**BLM Manager's Forum #1**

**BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**November 21, 1996**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors in transcription and omissions.

The Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live From the
BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, an Interactive Look at
Current Public Land Management Issues. Now the Host of Your Program,
Larry Hamilton.

Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to the BLM Manager\'s Forum. Joining Me
Today Is Mike Dombeck, BLM Acting Director. Mike, It\'s Nice to Have You
with Us Today.

Thanks, Larry. It\'s Been a Wonderful Two Days In Phoenix. I Hope the
Weather Is this Nice When I Get Back Home Later Today.

Don\'t Count on It. I Don\'t Think That\'s Going to Happen. Also with Us
from Headquarters Is Mat Millenbach. Mat Is the BLM Deputy Director.

We Have Been down Here in Phoenix the Last Couple Days at an Executive
Leadership Meeting. Now We\'re Going Back Home to Do The Real Work.

Good. Glad to Have You with Us Today. We Also Have with Us Today in The
First Segment Melanie Beller. Melanie Is Assistant to the Secretary of
the Interior, and Melanie Is Also the Director of The Office of
Congressional and Legislative Affairs. Welcome, Melanie.

Thank You Very Much, Larry. It\'s Been a Great Opportunity to Be Here. I
Don\'t Get to Travel That Much In My Particular Job. I\'m Usually in
Washington. So It\'s Great to Be out Here With the BLM.

Great. Glad to Have You. Our Special Guest this Morning Is Bob
Armstrong. Bob Is the Assistant Secretary for Land And Minerals
Management at the Department of Interior. How Are You Today, Bob.

Well, I\'m Well, and We Have Had a Great Time While We Were Here.

We\'re Beginning the Day with A View from the Top, and Probably Some of
You Aren\'t Aware That Bob Spends Some Time With the President of the
United States, Travels with Him Quite a Bit, as Well as Plays Golf with
Him on Occasion, And, Bob, You Probably Know What the President\'s Real
Golf Score Is.

That\'s True, and I\'m Not Telling, Because I Want to Go Again. He Plays
a Lot of Golf and I Noticed He Was in Australia Playing with Greg
Norman. But, You Know, I Believe We Ought to Start with Some Serious
Stuff. This One Guy Had a Dog That He Kept in Front of the 7‑eleven, And
He Prided Himself on it Being the Meanest Dog That He Could Find, and
One Day a Little Guy Came in and Said, My Dog Is Killing Your Dog. And
He Said, What Do You Mean? He Said, Well, He Is Killing Him. And He
Said, What Kind of Dog Do You Have? He Said, Well, I Have a Chihuahua.
Well, How Is He Killing Him? Well, He\'s Stuck in His Throat! Anyhow\...
I\'m Going to Tell You Very Quickly Some Of the Things That We\'re Doing
And Some of the Things That We\'re Going to Do. I\'ll Start with Elaine
Zielinski. She Has the President\'s Forest Plan. The Real Significance
of this Plan Is That it Changed the Way That We Dealt with the Forests
Away from Spotted Owl Circles Into a Real Valid Ecosystem Management
Program. It\'s a Watershed Analysis Which Contains 642,000 Acres. It\'s
Jobs in the Woods. But Mainly We Are Cutting Trees. But We\'re Cutting
Them in the Right Way. I\'d like to Move to Al Pierson. Al Pierson Has
the Green River Basin Advisory Committee. It\'s Already Shortened the
Nepa Requirements for Drilling for Oil and Gas and We Think That It\'s
Going to Be a Pattern for The Rest of the West to Look at And Shorten
this Period of Time. We\'re Shortening it from 26 to 16 Months, and More
Important, We May Be Able to Use Ea\'s as Opposed to Eis\'s, and I Think
This Is Going to Be a Significant Work Product That We Can Have. The
Good Thing about it Is You Got Everybody Together. I Didn\'t Have
Anything to Do With it Except to Get it Started. But Al Presided over a
Meeting Between Environmentalists and Oil and Gas Industry and It\'s
Working. Probably the Most Significant Thing That We Do Is Fire. Les
Rosencrantz Is in Charge of That. Fire Safety Is the Most Important
Step. Last Year We Burned Six Million Acres Without a Death and That Is
a Real Significant Thing in Terms of Fire Safety. Riparian Restoration
Works in All Kinds of Ways. We Need it in the Health of the Land and
That Will Be a Continuing Thing That We Will Do In the Future.
Designating Wild and Scenic Rivers, Weed Control. These Are All Things
We Do. Land Exchanges Principally under Ann Morgan in Nevada, We Took a
Bunch of High‑dollar Land and Traded it for One ‑‑ for 5,000 Feet of
Lake Tahoe and That Is Real Significant Because Lake Tahoe Is Selling by
the Foot, And We\'re Going to Make That Land Available to the Public.
Heavy Oil Royalty Rate Reduction, More Oil with the Reduction Will Be
Able to Be Pumped. Sometimes the Price of Oil Doesn\'t Equal the Cost of
Lifting, and So We\'re Going to Work in That Area. Rego 2, the
Vice‑president\'s Organization, Is Working with Us Hand and Glove and I
Don\'t Know How Many of You Have Seen it but I\'ve Seen Quite a Few of
Those Hammers We Put on People\'s Lapels and They Are Significant
Because They Mean Savings. We\'re Doing More with Less, and So I Think
That That Is Another Way That We Can Progress to Doing More with less
People and Do ‑‑ with Government Getting Smaller. Martha Hahn Works with
the Columbia River. It\'s Really a Pack Fish Situation, and it Deals
with About Seven States. It Is a Big Program. And I Think That She Will
Do a Lot for That Program in the Future as She Has Already Done In the
past. Grazing, Well, We Finally Got it Right, Sort Of. It Took Us a Long
Time, but We Finally Worked with the People That Had the Grazing on
Their Land, and So We Set up a Bunch Of Racks. You Know, the President
Said to Me One Time, \"I Would Give Anything If I Could Pass Some of
This down to the People That Are On the Ground,\" and I Think That\'s
What We\'ve Done with the Racks, Because Those Are the People That Are
Doing the Grazing, and We Will Get the Grazing to Us in Terms of the
Standards and Guidelines in this Month and We\'ll Go from There. But
this Is Going to Be, I Think, a Good Method to Handle Grazing. Native
American Issues, We Will Implement 628 Contracts and Cooperative
Agreements with Real Collaboration, Development of Dispute Resolution to
Settle Disputes Is Also in the Making. Bill Caulkins Runs Almrs, the
Pilot Project. It\'s an Automated Land and Records System. New Mexico Is
a Real Barn‑burner, and You Will Get it In Your Shop as We Go Through
This Year. Let\'s Look at Some of the New Things That Are Happening. The
New World Mine Is Going to Be at the Corner of Yellowstone. It\'s Going
to Be a Real Challenge to Find the Acreage to Buy Them Out, but We\'re
Going to Do It. Ed Hastey Has the California Redwoods, and We Have
Another Commitment We\'re Going to Have To Meet There, but We\'ll Do
That, Too. Finally, Utah\'s Grand Staircase And Escalante National
Monument Is a Reality. We Have Three Years to Put the Monument in Place
and I Think That Bill Lamb Is Going to Do It. We Have 1.7 Million Acres
of Land, and I Guess What I\'m Saying Is, When All of this Is There, You
Just Can\'t Do it Alone. You\'ve Got to Have Collaborative Management,
and We Are Doing a Good Job of Reaching out to People. Recreation Is a
New Element. As the Land Is Filling up with People. And That Area Is
Good. But Oil and Gas, Timber, Grazing, They All Take Place in The Same
Time in the Same Area, And Your Job Is to Accommodate All of These.
Celebrate Your Accomplishments. Denise Meredith Had a Celebration Here
Where We Stood People out on the Street and Celebrated the Opening
Avenue Office. I Think That\'s What You Ought to Do. You Ought to Take
Time to Celebrate. So Let Me Just Say That Mat Is The Quarterback, He\'s
Right Here, and Then Mike Is the Coach, and You\'re Going to Have A Lot
of Things That Change and Change Is the Very Most Natural Thing, Is a
Song I Sing Every Once in a While, and Life Is Mostly Attitude and
Timing. But If You Keep That in Mind, You\'ll Be on Top of It. I\'m
Going to Read a Quote to You: the Public Lands and the Resources They
Contain Are a Legacy We Inherited from Our Forebearers. Our Collective
Challenge Is to Pass Them Unimpaired to Our Children. Who Said That?
Mike Dombeck. Let\'s Keep That in Mind.

Okay, Thanks, Bob. That\'s a Prodigious View and We\'re Looking Forward
on Accomplishing it with You. Thanks for Those Comments. Before We
Continue I Would like To Mention That Throughout this Program You\'ll Be
Able to Communicate with Us via Telephone and Fax Using the Numbers
Provided to Your Offices. You Can Send Us a Fax Question At Any Time.
Use the Form in the Back of Your Satellite Downlink Guide, and Please
Print Your Question with A Dark Marker. That Will Be Helpful for Us
Reading it in Here. You May Call Us Whenever You Like. Our Operators Are
Standing By. In Most Cases, However, We Will Only Be Putting Calls on
the Air During Our Two or Three Scheduled Interactive Segments. We\'re
Very Fortunate Today to Have Melanie Beller with Us. Melanie Also Has an
Insider\'s View of the Workings on Capitol Hill and the Congress.
Melanie, What Is Your Interpretation of How the Latest Election Has
Impacted Congress, The Committees and What Does it Mean for the Bureau
of Land Management?

Well, Larry, I Think Congress Really Looks Marginally Different this
Time Around in The 105th Congress. The Senate ‑‑ in the Senate the
Republicans Picked up Two Seats, So it Will Be 55 Republicans to 45
Democrats, and in the House It Appears That the Democrats Have Picked up
at Least 8 to 10 Seats, Although a Few of Those Are Still in Dispute. I
Think the Most Interesting Thing to Talk about Is Really What the
Committee Makeup May Look like. I\'m on the House Natural Resources
Committee ‑‑ or the House Resources Committee. It Looks as If We\'re
Going to Have about Eight Openings, Maybe Five Republicans and Maybe
Three Democrats, and So That Could Really Change the Makeup of That
Committee. In the Senate Energy Committee, It Appears There Will Be One
Republican Opening and Three Democratic Openings. So That Will Be a
Total of Four Openings, Which Will Be Very Interesting to See Who Ends
up Sitting on That Committee. Probably One of the Most Interesting
Changes, I Think, Is The Fact That Senator Dale Bumpers Will Be the
Ranking Minority Senator on the Energy Committee in the Senate. He Has
‑‑ I Think We Can Expect A Much More Partisan Type of Interaction on
That Committee as People Probably Will Know He\'s Been Kind of the
Granddaddy of The Taxpayer Getting a Fair Return on the Dollar for
Mining Royalty and Grazing Fee Increases. So I Imagine That He Will
Probably Continue to Push Those Issues. In Reality, However, I Doubt
That Very Many Big Changes Will Be Coming out on Either Side out Of
Those Committees Because the Budget Is Really Going to Be the
Overwhelming Important Issue That I Think Will Take up Most Of
Congress\' Time in the next Year at Least.

