Summit County Council Chairman Roger Armstrong says it was appropriate for the Council to send a letter of concern to the Utah Association of Counties, and take issue with incidents where members of the group are making politicized comments and singling out perceived dissenters.
Armstrong told KPCW on Thursday that he hasn’t been to many UAC-style events. The most recent was a National Association of Counties convention in Washington D. C., which included a number of Utah officials.
“All the comments that I heard were within the scope of their jobs as commissioners or as representatives of their county. I didn’t agree with it. Politically, I don’t think we need to open up our public lands to as much resource production as we can in the state of Utah. But that I think is a policy issue that is fair for those people to consider as policies for their counties, and to articulate. That’s totally reasonable.”
What was questionable, he said, was the UAC meeting in September where an official, now identified as Garfield County Commissioner Leland Pollock, lobbied in support of President Trump and reportedly singled out Summit County Council Member Kim Carson a Democrat.
Armstrong said he doesn’t think the county is making too big a deal of the episode.
“I mean, had I been there, it would have been a much bigger deal. Kim, I thought, was remarkably civil in the face of what was going on. I tend not to be able to hold my tongue in those situations, so I would have been much louder about it. I think we have appropriately expressed our concern with those kinds of issues.”
A similar episode occurred after San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman was arrested for trespassing on federal land, and a UAC member suggested the organization contribute to his legal defense.
“And we raised concerns at that time about that, and were also on the precipice of removing ourselves from membership in UAC. There are other things that were not specifically called out, but I know Glenn and Kim have both seen issues in UAC meetings where county commissioners and other representatives are engaging in behavior that’s not appropriate—often towards, I shouldn’t say often, occasionally towards women.”
Summit County Council Member Roger Armstrong
