When some members of the Utah
Legislature get mad, they try to get even. A rural Utah lawmaker,
furious at actor Robert Redford’s support of the state’s new Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument, introduced a resolution
recently to turn Redford’s Sundance resort into a
wilderness.
“Mr. Redford has made a tremendous
amount of money off what land he has and he says he wants to lock
up land the rest of the people live by and depend on,” Rep. Brad
Johnson told AP. A Redford spokesperson pointed out that all but 75
of Sundance’s 6,000 acres remain undeveloped. “We’re working right
now to find some way to preserve that forever,” said Sundance
representative Julie Mack. “If the statesman down in Sevier County
would do that for us, we’d be grateful.”
Redford
called the resolution, which passed Utah’s House of Representatives
44-27, “a publicity stunt paid for by taxpayer money.”
* Betsy Marston
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A Utah vendetta.
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