Okay. Thank You.

Melanie, I Want to Thank You And Your Staff and Also the BLM
Congressional Affairs Staff for Just an Incredibly Busy Year ‑‑ Two
Years We Had with the 104th Congress and It\'s Interesting That
Typically an Agency like BLM Would Deal with Three to Five Pieces of
Legislation and This Year We Had over 30, but It\'s Fascinating That
Almost Nothing Passed.

That\'s Exactly Right, Mike. It Was a Very Busy Year, Both in Terms of
Dealing with Legislation That Was Introduced And Also We Had a Lot Of,
Quote‑unquote, Investigative Issues We Had to Deal with. So We Were
Collecting a Lot of a Lot of the Time for Some of the Committees on the
Hill.

Melanie, Do You See the Same Kind of Activity Going on in the Upcoming
Congress Where We\'re Going to Have a Lot of Legislative Action and
Investigative Work?

It\'s a Little Hard to Tell Right Now. I Think That Maybe We Will See
Some of the Traditional Issues We\'ve Seen Before. Maybe Somebody Will
Introduce a Divestiture Bill. Perhaps Another Mining Bill. I Hope That
We\'ve Laid Grazing To Rest, But, You Know, That Could Pop up Possibly
as Well. Again, I Really Don\'t See That Any of Those Things Are Going
to Move out with Any Great Speed. One, Just Because of the Makeup Of
Congress. And Also ‑‑ and the Strength of Some Moderate Republicans Who
Are Ready ‑‑ Are Already Starting to Make Their Strength Be Known Within
Leadership. ‑‑ of the House. But Also, Again, the Budget Is Going to Be
Such an Overwhelming Issue That Everyone Has to Deal With, I Think That
Will Take up Most of the Time.

I Know That People Are ‑‑ We All Need to Be More Interested In the
Future than the past but I Think One Important Thing for All Our
Employees to Be Aware of And That\'s That the BLM Got Reauthorized.

That\'s Right. For the First Time since 1982 And We Have a Six‑year
Authorization and It\'s Ironic This Would Happen in a Year That We Dealt
with Two Divestiture Bills.

Exactly. It Is Kind of Ironic. I Think Early on We Were a Little Afraid
That That BLM Bill Would Be a Christmas Tree for a Lot of Mischievous
Other Bills, But it Ended up Going Through Clean and So We\'re Real
Happy About That.

This Is an Excellent Discussion. We\'d like to Get Some Folks in The
Field Involved in this. In a Few Minutes We Will Be Opening the Phones
up to Hear From You. So If You Have a Question or a Comment for Our Top
Leadership, This Would Be a Good Time to Start Calling In. To Avoid an
Echo Effect When You Call, Please Stand Away from Your Television Set or
Turn the Volume down. Don\'t Get Frustrated If You End Up on Hold for a
While. We Will Get to You as Fast as We Can. Mat, You Mentioned
Something Earlier That You Wanted to Ask Melanie about. Would this Be a
Good Time to Do That?

I\'m Trying to Think of What That Was ‑‑

I Think it Was on How Maybe Some of the Committee Assignments Might
Affect Us in The Future Based on What We Have Experienced in the past.

Yeah, Do You Want to Go into More Detail on That, Melanie, How the
Committee Assignments Actually Affect the BLM and the Different Kinds of
Things We\'re Trying to Do?

Well, Clearly, it Depends On, You Know, Who the Members Are And What
Their Background Is, If They\'ve Been Interested in Our Kind of Issues
or Not. A Lot of Times ‑‑ or I\'m Hearing That on the Natural Resources
Committee or the Resources Committee, I Keep Having to Correct Myself
Because it Was Natural Resources When I Was on It, the Makeup of That
Could Really Make All the Difference In the Kind of Legislation We See
Come out of It. Again, the Ratios Between the Republicans and Democrats
Are Pretty Significant. Don Young Usually Controls the Committee on the
Republican Side Pretty Strongly. George Miller, of Course, Is the
Ranking Democratic Member. We\'ll Just See. I Know Right Now They\'re in
Leadership Meetings and Trying To Figure out Who Will Get on The
Committee.

One of the Things That I Think About, Melanie, with BLM And the
Committees ‑‑ in Fact, This Has Been Maybe More of a Challenge for Us in
Appropriations, but Most of the BLM Is in 13 Western States and So the
Balance of Where Those Members Are From, the New Committee Members Will
Be from The East or West, Will Make a Significant Difference in How We
Have to Deal with Them.

That\'s Exactly Right. And Almost Always, at Least on The House Side, We
Find That Most of the Republican Members Are from the West. Probably a
Little More Even Distribution on the Democratic Side Between Eastern,
Midwestern And Western States.

Do You Think That the Divestiture Bill Is Put Aside Now That We Have Six
Years and Will There Be Much of a Move in That Regard?

I Wouldn\'t Be Surprised If a Bill Got Introduced. I Think There May Be
Some Attempt to Retool That Bill in a Way That Maybe Is More Palatable
To More People. I Can\'t Imagine How it Will Be Retooled to Be More
Palatable to This Administration, However. But We\'ll Have to Kind of
Wait And See. It\'s Still Very Early. Like I Said, the Senate and the
House Are Involved in Their Leadership Meetings Right Now. We Will Know
the Makeup of the Committees Probably Within a Week.

and I Suppose There Is Always The Veto.

That\'s Right.

They Will Have to Operate Within That Framework. So That Might Make a
More Reasonable Situation in the Congress, We Hope.

I Think So. I Think That Was a Message in This Election, at Least with
the Reelection of the President, That the American People Are Very
Concerned about the Environment and They Don\'t Want To Be Overregulated
but They Want Enough to Where They Can Breathe Clean Air, Drink Clean
Water and Enjoy Their Public Lands, Which They Own.

Bob, I Know One Question That\'s Been Asked a Lot in the Field, and You
Shared These Answers with Us at the Executive Leadership Team Meeting,
and That Is, What\'s Going to Be the Tenure of Secretary Babbitt and The
Assistant Secretary Bob Armstrong?

Well, as Far as Secretary Babbitt Is Concerned, I Would Like to Let Him
Answer That. But I Think Is Certainly Giving Every Indication That He
Wants To Keep on Keeping on Right Now. I\'m 65 Years Old next Birthday,
And the Only Thing Is I Just Enjoy it So Much That I Really Want to Get
a Couple of Things Done. I Said That I Was Going to Quit In June of next
Year. I\'ve Kind of Extended That Maybe To January, but We\'re Just
Going To Play It, as They Say in the Golf, We Play it like it Lies And
See What Happens. But I\'m Not in a Big Hurry, but We\'ll Just Have to
See.

One Thing We\'re Trying to Do In this Program Is Deal with Rumor
Control, And, Mike, We\'re Not Going to Let You off the Hook, Either.
There\'s a Lot of Rumors You Might Be Moving onto the Forest Service.
Could You Share Some of That With Us?

Well, All I Can Say Is Bob Hasn\'t Asked Me to Do That Yet, But as I
Told All of the State Directors and All of the Executive Leadership of
BLM, as Career Professionals, We\'re Subject to Reassignment and I
Believe That the Administration And the Secretary, along with Bob
Armstrong, They\'ll Do What They Think Is Best. I\'ve Got to Say,
Though, We\'ve Got Our Hands Full at BLM. We\'ve Got a Lot Accomplished
This Year, the Last Couple Years N Fact, Some of the Things Bob Talked B
I\'m Just Rearing to Go To Keep on Forging Ahead.

the Field Is Being Shy at This Point, and this Is Not a Time to Be Shy.
We Have the Top Leadership Here With Us, and this Is a Unique
Opportunity to Ask Some of Those Questions You\'ve Been Dying to Ask,
and Ask it of the Folks That Have the Answers. So I Encourage You to
Call In. We\'ve Got a Few Minutes Here Set Aside. I Don\'t Want to Waste
this Opportunity. So Please Make Your Phone Call At this Point. Melanie,
Another Concern That Was Raised at the Executive Leadership Team Meeting
Was If You Had Any Idea on Maybe What The Timing Would Be for Filling
Some of the Key Positions on the Committees. Is this Something That\'s
Going To Happen Fairly Quickly or Is It Going to Be Strung out for a
While? What\'s Your Sense of That?

I Suspect it Will Be Done Probably in the next Week or Two. We\'ll Have
a Good Idea of Who All Will Be On. The Only Thing That Complicates That
Slightly Is That There\'s a Few House Seats Still in Dispute, but for
the Most Part I Think We\'ll Know Basically What The Committees Are
Going to Look Like Before Mid‑december or So. One Other Issue, We Talk a
Lot About the Authorizing Committees, but Probably One of The Most
Important Committees That We Deal with Are the Appropriations Committees
and Our Subcommittee on Interior Appropriations. There\'s Going to Be
Some Changes On That Committee as Well, and It Will Be Very Interesting
to See How That Works out. You Have a Little Bit Different Makeup on
That Committee, Generally. The Republican Side Is More Evenly Balanced
Throughout the United States as Well as the Democratic Side. So, I
Always Keep My Eye on the Appropriations Committee.

What\'s Your Sense of That, Mat?

