Watchdog set to investigate Interior moves

SALT LAKE CITY — A government watchdog will investigate whether the U.S. Interior Department broke the law by making plans to open former national monument lands in Utah to leasing for oil, gas and coal development, a pair of Democratic congress members said Monday.

The lands were removed from the Grand Staircase-escalante National Monument by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Government Accountability Office will look into whether Interior violated the appropriations law by using funds to assess potential resource extraction in the lands.

It is the latest chapter in a long-running saga over the sprawling monument, which was created in 1996 and is home to scenic cliffs, canyons, dinosaur fossils and coal reserves.

Trump slashed the monument by nearly half in 2017 following a contentious review by former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke of monuments around the country.

Trump ordered the review based on arguments by him and others that a law signed by President Theodore Roosevelt allowing presidents to declare monuments had been improperly used to protect wide expanses of lands instead of places with particular historical or archaeological value.

The GAO investigation comes after U.S. Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico and U.S. Rep. Betty Mccollum of Minnesota, both Democrats, requested the investigation in May.

They argue that a section of the appropriations law on the books since 2002 states that no taxpayer money can be used to do pre-leasing studies on lands in monuments that were created by Jan. 20, 2001.

Trump in 2017 also downsized the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, but that won’t be part of the GAO’S inquiry because it was created in 2016 by President Barack Obama.