The town of Tusayan has been lobbying the Trump administration while seeking approval for building roads and running electrical lines across federal land, a proposal that would enable an Italian developer to build hotels and hundreds of homes near the Grand Canyon.

Government lobbying disclosure reports show the town has paid $470,000 since mid-2017 to the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP for its lobbyists’ work with federal agencies and Congress on “issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities.”

According to the documents, a large portion of the lobbying work has involved the Interior Department, the U.S. Forest Service, the Agriculture Department and both houses of Congress.

Conservation groups are voicing concerns that the lobbying efforts could help sway the process as the Forest Service considers a proposal for road and utility easements that would clear the way for developing two properties, which are surrounded by the Kaibab National Forest near the Grand Canyon’s South Rim.

Jayson O'Neill, deputy director of Western Values Project, pointed out the reports detailing Tusayan’s spending in the Senate lobbying disclosure database.

He said the lobbying raises questions about the possibility of exerting undue influence in the federal review process, and he cited the fact that Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was a lobbyist and partner at Brownstein until 2017.

O’Neill said the leaders of Tusayan’s Town Council apparently “know that when money talks, the Trump administration listens.”

“While Bernhardt’s former lobby firm is pushing for approvals and cashing in, we know that if this controversial development moves forward, it will negatively impact both the Grand Canyon and Colorado River,” O’Neill said.

Tusayan and Stilo Development Group USA disagree with those criticisms and say the development would provide much-needed housing near the Grand Canyon. The town and the developer submitted their proposal for the road easements on Feb. 7 to Forest Service officials, who are considering whether to accept it as an application for a special use permit.

Brady Harris, the vice mayor of Tusayan, said the town has been paying Brownstein a flat yearly rate for its services.

“They are not solely a lobbying firm for us, but also legal counsel,” Harris said. He said the firm’s staff “handle a myriad of subjects suited to the town’s needs.”

The town's stake in the developments

Tusayan was incorporated as a town in 2010 and has about 600 residents. Its economy relies heavily on its hotels and visitors headed for the Canyon's South Rim.

Harris said given the town’s location, surrounded by the national forest and the national park, “we would be foolish not to have representation on a federal level.”

The five-member Town Council voted unanimously on Jan. 23 to submit the proposal, which included several revisions to an earlier draft that the town and Stilo submitted in September.

Related:Developer and town propose roads for hotels and hundreds of homes near Grand Canyon

Among the changes, they proposed to reroute the main paved road to a 160-acre property called Kotzin Ranch and make a second road an unpaved emergency route rather than a paved road. The proposal also calls for paving a 2.8-mile road through the national forest to a 190-acre property called Ten-X Ranch.

The town has a direct stake in developing the two properties. Several years ago, in an agreement that involved rezoning the land, Stilo donated two separate 20-acre parcels to the town. Tusayan plans to use those properties to build homes.

“Our focus in the town is just the need for housing,” Harris said. “We are working with Stilo and getting a road easement so we can get to those parcels.”

Harris said Brownstein has helped the town so far with lobbying on two priority projects: the Forest Service proposal and an unrelated effort by the town to use a federal grant to run a 60-mile fiber line to bring high-speed internet to a local school.

The town and the Grand Canyon School District announced last week that their three-year effort on the internet project, which had faced hurdles, paid off when they secured final approval from the Federal Communications Commission, enabling the $5.6 million project to move forward.

The two most recent lobbying reports, for the second half of 2019, list the FCC among the agencies lobbied by the town’s representatives.

Harris said the recent work by Brownstein’s lobbyists has been split about 50-50 between the Forest Service proposal and the internet project.

“Any meetings that I’ve been involved with,” he said, “there’s been two topics and they’ve been discussed equally.”

Harris said the town is working with Brownstein because it’s a large firm that offers expertise and works with other nearby governments, including the Navajo Nation. In addition to its lobbying, he said, the firm offers experts “that can help us get through a federal process.”

Current zoning would allow homes

Stilo has owned the two properties for more than 25 years, and the company is making its third attempt to develop them.

A previous proposal was turned down by the federal government in 2016. At the time, Kaibab National Forest Supervisor Heather Provencio wrote that the proposal “is deeply controversial, is opposed by local and national communities, would stress local and Park infrastructure, and have untold impacts to the surrounding Tribal and National Park lands.”

In the debate over that proposal, critics opposed the size of the development and questioned where the water would come from, saying groundwater pumping could harm springs in the Grand Canyon.

Representatives of the town and the developer say they’ve made significant changes to address those concerns. Among them, Stilo has committed not to use local groundwater for the commercial portion of the development, and to instead rely on hauling in water with trucks.