Well, Again, It\'s Really Hard To Tell. The Legislative Interaction
Between the Bureau and the Congress Is a Very Difficult Thing to
Predict. Last Year and the Year Before Was Really Tough for Us to Know
What They Were Going to Come up With. You Remember the Last Congress
Came in with an Agenda for a Lot Of Changes. Starting out in That,
We\'re Sitting There in the BLM Trying To Figure out What this Means For
Us, and It\'s Very Difficult To Predict That. I Think this Year One of
the Things That Is Probably Different than Two Years Ago Is That a Lot
of People Have Gotten, Both in the Congress and In the Administration,
Have Gotten a Lot Better Sense about What They Can Really Accomplish. If
You Think About, Yeah, We\'re Going to Have Changes on the Committee
Staffs, but a Lot of The Members of Congress Are Still the Same Members
and I Think When They Sit down and Really Take a Look at What They Might
Be Able to Do Versus What They Thought They Might Be Able To Do Two
Years Ago, Hopefully Some Move Toward Being Able to Actually Get Things
Done Would Be What They Would Shoot At. It\'s Really Hard for Us to Know
That. They\'re the Ones Have That to Sit down and Decide That, and Once
They Get Themselves Organized and in Place, I Think We\'ll Probably Have
a Better Idea of That.

Okay. Something That Occurred at the Executive Leadership Team Meeting,
and this Is Probably a Good Time to Talk about It, Was Each State
Director Had an Opportunity to Spend 10 Minutes With the Assistant
Secretary and The Deputy Assistant Secretary, And We Weren\'t Sure
Whether We Were Going to the Wood Shed or Exactly What Was Going to
Occur, But, Bob, What Was Your Sense of Meeting with Every State
Director? Did You Learn Anything?

Yeah, I Really Did. You Know, What We Tried to Do Was to Get the People
in There And Say, \"What Can We Do That\'s Better? How Can We Help You?
What Is the Assistant Secretary\'s Office ‑‑ What Can They Do That Will
Make Things Better?\" And We Learned a Lot of Things, And I Think That
I\'m Going to Sit down with Mat and Mike and Some of Them Will Be Easy
to Implement Right Now. Frequently There Was a Disconnect in the Ability
of People to Talk to People Right Quick, You Know, and We Could ‑‑ We
Can Do That Easily, and We\'re Going to Work on All of this Starting
Tomorrow, and Those That We Can ‑‑ Some Things Will Take a Little More
Time, but I Thought That the Other Thing Was That It\'s Always Good for
to You Sit down and Meet with People, And They Really Responded to Our
Requests and Opened up and Told Us Everything That We Needed to Know,
Both the Good and the Bad, And I Think We\'re Going to Be a Better
Organization Because of It.

You Know, Larry, I Thought Bob Was ‑‑ Were Hearing Confessions and after
You Were Out of the Room for So Long, Boy, You Really Gave Larry a Long
Pennants, Bob.

We Did. Others Would Say, It\'s Really Boring in There, Keep Me in Here
A Long Time. They Were Really Good Meetings.

I Think We\'ve Struck a Chord Here Because the Phone Lines Are Starting
to Light up and I Would Like to Go to Our First Caller. Bill in
Montrose, Are You There?

Yes.

You Got a Question this Morning?

Caller: Sure Do.

Let\'s Have It.

Caller: What\'s the Likelihood of More Trading Post Initiatives Being
Endorsed?

Bill, It\'s Very Good. We Think That ‑‑ Just like We Talk in Ecosystem
Management, We Talk about Boundaryless Management. What We\'re Talking
about with The Trading Post Is a One‑stop Shopping for the American
Public. The Fact Is That the People Really Don\'t Care If We\'re Paid By
One Agency or Another. What They Really Care about Is They Really Care
about the Service That We Give and I\'ve Got to Compliment All of You in
Colorado and a Lot of Other States for Having Moved Forward With this
and We\'ve Got Full Support of Jack Ward Tom Us and Relationships with
the Forest Service and What We Need to Do Now Is We Need to Do Better
with The Other Agencies So We Can Really Provide One‑stop Shopping For
People.

You Know, That Was Really Brought out by Bob Abby and It\'s A Good Idea
and I Think It\'s Going to Go Forward.

Bill, Thanks for the Question.

Caller: Thank You.

Dee in Fairbanks, Alaska, You\'re on the Air.

Caller: Hi, Larry and the Rest of You. Melanie, Hello to You. I Used to
Work for You.

I Keep Running into All My Old Friends from the Hill.

Is this One of Your Old Boyfriends, Melanie?

Caller: I Hope You Consider Me That. Some Day I Would like to Get to You
Alaska. My Question Is, Really, for the ‑‑ I Asked Mat this Not Long
Ago, but What\'s Your Take on the Carryover Dollars? What Are You Going
to Do with Those? We Need to Get to Work with Them. Then I Wanted to
Talk a Little Bit about the National Petroleum Reserve and What Are Your
Thoughts There.

Well, Dee, You\'re Getting Into Our Second Half Stuff Here, But Let Me
Just Talk about That Since You\'ve Asked the Question. The First
Principle That We Want To Try to Keep in Mind When We\'re Dealing with
Carryover Dollars Is That We Want to Try To Make That Money as Available
To the States and the Field Offices as We Can. The Thing That We\'re
Trying to Deal with Here Is That We Do Have a Number of Unfunded
National Priorities Such as the Grand Staircase, Escalante National
Monument, We Need Funding for Almrs, Wild Horse And Burro Roundups and
So Forth. So We Do Need to Try to Come One A Way to Fund Some of That
Project Work That Needs to Be Done. So We\'ve Really Started out ‑‑ We
Talked Quite a Bit at the Elt About What We\'re Going to Do to Fund
Those Things and It\'s Really Kind of a Three‑step Process. First of
All, We Want to Go Ahead and Take a Look at the Requests That Have Been
Sent in To Fund These National Priority Projects. Right Now We\'ve Got
about an Estimate of \$20 Million That It\'s Going to Take to Do That.
Then Once We Get That Pretty Well Figured Out, the next Step, Then,
Would Be to Go Ahead and Take a Look at Some of the Overhead Funding.
We\'ve Got a \$6 Million Carryover In the Washington Office. We\'ve Got
Carryover Funding in Some of the Other National Offices Based in Denver
and Throughout the Country and Those Are a Good Source of Carryover
Funds That We Could Use. And Then We\'ve Also Held over a 2% Reserve
from the Preannual Work Plan Which Amounted to \$9 Million. So If You
Start Adding up Those Numbers, You Know, Numbers like \$6 Million, \$9
Million, the Money from the Other National Offices, You Can See We\'re
Start To Go Get Close to the \$20 Million. So We Think That We Should Be
Able to Get Pretty Close to the \$20 Million Need by Doing That. As a
Last Resort, If We Have to Dip into Some of the States\' Carryover
Funds, Then We Would Have to Do That to Fund Some of These Projects. But
it Looks at the Time Be Field Goal We Do Have to Dip Into Those It\'s
Not Going to Be A Big Hit. So Most of the Money That You\'ve Had That
You\'re Counting on That\'s Available Through the Last‑year Carryover,
it Looks Like We\'re Going to Be in Pretty Good Shape, That You\'ll Be
Able To Use Almost All of That.

Before You Get into the National Petroleum Reserve, Mat, Let Me Mention
One Thing to Dee And Everybody Else out There. The Thing That I Continue
to Push and Will Continue to Push The State Directors and All of You on
Is to ‑‑ We\'re about Managing the Land and the Important Thing We Do Is
the Work on the Ground, the Deliverables to the American Public and
That\'s Where I Want The Emphasis to Go and I Understand That Every
Level of The Organization Is Important Because Our Mission Is to Support
That, but I Really Want To Push as Much of That Money Down on the Land
for Project Dollars as Possible.

Dee, What\'s the Temperature In Fairbanks Today?

Caller: it Was 18 below When I Came to Work this Morning, Larry. Of
Course, You Got Us up a Little Earlier than You Are, But\... Still a
Beautiful Day.

I Guess I Was Thinking, Dee, If it Were below zero We Would Let You Ask
the Second Part of Your Question. So it Sounds like You Qualify.

Caller: I Have ‑‑ in Alaska Right Now the National Petroleum Reserve Is
Making a Big Play on Several Fronts. There\'s Been a Lot of Proposals
For It. I Just Want to Know Maybe from Bob Armstrong\'s Standpoint, I\'m
Sure You\'ve Had Some Briefing on That and We\'re Just Concerned About
That\'s the Largest Piece Of Real Estate That BLM Has in One Chunk in
the United States And the Very Important Resource And Just We\'re
Concerned about The ‑‑ That and the Future Management.

a Good Question, Dee. We Will Have Bob Answer it for You.

All Right. I Know That the Following Things Are Happening: I Have the
101 Book on National Petroleum Reserve. I Happen to Be One of the Few
People That Have Been up There And Flown over It. But Brooks Holman Is
Going to Go Up, I Believe next Week, and Be Briefed, and We Are ‑‑ and
He Will Come Back and Make Some Recommendations. I Know That When I
Talked to Sally, Who Was at Our Meeting, She Said That She Is Going to
Brief Brooks on this and Is Going to Come Back down with Tom Allen and
Brief Us. But I Want the People to Understand That this Is a BLM Piece
of Property. I Know That the Fish & Wildlife People Have Got Eyes on It.
I Know That Other People Have. But I Really Want Us to See What We Can
Do So That BLM Is Firmly In Control and We\'ll Work on That as it Goes.
But It\'s Going to Take a While To Play out.

Dee, Thanks for the Questions. I Hope it Warms Up. Thanks for Calling.

Caller: We Appreciate this. This Is a Great Deal to See You Here in
Fairbanks from Phoenix.

Good Talking to You. Charles in Springfield, Virginia, You\'re on the
Air. You Got a Question for Us?

Caller: Yeah, I Sure Do. Hello, Everyone. Starting with the Summit a
Couple Years Ago, We All Got off To a Great Start on Changing Some of
Our Management Paradigms. We Started Some Deeming, Collaborative
Leadership and So Forth. It Would Appear That That Has Lost a Little Bit
of its Emphasis and My Question Is Whether or Not Those Are Still Our
Prevailing Paradigms in the Bureau Are We Heading in Other Directions?

