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Public Lands:
Off-Highway Vehicle Use on Public Highways

Our Position: oppose
Bill Number: sb181s1
Sponsor: Sen Scott Jenkins (R-Plain City)
Legislative Session: 2008 General Session

This bill would open all two-lane highways outside Salt Lake County to use by ATVs.  No county aside from Salt Lake County would be able to say no to ATV use.  Outside of Salt Lake County, the only cities or towns able to say no to ATV use on public highways would be those with a population greater than 7,500.  This would rob a long list of cities and towns from Springdale to Moab of the authority to regulate ATVs on public roads.

New language in the substitute appears to allow municipalities to be even MORE permissive in allowing ATVs onto public highways, for example, by allowing general ATV use on public highways as opposed only to street-legal ATVs.  These provisions pose obvious safety threats.

Status

Both houses passed this irresponsible legislation.  Please call the governor as soon as possible.  The phone numbers are 801/538-1000 or 800/705-2464, or send him him a message from his website.

The house sponsor of this bill, Rep Mike Noel, sprang an amendment before the House Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Committee on February 20th, a half an hour before the meeting.  His amendment stripped out provisions adopted on the senate floor allowing any county or municipality to prohibit so-called street-legal ATV use. 

Now only Salt Lake County and municipalities with populations greater than 7,500 have the authority to prohibit this use.  Noel's amendment also stripped the language that prevented these street-legal ATVs from traveling on highways with a posted speed limit of 50 mph or greater.  It's not hard to picture the safety problems that could result.  This is now a very bad bill that needs to be stopped, but the committee voted without dissent to report it favorably to the house floor.

SB 181 was approved by the Senate Transportation and Public Utilities & Technology Committee by a vote of 6-0-0 on February 1st. 

The full senate approved an amended version of the first substitute bill on February 12th.  The vote was 17-9-3.   The senators listed below voted against this bad bill.  Please take a moment to thank them.

Davis           Hillyard        McCoy           
Fife              Jones           Romero          
Greiner        Mayne          Valentine  

The following representative voted correctly.

Biskupski              Hansen              Litvack             Riesen            
Chavez-Houck      Hemingway        McGee             Seelig            
Fisher, Janice        Hendrickson       Morgan           Wiley             
Gowans                Johnson              Moss         

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Background

A very similar bill, HB 425, was sponsored in the 2007 General Session by Rep Mike Noel.  With a couple of changes, the bill is now sponsored by Sen Scott Jenkins.

The bill might have another, more covert, purpose beyond unleashing ATVs on roads throughout Utah.  Under its current county commissioners, Kane County has been fighting a long battle against the Grand Staircase National Monument.  Their original litigation to try to overturn the monument's creation went nowhere, but they continue to pursue various strategies to wrest control of land management away from the monument.

Another lawsuit against the monument seeks to prevent the monument's managers from closing obscure cow trails and wash bottoms to ATV use.  Their argument is that these faint trails are in fact highways under the provisions of a law, called RS 2477, that was repealed in 1976.  This lawsuit has proved relatively expensive, and the commissioners would like someone else to shoulder the burden.

That's where SB 181 comes in.  If the State of Utah declares in law that ATVs may travel on any two-lane public highway on which the speed limit is less than 50 mph, then it might be possible for Kane County to argue the state should pay for its lawsuit against the feds.  Even though an obscure track through the junipers might not seem like a highway to most people, if it's a highway according to Kane County, the state should defend ATV riders right to drive on it.  Or so their reasoning is likely to run.