How much is Utah’s public lands lawsuit and PR campaign costing taxpayers?

A billboard along I-80 in South Salt Lake promotes Utah’s lawsuit trying to claim control of federally managed land on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. Photo: Spenser Heaps // Utah News Dispatch

By Kyle Dunphy, Utah News Dispatch

It remains to be seen whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take up Utah’s lawsuit filed in August, which argues about 18.5 million acres of federally-controlled public land should be transferred to the state’s control.

But that hasn’t stopped the state from spending more than $1 million on a wide-reaching public relations campaign which includes hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on media advertising, ranging from KSL.com and The Salt Lake Tribune, to the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal; and a law firm whose most senior attorney charges over $2,300 per hour.

That’s according to records of invoices and receipts obtained by Utah News Dispatch through an open records request that show the state’s Attorney General’s Office and Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, or PLPCO, had spent nearly $1.1 million on attorney fees and marketing as of mid-September.

Filed in August, the state is petitioning directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to question whether the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, can indefinitely hold onto land without giving it a formal designation. National parks, national monuments and national forests all have designations — but about 18.5 million acres of BLM land in Utah does not. It’s what the state calls “unappropriated land.”

In its complaint, Utah argues it’s unconstitutional for the BLM to hold that unappropriated land in perpetuity, a claim that the U.S. Department of Justice called “without merit” in a recent brief filed with the Supreme Court.

The state is invoking what’s called original jurisdiction, which allows states to petition directly to the U.S. Supreme Court in certain cases rather than go through lower courts first.

And in an attempt to get there, the Attorney General’s Office has paid at least $475,000 to the law firm Clement & Murphy since June 2023. Described by Attorney General Sean Reyes as “the preeminent Supreme Court advocates of our day,” the law firm charges hourly rates that are among some of the highest in the country, according to several attorneys and legal publications.

Its most senior attorney Paul Clement is billing the state $2,350 an hour; Erin Murphy is charging $1,850 per hour; junior attorneys are making between $1,100 to $1,350 per hour; and paralegals are billing as much as $460 for each hour.

In one invoice, the law firm billed the state for 4.5 hours of work, running taxpayers $3,826.

“Paul Clement is the best Supreme Court practitioner in America,” said Daniel Burton, general counsel for the Utah Attorney General’s Office. “I think that’s money well spent. We didn’t want to do this without making sure we crossed our Ts and dotted our Is.”

Burton said the state ran a regular request for proposal process, as required under state law, and had multiple bidders from multiple law firms — ultimately they went with Clement & Murphy.

“Yes, he does have his hourly rate, but we think it’s valuable if we’re going to be looking at this question correctly. We want to make sure we’re doing this right,” said Burton.

That money has been set aside for public lands litigation by the Utah lawmakers, which during a special session in 2024 allocated $3 million for the state’s “Public Lands Litigation Program.” And when the state announced the lawsuit in August, Reyes said the legislature had allocated a total of $20 million for the legal challenge, though he told reporters he expects to spend a “fraction” of that.

According to Burton, the state will likely know whether the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the case in January, unless one of the parties asks for an extension. If the court agrees to hear Utah’s case, oral arguments would come sometime in the spring.

If the high court decides not to hear the case, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the state would likely file a complaint with a federal district court.

The state’s effort is twofold — the lawsuit, and a public relations campaign that includes radio and television advertising, billboards and a website. Much of the advertising will wrap up this fall, said Redge Johnson, director of PLPCO. But the state will retain some kind of public awareness campaign, he said.

“Letting the public know that they’re losing access to public lands is kind of important. We’ll see how the legislature feels about it and what they want to do as far as funding goes,” Johnson said.

Records show PLPCO has spent at least $616,000 on the marketing agency Penna Powers for its “Stand for our Land” campaign, starting in March 2024.

The contract with Penna Powers ends in February 2029 and amounts to $2,142,000 in state funds, allocated by the legislature during a special session in June with HB3002. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Walt Brooks, R-St. George, put that $2 million-plus in the state’s Federal Overreach Restricted Account to be used for “costs associated with countering federal overreach on public lands in Utah.”

Records show the state paid nearly $55,000 to local news outlets — that includes about $18,402 to The Salt Lake Tribune, $15,605 to Deseret News Online, and roughly $19,050 to Deseret Digital Media, which runs KSL.com and the KSL classifieds. Because the campaign is ongoing, those numbers have likely increased since the records were released to Utah News Dispatch.

That contract was signed in February, before the special session, and expires in 2029. It seeks to “strategically help the State of Utah tell the story surrounding the challenges and opportunities related to the management of public lands, natural resources, multiple-use practices, and other concepts.”

According to the contract, Penna Powers could be “required to recruit top-tier national and regional journalists for individual familiarization tours or small-group familiarization tours. The goal of these tours is to bring in journalists to experience Utah’s robust public lands and natural resources and the associated challenges and opportunities related to the management of those public lands.”

And records show just how much the state is trying to sell its lawsuit outside its borders.

Its “Washington D.C. launch,” detailed in Penna Powers’ media plan, shows a $65,000 campaign with The Dispatch, a conservative media outlet; more than $12,000 to “Honestly with Bari Weiss,” a podcast hosted by the former New York Times opinion writer; more than $100,000 to the Washington Post for advertising; and $62,000 to The Wall Street Journal.

Johnson with PLPCO said the cost of the campaign pales in comparison to how much the state often spends in the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, process.

“While the state has to spend sometimes millions of dollars on access and our interests on these public lands, a lot of people don’t know about the tens of millions of dollars that are spent in the state just doing the NEPA process,” he said.

But some public lands advocates take a much different tone. Aaron Weiss, executive director of the conservation nonprofit Center for Western Priorities, called the marketing campaign “disingenuous.”

Weiss’ organization has been opposed to Utah’s lawsuit from the start, calling it an attempted “land grab.” His criticism of the lawsuit extends to the media campaign.

“There’s a word for when the state tries to convince the public of a political position — propaganda. There is no doubt in my mind that that is the proper word to apply to this PR campaign,” he said. “Some of it, of course, is aimed at convincing Utah voters that their money is not being tossed into a dumpster and set on fire, which is, in fact, what’s happening.”

Weiss doesn’t think the U.S. Supreme Court will even hear the case — for him, the amount of money the state is spending on advertising only cements that.

“If you think you’re standing on a rock solid legal case, then you spend more money on your lawyers than you do in your PR campaign. Instead, Utah’s doing it the other way around,” he said.