Well, Larry, Let Me Answer That, at Least to Start with. Number One Is,
We\'re Forging Ahead with That, and We Have Had Lots of Successes as a
Result of The Summit. In Fact, I Think If There Was a Way That We Could
Enumerate the Successes, We Would All Be Amazed at How Much Progress
We\'ve Made. One of the Significant Things That I\'ve Seen at
Headquarters, For Example, Is the Interdisciplinary Interaction That Is
Occurring at Headquarters Is the Thing That I Continually Hear from
Employees, In Spite of the Fact That Other Things Have Changed. Networks
Have Changed and We\'ve Got to Rebuild Those Networks. Our Relationships
with Constituencies Is Something We Have to Be Very Vigilant of Because
We\'ve Got to Provide Good Information to the People That Support Us and
Our Programs. But the Fact Is, Some Things Lend Themselves to Teamwork
and Others Don\'t and Let Me Give You The Best Example of a Team That I
Know and That\'s the Development of the President\'s Forest Plan Where
in 11 Months Several Agencies Developed the First‑ever Ecosystem
Management Plan on 24 Million Acres, and They Did it in 11 Months. Now,
If We Followed a Typical Approach, Our Planning Processes In a
Multi‑agency Effort like That, We Would All Be Retired Before That Was
Done. So it Can Work and We Know How To Make it Work, but It\'s
Different and We\'ve Just Got to Work Together, Keep on Talking To One
Another, and Keep on Working to Get Better as an Agency.

Yeah, I\'d like to Chime in on That, Too. You Know, Charles, I Think If
You Think about One of the Biggest Accomplishments That Came out of the
Summit, it Was The Development of the Bureau of Vision Statement,
Mission Statement and the Five Components of the Strategic Plan, the
Blueprint for the Future. You Know, If You Look Around at Other
Organizations, Very Few of Them Have That Very Clear Set ‑‑ Clear Way of
Setting Priorities And Objectives for the Future. You Are Going to See
That Carried into Things like the Bureau\'s Strategic Plan. That\'s
Going to Be Part of the Government Performance and Results Act. I Think
We Really Owe it to Ourselves to Pick That Blueprint For the Future up
Every Once in A While and Take a Look at it And Try to Assess the Things
That We\'re Doing, the Projects That We\'re Working On, the Programs
We\'re Trying to Put Forth in Terms of That Blueprint. You Know, It\'s
Really a Very Good Document. It\'s Timely. We\'re Doing Work to Bring it
up To the Present, but I Think It\'s Something That We Can Really Hang
Our Hats On. The Last Thing I Want to Say About That Is That as We Go
Through this Strategic Planning Effort, Through the G.p.r.a. You\'re All
Going to Have a Chance to Take a Look at the Different Programs That
We\'re Trying to Emphasize as Part of That, and Anything That Can You Do
to Give Us Help on That, this Will Be Occurring over the next Six
Months, Anything You Can \'Do To Give Us Help Would Sure Be Appreciated.

Charles, Thanks for the Question. That Was a Great Question.

Caller: Thank You, Larry.

Okay. At this Point We\'ll Take a 10‑minute Break, and When We Come
Back, Mike Will Share with Us His Vision of the Future for BLM. I Would
like to Thank Both Bob And Melanie for Being with Us This Morning.

Thank You. It Was Great Being Here.

We Appreciate Them. Look Forward to Doing it Again. We\'ll See You in a
Few Minutes!

Welcome Back to the BLM Managers Forum. Joining Us in this Segment of
Our Broadcast Is Elaine Zielinski, State Director, Oregon/washington.
Glad You Could Be with Us Today, Elaine.

Great to Be Here in Sunny, Arizona, Larry. I\'m a Little Concerned about
the Reports I Have Been Getting About Oregon and Washington and The Snow
and the Rain. So If We\'ve Got Some Callers That Are Going to Call In,
Maybe They Can Give Us a Weather Update.

Elaine Has Been Thinking About Spending the Weekend down Here. Also Al
Pierson, Who Is the BLM Wyoming State Director Has Joined Us. I\'m Glad
to See You Got Away From Some of the Wild Horses.

It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here Where It\'s Warm and Our First Elt Meeting
We\'ve Had in a While. I Think We\'ve Done Some Important Business this
Week.

Great. Glad to Have You Here. Mike, I Believe You Have Some Thoughts You
Would like to Share With Everyone at this Point.

Well, Thanks, Larry. Actually I\'ve Got about Two Major Things I Want to
Talk About with Folks and I Know Some Of You Have Heard this Before, But
I Think It\'s Real Important. In Fact, Mat\'s Last Point Was an
Important Segue to Set Me up for This, and That\'s to Talk about The
Importance of the Blueprint For the Future. Before I Tell You about the
Blueprint for the Future, I Want To Say That What I Told the Folks at
the Elt, I Told Them The Same Thing at the Last Elt In February, and
That\'s That We\'re in a Time of Change and The Only Thing That\'s Going
to Change Is the Rate of Change Is Going to Continue to Increase, And
It\'s like Species\... The Species That Stay off Those Lists, Namely,
Threatened and Endangered, Are Those Species That Remain Plastic or
Adaptable. That\'s What We Have to Do as an Organization. Even in Our
Personal Lives We Have Got to Remain Flexible and Adaptable, and the One
Thing I Want to Say That\'s What Bob Armstrong Mentioned, Is We Need To
Thank Each Other for Our Successes. Because If You Look out There, The
Things We Have Accomplished Or the ‑‑ over the Last Couple Years Is
Phenomenal. As I Look at My Hair Didn\'t Used To Be Gray at All, Nor Did
Elaine\'s, to Say Nothing about Larry, but That\'s an Important Thing
That We Just Continue to Have to Shore Each Other Because We Have Some
Tough Issues and Tough Things to Deal with. First Let Me Tell You about
the Mission and the Blueprint for The Future. As Was Discussed in the
First Segment of the Program, this Was Really Designed by the Employees
And by Our Constituents. It\'s an Absolutely Bipartisan Document That
Articulates What\'s Right for the Land, What\'s Right For People and
What\'s Right for Our Organization, and as Mat Indicated, Go Back and
Read It. Read it Once a Month. Because ‑‑ Don\'t Look for Washington ‑‑
in Fact, Don\'t Always Look for Your State Offices to Tell You Exactly
What You Need to Accomplish. You\'re the Expert out There. This Agency
Is Full of People With Associate Degrees, Bachelor\'s Degrees, Master\'s
Degrees, Ph.d.\'s and You Are Very Good at What You To. I Want to Read
the Five Blueprint Goals as a Reminder. Number One, Maintain Healthy
Ecosystems. We\'re All about the Health of The Land and That\'s the End
Product. That\'s Our Reason for Our Existence. Service to Current and
Future Publics. We Talked about One‑stop Shopping a Little Bit Last
Time. It\'s the People, the Citizens of The United States That Pay Our
Salaries and We Need to Provide Good Service to Them. Promoting
Collaborative Leadership. I Have Got to Say this Agency of All Agencies
Is the Agency That Has the Most Experience in Dealing with Advisory
Councils, Is and We Turned a New Corner With the Resource Advisory
Councils, and the Fact Is BLM Has Been Dealing with Resource Advisory
Councils since Before We Were BLM. As a Matter of Fact, the Grazing
Boards That Were Developed in 1940 ‑‑ 36 Were Part of That, And We\'re
an Organization by Culture That\'s Close to People On the Land and
That\'s Working In Our Favor Today and Keep on Doing It. Improving
Business Practices, I Can\'t Elaborate on That Anymore. And, of Course,
Improving Human Resource Practices, and We\'re Going to Talk about Some
Important Issues Associated with Human Resources Later in this Segment
On, Namely, Diversity And Continuing to Be Able to Relate as Well as We
Can to the Changing Demographics of the United States and of the West,
And There Are Major Changes Going On, And, Again, this Is All Part of
Adaptability and Flexibility. A Couple Other Points I Want to Make and I
Know Some of You Have Heard this Before, but We Talked About the
Divestiture Bills and To Think That All of the Argument Associated with
the Divestiture Hasn\'t Been Heard And It\'s up to Us to Tell That
Story. In Fact, I Believe That BLM Is One of the Least Appreciated
Agencies in the Country Because Not Many People Know That We\'re The
Public ‑‑ the Public Lands Are the Fourth Largest Revenue Generator for
the U.s. Treasury, \$1.4 Billion and We Do That with an Mlr
Appropriation Of about 650 Million. In Addition We Send 725 Million
Dollars Back to States and Local Communities in Cash to Pay for Things
like Schools and Roads And Even County Commissioner Salaries, Range
Improvement Projects, a Forest Health Improvement Project. Those Kinds
of Things. What I\'m Asking Each and Every BLM Employee to Do Is Tell
Your Story for the Part of the Program That You Deal With, Because What
We\'re about Is We\'re about Good Stuff, and I\'ve Got to Tell You
There\'s a Basic Marketing Principle That Applies To Everything. Money
Flows Towards Things That People Want. It Doesn\'t Matter If It\'s
Nordstrom\'s, Wal‑mart or a Government Agency. What We\'re about Is
We\'re about Whitehead Business. We\'re about Hunting and Fishing And
Recreation Opportunities for Families and Families Getting Together and
Spending Time Together on the Land and Learning about Conservation and
Watching Wildlife and Environmentally Benign Energy And Mineral
Operations and Healthy Riparian Areas, Clean Water. That\'s What We\'re
about. And There Is an Element of Controversy in What We Do and There
Always Will Be, but There\'s a Very, Very Important High‑road Story That
We Need to Tell and If We Tell it Passionately, If We Stay on the High
Ground, Our Budget Is Going To Increase. If We Do it Right. And We Have
an Army Of, What, 10,000 People in this Agency to Tell the Story.
You\'re the Friends and Neighbors Of People That Talk to Their
Delegations, Their Neighbors and That Sort of Thing and this Is Really
Positive Business That We\'re In, and I Would Encourage You to Tell the
Message, Learn The Story, Tell the Message. That\'s How We\'re Going to
Get Ahead. That\'s It, Larry.

Thanks, Mike. That Was Great. I Think at this Point, since We Have Some
Troubles in Getting People on the Line, That We\'d Like to Let You Know
We\'ll Be Going to the Phones Again in a Few Minutes. So If You Have
Some Questions or Comments for Our Panel, this Would Be a Good Time to
Start Placing Your Calls. Mat, I Know You Had Some Comments You Wanted
to Make. You Made Some of Those in the First Segment, but If You Have
Some Other Things You Would like To Share, this Would Be a Good Time.

I Think Dee\'s Question about The Carryover Relates to the Bureau\'s
Overall Budget Situation. One of its Most Important Decision‑making
Duties Is to Play a Big Role in How We Distribute Our Funds and How We
Get Our Work Done, and to Try to Make Sure That the Money Goes to The
Most Important Things That We Have to Do. So We Did Spend a Fair Amount
of Time Here at this Meeting Talking about That, And, of Course, the Use
of the Carryover Funds Was Something That Was of A Lot of Concern to the
Various State Directors and the Assistant Directors. But I Do Want to
Say a Couple of Things about the Overall Budget Situation in General.
You Know, about a Year Ago We Were Very Concerned That We Might Be
Facing a Substantial Budget Cut for Fiscal Year 1997, And That Has Not
Happened. The Bureau Did Get a Very Modest Increase, about \$4 Million,
and Between the \$4 Million Increase And the \$46 Million Carryover That
the Bureau Saw Last Year, We\'re Actually in Reasonably Good Shape this
Year for Planning for this Upcoming Year. So as a Result of That, We\'re
Not Going to See Any Kind of Bureauwide Rifs. It Looks like as Far as
These Kind of Disruptive Things like We Had Last Year, You\'re Not Going
to See That. I Think That\'s Very Good News For the Bureau. One of the
Things That Everybody Needs to Be Careful About, Though, Is That Fiscal
Year \'98 Is Going to Be a New Year, And, You Know, We Still Need to Be
Very Conservative about the Kinds of Things We\'re Doing. If You Look at
the Projections And the Plans for the Reaching a Balanced Budget, it
Does Look at A Continual Downturn in Our Budget Capabilities in the
Future. So We\'re Going to Be Doing Some Things in \'97, and Al Pierson
Is Going to Talk about Some of the Decisions That Were Made at the
Meeting, but I\'d like to Say to All of You That, You Know, We Still
Need to Be Very Cautious About How We Spend Our Money and That We Need
to Be Very Careful About Making Commitments into The Future as to Those
‑‑ That Future Funding.

I\'d like to Add to Mat\'s Comments Just a Little Bit, Because I Think
this Is a Real Important Topic. You Know, We Went into this past Fiscal
Year Not Knowing What to Expect, and One of the Things That I Asked All
of the People At this Table and All of You out There, Is to Tighten the
Belt And Save the Money That You Can, And the Response Was Resounding
Because the Fact Is, When We Went into this past Fiscal Year, It Could
Be That 10 or 20 or \$30,000 You Saved Could Be Somebody\'s Paycheck and
Somebody\'s Job and I Just Want To Thank You for Doing That. The Other
Point That I Want to Make about the Budget and the Fact Is We Did a Lot
Better in 1997, Fiscal Year \'97, than We Thought We Would, and That\'s
Because of What You Did, That Some of You Did, and a Lot of You Did,
That I Spoke about Earlier, the Budget Staffs Were Very, Very
Responsive. We Provided the Appropriate Information That Was Needed to
The Secretary\'s Office, to O.m.b. to Work with the Hill, to Work with
Our Constituencies and I Know a Lot of You in the Field Wonders What
Goes on in Washington, but the Fact Is Job One of Washington Is to Be
the Ambassador for the Agency, to Communicate What We Do, and I\'ve Got
to Tell You the Public Lands Agencies Were the Secretary\'s Top Priority
from the Standpoint Of Funding and It\'s Because of a Lot ‑‑ a Lot in
Part Because of What the BLM Employees Did and Thank You. That\'s Why I
So Firmly Believe If That People Know What We Do, They\'ll Do the Budget
Work for Us.

as Mat Mentioned and Mike Has Alluded to Here, There Were Decisions Made
at the Elt, and One Part of the Program Is to Test the State Directors
and See Whether or Not They Got the Decisions Accurate or Not. So, Al,
What Do You Think Some Of the Decisions Were That We Made and We\'ll See
If Mike and Mat Agree.

I\'ll Try to Put the Wyoming Spin on It. I Think We Did Make Some
Important Decisions, Not Only Budget, but on Those Things Coming from
Budget That Relate Directly to Personnel and Those Of Us Who Work Every
Day in the Offices. You May Recall a Month or So Ago We Got a Memorandum
out of the Department That Had Determined That There Would Not Be
Buy‑outs Offered in this Round of Buy‑outs, and We Reaffirmed That In
the Management Team. Buy‑outs Are Designed Primarily To Assist Agencies
Facing Rifs And Serious Shortfalls in Budget. We\'re Not Facing That. So
We Have Not Have Buy‑outs. We Will, However, Be Offering Early‑outs,
Which Are Somewhat Different. We\'ll Be Getting a Memo out in The near
Future Describing the Process to Consider in this. Basically it Will Be
You Need to Make a Decision by March of \'97, And If You Choose to Take
an Early Out, Would Be off the Rolls by the End of the Fiscal Year, or
September \'97. This Does a Couple of Things. It Gives Us the
Opportunity to Further Implement Our Field Organization Strategies and
Give Those Folks Who May Be Affected By That One More Option. That\'s
the Primary Reason and Benefit from this. Tied Somewhat to That but
Separate Is a Lifting of the Hiring Freeze. We\'ve Been under a Hiring
Freeze Now for Some Time Related to Last Year\'s Buy‑outs and a Very
Conservative Approach to Filling Positions, Very Stringent Requirements
When We Need to Do Fill a Position, and for Most of Us That Meant a
Hiring Freeze, Period. We Made the Decision in the Meeting this Week to
Lift That. There Are Still a Few Constraints. We\'ll Need to Check the
Displaced Persons List in the Department of Interior to See If Some of
Our Fellow Employees Are Displaced and Would Qualify for A Job That We
Would Look to Fill. The Other List We Need to Check Before We Go Outside
to Hire Is The List out of the Project Office in Denver, Particularly On
Computer Specialists. As You Know, this Is Set up as a Project. It Is
Winding Down, and There Will Be ‑‑ There Are People Right Now Who Are
Not Going to Have a Home in the BLM in the Near Future. That Doesn\'t
Just Throw the Door Open for New Hiring. I Think We\'ve All Been Around
The Block a Time or Two Now. We Know What it Is to Have More People than
We Can Pay For, and I Think by the Numbers You\'ll See People Being
Pretty Darn Conservative about How We Fill Positions and Which Positions
We Fill. But We Have the Ability to Do That Now. That\'s Really Going to
Help Us With Some of Our Co‑op Ed Students in Filling Some Key Positions
We Know We Have Real Skill and Balances for or That We Desperately Need
Right Now And I Think That\'s Real Good News for All of Us in the Field
That Need to Fill a Few of These Key Positions.

How Did He Do? That Wyoming Spin Okay?

Good.

Yeah, I Thought it Was Just Fine. You Know, What We Want to ‑‑ If You
Think about a Hiring Freeze For a Minute, Then Put Yourself In My Seat
Where They All Have To Come Through Me, That Can Keep You Pretty Darn
Busy. So What this Does, I Think, Is Put the Decision‑making Where it
Really Belongs, at the Local Manager\'s Level So They Can Decide, You
Know, What They Want To Do and What the Most Appropriate Jobs Are That
They Need to Fill. So I Think That, Again, I Want To Reiterate That this
Is Not Like We\'re Opening the Flood Gates and All of a Sudden You Are
Going to See a Thousand New Employees Coming in the Bureau, We Should
Not and We Cannot Afford Something like That. But I Think There\'s a Lot
of Jobs ‑‑ a Lot of Imbalance in The Bureau. When I Go Around to the
Different Offices and I See Resource Areas That Don\'t Have Any Range
Cons and I Think about The Almrs Project That\'s Going To Have to Be Put
in Place in The Upcoming Year, You Know, Areas like That Where We\'ve
Got These Critical Shortages and Critical Vacancies, Those Are The Areas
Where We Need to Be Focusing in on and Trying to Figure out Who We
Should Be Bringing into the Bureau and What We Should Be Doing to Make
Ourselves Healthy and I Think We Have a Good Opportunity this Year and I
Think We Should Be Smart about it and Take Advantage of That.

at this Point We\'re Being Flooded with Faxes, and That\'s Terrific, but
Let Your Fingers Do the Talking and Dial the Number. We\'d Love to Hear
from You. So Don\'t Be Afraid to Call. Elaine, Bob Mentioned Some of The
National Priorities. What Was Your Impression of Some Of the Things He
Was Talking About? Because There Was Quite a Bit of Discussion at the
Elt on Some of These Priorities.

Yeah, We Spent Quite a Bit of Time Talking about National Priorities and
I Think it Was Really Worthwhile in That it Gave All the State Directors
in Our Washington ‑‑ and Our Washington Office Folks an Opportunity
Really to Get into More Detail about All of the Work That\'s Be ‑‑ That
Is Being Done in the Bureau and to Give Us a Better Understanding of
What the States Are Focusing On. Bob Did a Real Good Job of Kind Of
Going Through the Top National Priorities, but There\'s A Couple, I
Think, That Are Maybe Worth Repeating and a Couple Very near and Dear to
My Heart, One Being the Continued Implementation of the Northwest Forest
Plan. Another One, the Columbia Basin Effort, Which Is Really a Huge
Undertaking Covering 144 Million Acres and 75 Million Acres Being Forest
Service and BLM Land. Other Projects, the Big Exchanges That Were Talked
About, the New World Mine in Larry\'s Neck of the Woods There, The
Headwaters in California, The Grand Staircase Monument, Which I Think Is
Pretty Exciting For All of Us in Utah, and We Did Talk Also a Lot about
Some Of the More Program‑specific Issues, the Ones That Are Kind Of on
the Front Burner this Year Also, And, Again, Bob Mentioned Recreation
and Tourism as a Big Initiative for Us, and We Talked A Little Bit about
the Opportunities with the Olympics Coming to Utah, Winter Olympics
Coming to Utah in a Couple of Years and How We Can Kind of Tap Into That
and Really Need to Prepare for That Right Now, Because People Are
Already Making Their Plans on Added Side Trips and We Really Want to Get
BLM Some Exposure in That Huge International Arena. We Talked about the
Wild and Fire Policies, Are and Programs And Implementation That We\'re
Doing this Year, and Also about The Wild Horse and Burro Program. I
Thought it Was a Great Discussion, And, Again, a Real Good Opportunity
to Share Our Priorities as an Organization And to Support Each Other in
Our Accomplishments in Those Priorities.

Great. Mike, I Think You Wanted to Clarify a Couple of Things That Bob
Said Earlier in His Remarks.

Yes, One of the Things, Larry, and I Think You and Mat Are Probably More
the Experts in This Area, but When We Talk About the Demands on BLM and
All Agencies, When We\'re Talking About Some of These Larger Land
Exchanges like Crown Butte, for Example, and like Headwaters and There
Are a Variety of Ways Well Beyond Trading Raw Land That We\'re Looking
at in Arriving at Some Sort of Accommodation or Resolution in These
Issues, like Royalty Streams, Like, You Know, We Need to Take a Harder
Look at The Conservation Fund and See If We Can Convince Omb There Is a
Pot of Money There Available. I Wanted to Reaffirm That with You and Mat
That, You Know, We Are Looking at Other Ways. In Fact, Land Exchanges
Might Be The Lowest Priority to Achieve That. Is That Right?

Yeah, I Think ‑‑ You Know, The Difficulty, Mike, with These ‑‑ Let Me
Give You Some Idea of The Magnitude of These Land Exchanges. The Largest
Land Exchange BLM Has Ever Done, in Monetary Measurements, Was a Few
Years Back, an Exchange in Nevada Called the Galena Exchange, Which Was
\$58 Million. The New World Mine Exchange, the Estimate on That Is \$65
Million. And the Headwaters Exchange Is Over \$300 Million. These Are
the Values of the Land Lands the Government Is Trying To Acquire. If You
Think about the New World Mine, When the People from the White House and
Ceq Came over to Talk to Us about It, You Know, Our \$100 an Acre
Rangeland That We Have in Montana, You Would Have Had to Exchange the
Whole Eastern Part of the Montana to Pick up That One Site. So What We
Really Need to Start Looking at Is Lands and Assets That Have Higher
Value per Acre, And That\'s Why We\'re Looking at Things like Cole
Leases, You Know, Existing Lands That Have Coal Leases on Them That We
Would Perhaps Put into Private Ownership. The Coal Royalties Revenues
Are Another Example, Just to Give You an Example. Those Sound like Awful
Big Numbers, but the Royalty Revenues out of the State of Wyoming Are
over \$200 Million a Year. So, You Know, If You Think about The Assets
That the Federal Government Has from the Perspective of Assets That Are
Actually Income Producing, and This Mostly Has to Do with Minerals, You
Can See That That\'s the Area We\'re Going to Have to Start Looking at
More So Than Just Raw Lands. Most of Our Land Is Not That Valuable
Economically, and for Us to Go Trading it Off, You Know, Just the
Average Piece of Property We Have, Would Take Enormous Amounts of Land.
So That\'s Why We\'re Looking at Trying to Come up with Different Ways
of Doing this Kind of Thing.

We Need to Get Back to Some Questions Here. We Have Some Excellent
Questions That Have Been Faxed In. The First One ‑‑ this One Is From
Butte, Montana. I\'m Protecting the Guilty Here, Okay? What Future
Organization Changes May Be in Store for States to Make Them More
Consistent?

Larry, the ‑‑ You Know, the Things We Have Continued to Talk About Are
the Elts, the Really Important Thing Is Not What the Organization Looks
Like, but What it ‑‑ How We Work and What We Deliver to the Public and
I\'ve Got to Say, Especially to The Folks in the Field, It\'s Important
That We Get as Much of The Money to the Field Operations as Possible. In
Fact, the Elt up in Helena a Year Ago, or Is it More than That Now, Mat,
We Said the Goal Was to Get 80% of the Resources And 75% of the Ftes at
the Field Operation Level in the Future. From the Standpoint of
Organizations, I Got to Tell You, for a Long Time My Personal Belief Is
That a Four‑layer Organization Is a Thing of the Past. But What\'s More
Important Is That an Organization Is Designed That Works, That Works
Best for That Community, for That District, for That State, for That
Region, and I Really Want To Focus on Allocation of Resources,
Allocation of Skills And Getting the Job Done on the Ground. That\'s the
Most Important Thing For Us to Focus On.

We Have Another Fax Here. It\'s from Maggie Wyatt from the Salt Lake
District. Maggie\'s Question Is: Utah Judge Dee Benson Recently Imposed
an Injunction Prohibiting BLM from Completing Wilderness Inventory. Does
the Department Plan to Challenge the Order.

the Department Is Very Concerned about That, and Obviously We Don\'t
Think That The Judge Is Proper in That Ruling. The Bureau\'s Recommended
to the Solicitor\'s Office That We Go Ahead and Appeal That Decision,
And I Haven\'t Gotten the Final Answer Yet, but I Would Suggest Give
Jeff Jarvis in Washington a Call and Can He Give You the Final Word on
That.

Here\'s a Question That\'s Becoming More and Dear to All of Our Hearts
and this One Is from Darrell Barns in or Land, District: Do You
Anticipate Congress Making Any Changes to The Golden Age Passport
Program?

I Don\'t Know ‑‑

Darrell, I Can Understand Your Asking That\... I\'ve Not Had a
Discussion on That. I Have Not Heard a Discussion. So I Guess I Just
Don\'t Know.

Maybe Here\'s Something We Do Know. Let\'s Try this One Now. This Is
from the Carlsbad Resource Area, and the Question Is: What Is the Status
of Oil And Gas Inspection Enforcement Being Transferred to the States?

Mat, Do You Want to Take and That I\'ll Pick up the Pieces?

Okay. That Is Still under Very Active Discussion. We\'re Going to Be
Having a Meeting with the Iogcc, the Interstate Oil and Gas Commission,
I Believe It\'s next Month and What We\'re Doing Is Taking a Look at
Each State on a State by State Basis to See If We Can Reach Some Kind of
Agreement with the State on When To Do That. The Congress Has Instructed
Us To Put Together a Proposal on Whether or Not to Do That over The next
Year, and So We\'re Working Really Hard on That, but No Final Decisions
Have Been Made Right at this Moment. I Think in the next Month or So You
Will Probably Be Seeing Us Moving Toward Some Decisions on That.

I Can Improve on That Answer, Larry ‑‑ I Can\'t Improve on That Answer,
Larry.

Great. This Will Be the Last Question. This Is from Ray Holm, and the
Question Is: I\'ve Recently Seen Some of the Demographics. What Are Some
of the Implications of the Study and Steps and this Is the Second Part
of the Question, What Steps Does the Bureau Intend to Take To Resolve
Some of These Problems?

Well, I Think the Thing to Keep in Mind on the Demographic Study, We\'re
Going to Be Sending Those Out, Larry and His Staff Just Finished That up
and We Will Be Sending That out to the States Here this Coming Week.
Basically What it Shows Is That Most of the People That Work for The BLM
Are Between 40 and 50. So It\'s Not like We\'ve Got an Imminent Problem
in the Bureau With All of a Sudden Everybody Walking out the Door
Tomorrow, But We Do Need to Position Ourselves So That Once We Do Start
to Have a Big Slug of Retirements Starting in about Five Years, We\'ll
Be Able to Have the People That Are Coming Behind That Group Be Prepared
to Take over the Reins of the Bureau. It\'s Kind of a Long‑term Problem
That We Need to Deal with. I Think the Other Aspect of That, Though, Is
That We\'ve Asked the State Directors to Go Back and Take a Look at
Their Skill Mixes Within Their Organizations So That We Can Plan to
Bring People into the Bureau Who Are Going to Meet the Needs of the
Future. So That Skill Mix Study Is Something That\'s Still in the Works
and Any of You That Have Any Ideas about That, this Would Sure Be a Good
Time to Give Us a Hand with That.

Okay. At this Point We\'d like to Change Our Focus to the Topic of Work
Force Diversity. Mat, I Believe You Have Some Thoughts Would You like to
Share This Morning with Us.

I Do. When I Came Back to this Job a Little over a Year Ago, One of The
Issues That We Needed to Take a Look at Is the Number of Women and
Minorities Within the Bureau, and the Opportunities For Everybody to
Feel like They Have a Place in Our Organization. What We Did Is We Did a
Look ‑‑ We Took a Look at the Overall Department Diversity Program, And
What We Found Is That Despite a Lot of Work That\'s Been Done to
Diversify Not Only The Bureaus but the Park Service, Fish & Wildlife
Service And the Other Agencies Within The Department, We Really Haven\'t
Made Much Progress in The Last 10 Years. If You Look at the Profile of
Our Work Force Now Compared to 10 Years Ago, it Really Is Pretty Much
about the Same. So What We Did Is a Number of Us Deputy Directors in the
Department Got Together and Put Together a Plan for Taking a Look at
Improving the Department\'s Overall Diversity Program. It Really Has
Four Components And I Want to Quickly Run Those By You. First Component
Is That We Need To Do a Better Job of Accumulating Statistics and Data.
One of the Things That We Found Is When We Do These Studies, It\'s Very
Difficult to Get after And Get Good Information on Where We Really Stand
Within Our Organization. So We Need to Work to Do That And the Eeo
Office in the Department Will Be Coming out With a New Format this
Coming Year That They\'re Going to Be Putting into Place to Allow Us To
Do a Better Job of That. The Second Component Has to Do With
Recruitment. Now, Because of the Budget Problems, this Is Probably the
Toughest Part of this Overall Project. You Know, It\'s Not like We\'re
Going to Be Bringing a Lot of New People into the Department, And So
What We Want to Try to Do Is Try to Play this Smart, Try To Figure out
Where Are the Areas Where We Have Opportunities to Bring New People into
the Organization. The Skills Mix Study Would Be a Part of That. I Think
Another Example That We Can Take a Look at Is That We\'ve Just Recently
Entered into an Agreement with an Organization Called the International
Association of Black Professional Firefighters. If You Think about Our
Firefighting Work Force, It\'s a Part of Our Work Force That\'s Going to
Stay Pretty Steady Throughout the Upcoming Years, And We Do Have Some
Turnover in That Organization. So it Does Give Us an Opportunity to
Bring People into Our Organization, and We Think This Is a Real Good
Group of People to Work with. We\'ve Had Numerous Meetings with Them,
and Hopefully That Will Be A Big Help in Trying to Broaden The Applicant
Base of People That Are Interested in Coming to Work for Us. The Third
Component Has to Do With Career Development and Training. One of the
Things the Department Had Done Several Years Ago Was Cut Way Back on its
Training Opportunities and So We\'ve Encouraged Them to Take a Look At
and That See What We Can Do To Improve the Training Offerings and
Employee Development Offerings We\'ve Got For All of Our People. One of
the Things That We Will Be Setting up this Year Is What\'s Called Team
Leadership Training, and That Is Going to Be Headed up by the Fish &
Wildlife Service, it Will Be Based out of Their New Training Center in
West Virginia and it Will Be Somewhat Similar to the Old Departmental
Manager Department Program and Oriented To People in Gs 11‑14 Grades to
Bring Them into Those Supervisory and Team Leader Kind Of Jobs. The Last
Component Has to Do With the Measurement of Performance, and If You Look
at Your State Director\'s Annual Evaluation, What They Talk about Is
Support of the Eeo Program And We Want Them to Do That but What We\'re
Going to Be Adding to Their Performance Evaluations Is Being Able to
Actually Document Some Progress in These Areas. For Example, in the
Black Firefighters Agreement, We Want Them to Be Able to Show Us at The
End of the Year What They\'ve Really Done to Implement this Agreement.
Have They Actually Gone out and Made an Honest Effort to Try to Bring
Some More Diversification Into the Organization to Support The Program
and Things That We Can Really Demonstrate That We\'re Making Some
Progress So That We Get the Eeo Reports and So Forth Back We Can See
We\'re Making Some Gains. So That\'s Pretty Much Where We Are on That
Project.

I Know Elaine When We Had This Discussion at the at the Executive
Leadership Team Meeting, You Had Some Thoughts Along Those Lines. Would
You like to Share Those With Us Based on What We Just Heard from Mat.

Well, I Think Mat Is Really Right on in That We Have to Kind Of Look at
the Big Picture And, To Me, What I See Happening Is As Our Whole
Population Gets More Urban Oriented, it Really Is Difficult to Get
Children and Kids Interested in Natural Resource Professions. At Least
That\'s What We Seem to Be Finding. So It\'s Really Important to Look At
Different Ways of Reaching Out and Showing Folks What Natural Resource
Management Is About. I Think the Firefighting Arena, It\'s a Huge Pool
of People That Are ‑‑ a Lot of Them Temporaries, but it Gives Them Kind
of That Open Door to this Is What Natural Resource Management Is About,
and You Can Use That as a Stepping‑stone to Get into Maybe Botany Or,
You Know, Range or Forestry, and I Think That\'s Kind of Where We Really
Need to Focus. So I Think It\'s Really a Good Opportunity with this Mou
to Have an Entree into That Arena.

Larry, I Think One of the Most Important Things We Can Do Is to Really
Be Sure That Everybody in this Country Understands That There\'s an
Opportunity for Them in this Organization. I Know I\'ve Got a Daughter
Who Is a Senior in High School and a Few Years Ago I Took Her down to
The Moab District with Me, and I Was Working, and I Spent a Week With
Her down There, and You Know, She Met with a Woman Who Was Running a
Ranch. She Spent Some Time with Her. She Went to Work on a Nature
Conservancy Preserve and the Preserve Manager Was a Woman and She Was
Able to Spend Time with Kate Kitchel, the District Manager down There,
and Other Women Who Are Doing Very Well in The Natural Resources Field
and I Think for a Lot of People, If They Can See People Who Are
Succeeding in the Organization And See an Opportunity Themselves, I
Think That Will Go A Long Way to Broadening this Applicant Base and
Getting More People Interested in Our Fields And in the Things We Do. We
Have Wonderful Jobs. We Have a Great Organization That I Think People
Would Be Excited about Working for If They Just Felt like That They
Could Fit into and it Be Successful in Their Careers.

Okay. Some of You in Wyoming Are Probably Going to Wonder What Happened
to Al Pierson Because The Final Subject We\'d like to Take a Look at
Today at the Irm Modernization Program, and Al Is On His Way Back to
Wyoming, and He\'s Write ‑‑ Riding His Newly Adopted Mustang. You Could
Look Forward to Him Arriving Sometime on Sunday. What I Would like to Do
Is Introduce the BLM New Assistants Director for Information Resources
Management and She Is Also Our Chief Information Officer, Gayle Gordon.
Welcome, Gayle.

Thank You, Larry. It\'s Great to Be out West. I\'ve Been, as Larry
We\'ve Talked About this Week, I\'ve Been with BLM for All of Six Weeks
Now. So I\'m Still Very Much in a Learning Mode. Having the Elt this
Week Was Particularly Helpful for Me Because Not Only Did it Give Me A
Chance to Meet the State Directors I Hadn\'t Met Before But Also to Hear
Some of the Issues You\'re Addressing in the Field. It\'s Great to Be
Here!

for Those of You That Haven\'t Met Gayle Before, Gayle Is New To the
Bureau but Not to the Department of Interior. We Thought this Would Be a
Good Way to Get You to Meet Her and We\'re Really Delighted You Joined
Us Today. Being New to the Bureau, We Have Got a Great Question for You
Here. We\'re Looking Forward to Your Response. That Is, What Is Your
Impression Of How Almrs, the Modernization Is Progressing in the Bureau
of Land Management.

Boy, Am I Glad You Asked That Question, Larry. And I\'m Not Really
Terribly Surprised. Very Early this Week Our Esteemed State Director
from California Made a Point of Reminding Me How Long Almrs Had Been on
the Table in BLM. I Think It\'s Very Easy ‑‑ We Have Been Talking about
Almrs For a Long Time and I Think It\'s Very Easy to Forget How Much
Progress We\'ve Already Made, Particularly since the Contract Was
Awarded in 1993. What I\'d like to Do Is Just to Run Through Some of the
Things We\'ve Already Accomplished, and Then Some of the Things That Are
On the Short‑term Horizon. Since We Awarded the Contract to Computer
Sciences Corporation, We Have Already Installed More Than 6,000 Work
Stations Across The Organization. We\'ve Not Only Installed the Work
Stations, but Also a Suite Of Software to Go with Them. We\'ve Trained
More than 4800 of Our Employees, and While I Have Been Here this Week,
the Training Center Pointed out to Me That There Are Probably Very Few
BLM Employees Who Haven\'t Been Touched by Training in the Last Couple
of Years. We Have an E‑mail System That Has Connected All of the
Organization, and We\'ve Made Real Good Progress Recently Connecting
with Not Only the Other Interior Bureaus, but Some Of Our Other Federal
Agencies, Particularly the Forest Service. Data Is Probably in Better
Shape Now than It\'s Ever Been Before. In Most States It\'s Really Good
Shape. We Have Almost Completed Rehosting Our Administrative Legacy
Systems and in the Last Year of Looking Toward the Deployment of the
Almrs Software, We Have Conducted a Number of Assessments. We Have Gone
to the State Offices and Assessed Their Skill And Staff Readiness and
Also How Prepared the Irm Organizations Are to Adopt the next Step in
The Almrs Project. Now, the near Term Future, the Project Has Been
Delayed for About Six Months. This Is Primarily Due to Need to Go
Resolve Some Performance Issues. A Decision Was Made a Number of Years
Ago That We Would Focus More on the Functionality and Then Tune the
Performance Towards the End of the Project. When We Really Got in and
Started Testing the Software Last Summer, We Realized There Were More
Performance Problems Than We Had Anticipated. That Was the Bad News. The
Good News Is That the Functionality Really Appears to Be Very Good, and
What We\'re Looking for. What We Have Done the Last Couple of Months Is
to Work with Our Contractors and the Staff in Denver and Try and Come up
with A Very Realistic Schedule to Make Sure That We Can Deploy the
Software So That it Will Be Very Usable for You out in the Field. Now,
the Schedule We Have Come Up with Right Now Is That in March We Will
Have Qualifications Testing. What this Means Is That the Contractors
Will Need to Demonstrate to BLM Employees That the Software Does, in
Fact, Meet the Qualifications That We Specified. Following That, We Will
Have the ‑‑ What\'s Called the Capability Demonstration Assessment in
Our Pilot State, New Mexico. Bob Armstrong Mentioned New Mexico.
They\'ve Done a Great Job up to Now as Our Pilot Site and We Expect
Great Things in the Future. BLM Employees Will Be Observing That Test.
Following That in July, We\'ll Be Having an Independent Assessment Of
the Software. This Is Something That Congress Dictated, but It\'s Ended
up Being Very Beneficial for Us. I Think We\'ve Had a Lot of Very Good
Advice and Participation From Our Independent Assessor And That\'s Miter
Tech Corporation. They Will Do Operational Testing In July and Then We
Will Make a Decision Whether to Go and Continue Deployment Across the
Bureau. Right Now We Are Very Optimistic That That Decision Will Be Go
Ahead. Assuming That That Is the Case, We Will Finish the Hardware
Deployment ‑‑ We Will Need to Upgrade the Hardware That\'s out In the
Field.

\> We Can Deploy the Software. This Is Something That We\'ve Known All
along We Would Have to Do and We Have Money Budgeted For It. We\'ll
Continue the Deployment of The Hardware and the Software in New Mexico
and Then at this Point We\'re Hoping to Deploy the Software to Do
Additional States This Fiscal Year. Those States Will Probably Be Idaho
and Arizona. Then What We\'re Planning on Doing Is Finishing the Rest of
The States by April of 1998 ‑‑ Let Pea Get My Fiscal Years and Calendar
Years Right. 1998. So That\'s Kind of Where We Are Right Now and Where
We See Ourselves Going in the Future.

Great. This Will Be Your Last Opportunity to Phone in Some Questions. So
If You\'re Going to Take Advantage, this Is the Time to Do It. There Are
Two Specific Questions Here and I Don\'t Want to Be Accused, Gayle, by
Wayne Alvin, Who Is the Irm Chief in the Field, That We Didn\'t Address
These Two Questions. Let\'s Try Them out and See If We Thought We
Answered Them or We Need a Little More Information. His First Question
Is: He\'s Concerned That Using the \$5 Million of the 25 Million That\'s
Earmarked for Hardware and Software Upgrades for Ioc to Repair the Ioc
Code May Not Leave Enough Money for the Needed Upgrades in Fy‑98.

Well, That\'s an Astute Observation. Our Best Judgment Right Now We Feel
Is If the \$20 Million That Will Be Left Will Be Sufficient. If It\'s
Not, We Will Be in the Unfortunate Position Where We\'ll Have to Go Back
and Ask the States for More Money. However, at this Time We\'re Fairly
Confident That We Are ‑‑ Will Be Able to Handle That.

Okay. And the Second Part, and Wayne\'s Looking out in the Future Here
Now, Which He\'s Renowned For, And That\'s Good: the Bureau Does Not
Seem to Have a Plan to Address the Former Resources Options on the
Modernization on The Contract. We in the Field Need an Increasing Amount
of Gis Capability to Deal with the Increasing Complexity of the Resource
Management Decisions. What Is Our Plan to Provide this Increment Beyond
Almrs/ioc‑2.

as a Matter of Fact, as I Have Learned in the Last Couple Of Weeks, the
Bureau Does Have a Plan for What\'s Been Referred to As the Resources
Option. Maitland Sharpe and I Spent a Fair Amount of Time Talking About
this next Step. What We\'re Looking at Is Really Kind of More of an
Expansion of Our Existing Capability Rather Than an Option. What
Maitland and I Have Agreed To Is the First Step That Needs To Be Done Is
Identify What Are The Base Resource Information That We Need to
Accommodate on The Platform. This Is Something That\'s His
Responsibility and He Is Moving Ahead with That. We\'re Getting out the
Plans That Were Developed the Last Several Years and Brushing Those off
and We Will Be Moving Ahead with That. The Irm Community Comes in in
Kind of the Second Phase. Once the Resource People Have Identified What
They Want to Be Doing and What the Information Requirements Are, We Will
Then Go Ahead and Make Sure That We Have the Hardware and the Software
to Accommodate That.

Wayne, I\'ve Got Some Advice For You: the Lady\'s Been Here For Six
Weeks and I Can Imagine What It\'s Going to Be like after A Year. So You
Better Get Ready for a Wild Ride. Let\'s Go Back to the Phones Here. Kay
in Medford, Are You There?

Caller: Yes.

Good Morning. How Are You?

Caller: I\'m Fine. Thank You.

Let Me Ask You a Question: Should Elaine Come Back to Oregon or Not?

Caller: Well, I Don\'t Know, They Dropped Two Semitrucks into A Sinkhole
on I‑5 this Morning.

That Doesn\'t Sound Good.

Caller: We\'ve Had a Lot of Rain.

You\'ve Got a Question, I Think, on Personnel; Is That Correct?

Caller: Yes, I Wanted to Ask, We Have Been Hearing a Few Rumors There
Might Be Some Lifting or Easing of the 1‑15 Ratio on Supervisory Ratio
and The 1‑100 on Personnel, and I Was Wondering If There Was Any Truth
to That Roomer.

I Can Start out by Saying I Have Not Heard a Word. This Is the First I
Have Heard Of It. Let Me Ask Mat. Have You Heard Anything, Mat?

Not Definitively, No. There Is a Quite a Bit of Talk About Both of Those
Issues. I Know Within the Bureau We\'re Finding the 1‑15 Supervisory
Ratio Particularly Is Really Limiting the ‑‑ Our Ability to Bring People
into Jobs like Associate District Manager Jobs, Branch Chief Jobs, That
Kind of Thing, Which Are Really the Jobs That We\'ve Used to Develop
Employees for Moving up in the Organization. So We Are ‑‑ There Is Some
Concern about That. But I Think What You Need to Remember Is That Still
Is an Administration Goal and That We\'re Still Moving Toward That. So
How We ‑‑ Exactly How We Deal With That While We\'re Talking About and
it We\'re Concerned About it Doesn\'t Mean We\'ve Actually Come up with
Any Way to Specifically Deal with That. The Personnel Officers Have Been
Meeting in Phoenix this Week, And I Know That\'s on Their Agenda. I\'m
Not ‑‑ We Haven\'t Gotten Any Feedback from Them on Our Recommendations.
They May Have to Deal with Either One of Those Issues.

Okay. We Have a Question Here from Dave from the Buffalo Resource Area.
The Question Is: We\'re Still Doing Class 3 Cultural Clearances on
Federal Land and Detailed Mineral Reports for Land Exchanges of like
Land Where the Minerals Is Retained. Any Changes Coming to Simplify Land
Exchanges? I Don\'t Know That I Can Answer That Specifically, Dave. On
the Class 3 Inventories, the Reason We Do That Is to Assure Us We\'re
Not Giving Away Valuable Cultural Resources in These Exchanges. We Have
Tried to Do Some Work on Doing Some Sample Surveys on Some Other Kinds
of Projects. I Know We Had One in Utah That Dealt with Fire Rehab That
Frankly Didn\'t Work out as Well As We Had Hoped it Would. So There Are
Some Experiments That Are Going on to Try to Lessen the Load on Some of
Those Things. As Far as the Minerals Part of It, I\'m Not Sure. We Will
Be Coming out with a New Manual Here this Coming Year on The
Implementation of the Federal Land Exchange Facilitation Act. That
Should Help Improve the Way We Do Our Exchanges but I Can\'t Tell You
for Sure What the Handling of the Mineral Reports Is in That Manual.

Dave Also Had Another Question and We Waited, Dave, Until Al Left. So
We\'ll Get an Objective Answer Here. That Is: What Will Happen to The
Wyoming Rack?

Well, Larry, I Think What Will Happen to the Wyoming Rack Already Has,
and the Fact Is BLM And Wyoming Will Move Ahead and Develop Standards
and Guidelines. They Will Take into Consideration the Work That Has Been
Done by the Former Wyoming Rack Thus Far and We\'re Just Going to
Continue to Move On. So, Dave, I Think You Can Just Look to ‑‑ to See
Continued Progress in Those Areas in Meeting the Requirements of the New
Grazing Regulations and Moving Forward. My Prediction Is it Will Come
Back Together in a Couple of Years, Maybe Sooner.

Okay. Gayle, You\'ve Struck a Chord Here. We Have Another Modernization
Question. We\'re on a Roll Here. Question Is: with the Many Computer
Software Programs at BLM to Record Data, Will Be Looking at Purchasing
Commercially off the Shelf Software to Manage Our Data?

Let\'s See. The Current ‑‑ We Have Already Started Using off the Shelf
Software to Support Many of Our Processes in the Field. The Emphasis in
the Future Will Be to Continue to Use off the Shelf Software as Much as
Possible. It Makes Sense Because it Gives Us Flexibility and It\'s an
Efficient Way to Use Our Very Limited Technical Staff. Now, as Far as
Software for Particular Applications, I Can\'t Answer That Without More
Details, but We Will, of Course, Continue to Support Our Core Almrs
Software That\'s Been Developed and Then Look for Ways To Expand on That
Using off the Shelf Software as Much as Possible.

That Was a Question from Bernie in Rock Springs. Thanks for That
Question, Bernie. Bob Armstrong Is Going to Get Off the Hook on this One
Because This Question Is Directed to Bob And Mike, So You\'re It. This
Is a Great Question: for The Better Part of Two Years There\'s Been a
Lot of Talk about Some Form of Merger Between the BLM and the Forest
Service and National Park Service with Fish & Wildlife Service.
Employees Are Also Disturbed With Constant Internal Reorganization, Name
Changes of Our Field Offices, Which Is Increasingly Weakening BLM\'s Tie
To the Public. Are These Reorganizations and Name Changes a Preamble to
a Merger? What Is BLM\'s Position on a Merger? What Is Doi\'s Position
on a Merge Center and Why Is Each State Reorganizing Differently?

Well, Let Me ‑‑ I Don\'t Want If I Can Get Through All Those Questions
in the Few Minutes We Have Left. Let Me Say This, Number One, Is I Had a
Conversation with Secretary Babbitt Some Time Ago About Three Years Ago
about this Kind of Thing, and His Response Was, Not on My Watch. The
Thing That\'s Important, and The Dialogue about the Forest Service and
BLM Merging and So On Is, You Know, You Can Shuffle Chairs in Washington
All You Want and That Doesn\'t Necessary Mean More Efficiency on the
Ground. The Important Thing for Us to Focus on and Everybody in this
Room and All of You out There, Is, You Know, We Had the Question Earlier
about Trading Posts, but It\'s about Providing Better Service to the
Public and If There Is Something That\'s More Efficiently Done by
Another Agency, Then We Should Do That. We Should Work Together. After
All, We Are All Work for The Citizens of the United States of America,
and the Boundaries That Exist Between Agencies, We Sort of Put There
Ourselves. So I Would Encourage You to Look At What Makes Sense on the
Ground and the Agreement That I Signed with Jack Ward Thomas, For
Example, Was to ‑‑ If It\'s ‑‑ from the Standpoint of Employee Exchanges
and Other Things, If it Makes Sense, Do It. Just Don\'t Do Anything That
Breaks the Law. So You Folks out There and the Managers Have the
Authority to Do What Makes the Most Sense on The Land for the People and
the Organization, and I\'m Getting The High Sign. We\'ll Have to Answer
the Rest of Them Another Way.

Great. We\'re Nearing the End of Our Telecast, Mike and I Know You Have
Some Final Thoughts. If You Could Share Those Real Quickly with Us.

Thank You, Larry. Obviously There\'s Dozens of Things We Could Talk
about but I Think There Is One Thing That Happened this Year That
Symbolically Very Important to The Continued Maturation and Improvement
of this Agency and Improving the Way We Do Business And Just like Life,
It\'s All About Getting Better at What You Do and Improving and So On,
but That\'s the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. Let Me Just
Tell You a Few Things about this. Number One, this Is ‑‑ this Was
Ordered by the President. This Was the 100th Time That the Antiquities
Act Was Used since 1906. This Occurred on the 100th Anniversary of the
State Who Had In Utah this. Occurred on the 50th Anniversary Of BLM and
the 20th Anniversary Of Flpma, and it Almost Seems Symbolic That Those
Things Would Happen, and What I\'ve Got to Say Is That the President of
the United States for the First Time Ever Has Enough Confidence in This
Agency to Permanently Assign Us the Task of Managing a National Monument
I Think Is a Real Milestone, Because You Know What Secretary Babbitt
Told Me a Couple of Months Ago? Three Years Ago the Environmental
Community Wouldn\'t Have Stood for This, and Now They Have the Trust for
Us to Move Forward. The Second Has the Trust. And the President Has the
Trust. Thank You for Doing What You Do.

Thanks, Mike. That Was Terrific. That about That Wraps it up for The
First BLM Managers Forum. I Would like to Remind Our Downlink Sites to
Have All Viewers Sign the Attendance Roster and Complete the Evaluation
Form. Please Fax These to the National Training Center Immediately After
Today\'s Show. To Help Your Office Participate In Future Ntc Broadcasts,
See The BLM Satellite Downlink Guide Or Visit the Ntc Home Page on The
World Wide Web. Already Transcripts of this Telecast and Other Ntc
Broadcasts Are Available on the Home Page. I Would like to Thank All Our
Panelists Today, Especially Assistant Secretary Bob Armstrong, for
Spending Some Time with Us at the Beginning of The Show, and All of Us
Here Look Forward to Future Broadcasts of this Type So We Can Continue
to Share Information and Our Perspectives On How We Can Work Together
for The Long‑term Benefit of Our Public Lands and the Americans We
Serve. I Look Forward to Seeing You Folks Back in Montana. Thanks for
Participating.