The proposal includes a map laying out the boundaries of an area stretching from the Grand Canyon to Williams where groundwater couldn’t be pumped, at least for the hotels and other commercial development. There would be an exception for homes, which would rely on existing wells that supply the town.

The proposal lists some specifics of Stilo’s plans if roads can be built. It says the zoning would allow for nearly 2,500 hotel rooms, an RV park with 248 spaces, and 550,000 square-feet of “commercial” construction.

The town-approved zoning allows for a maximum of 856 homes on the Ten-X Ranch property, including both single-family homes and multifamily units, and up to 745 homes on Kotzin Ranch, mostly multifamily units.

Harris said he can’t speak about the plans for hotels and commercial development until Stilo presents a concrete plan.

“When they actually propose what their development is, then we’ll have to look at it with, you know, a bit of scrutiny to make sure that it fits for Tusayan,” he said.

In the meantime, he said, the Town Council is focusing on the road proposal to get going with the housing projects.

Asked what message the Town Council hopes to convey to decision makers in Washington, Harris said: “We just want to make sure that we get a fair shake at the process.”

Questions about favorable treatment

Western Values Project, which called attention to the lobbying expenses, is a Montana-based nonprofit that focuses on protecting public lands and wildlife in the American West. It’s part of Accountable.US, a nonpartisan group that says its aims include “making sure public officials are advancing policies in the public interest.”

O’Neill said when he and his group learned that the town was spending such large sums on lobbying, it raised questions.

“It’s unprecedented that we’ve seen a community of this size… spending this amount of money on this level of lobbying firm,” O’Neill said.

The lobbying reports show a total of $200,000 paid to Brownstein during 2018 and $190,000 paid during 2019.

A document on the town’s website shows Tusayan budgeted $2.4 million in spending from its general fund during the 2019 fiscal year.

O’Neill said his group is concerned about a pattern of Brownstein clients getting “favorable treatment” from the Interior Department.

In the past, officials from Grand Canyon National Park raised concerns about the effects the previous development proposal could have on springs fed by the aquifer beneath Tusayan.

But the National Park Service hasn’t yet commented publicly on the current proposal. The agency’s silence got the attention of Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran, who wrote to National Park Service Deputy Director David Vela on Feb. 7 about the proposal by Tusayan and Stilo.

“The current proposal continues to threaten the water supply of the South Rim and the Grand Canyon’s delicate ecosystem,” O’Halleran said in the letter. “Many of my constituents are concerned by the National Park Service’s silence on this important issue.”

He asked whether the National Park Service has conducted any analysis of how the Grand Canyon would be affected by the new proposal, whether the agency has relayed its conclusions to the Forest Service, and whether it intends to make its findings public.

O’Halleran said in an emailed statement that he wants “to ensure an open and transparent process that includes all stakeholders.”

Would new rules favor development?

A recent proposal by the Trump administration to rewrite the regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, could have a major effect on how the Forest Service reviews the proposal, said Ted Zukoski, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

The changes could lead to far less disclosure of how projects “may impact groundwater at seeps, springs, and Havasu Creek in the Grand Canyon,” Zukoski said in an email.

Under the proposed rules, a requirement for federal agencies to consider any cumulative impacts of a project would be eliminated, and agencies could also choose not to consider indirect impacts.

“The proposed rules appear aimed at allowing agencies to turn a blind eye to the key impacts of projects like Stilo’s in the name of ‘streamlining,’” Zukoski said.

If the National Park Service, which falls under Interior Secretary Bernhardt, doesn’t raise critical questions this time about the potential impacts on water, O’Neill said, “then it’s a lot easier for the Forest Service to approve that easement and go forward with that project.”

Roger Clark of the Grand Canyon Trust said he’s concerned the Trump administration could force the Forest Service to expedite the review process under NEPA on a very short timeline, as it has done elsewhere, and ignore the cumulative and indirect impacts of the proposal.

“The primary concern is that the lobbyists who are meeting with top officials in Department of Interior and Agriculture will be unduly influencing the federal decisions regarding the right-of-way and… the impacts on water, the national park and surrounding federal lands,” said Clark, who leads the Trust’s Grand Canyon program.

“We’re concerned that the lobbying firm will tip the scales away from the responsible oversight by the federal agencies in favor of expediting what the developers want,” Clark said.

Grand Canyon Trust and other conservation groups wrote to the Forest Service in October urging the agency to reject the proposal, which they said would “pave the way for a mega-resort.”

'We're asking for a fair chance'

Harris said the accusations by the conservation groups are incorrect.

“All we’re asking for is just a fair chance,” Harris said, and for the Forest Service to “determine whether this is viable or not.”

Jacqueline Banks, a public affairs officer at the Kaibab National Forest, said officials are evaluating the proposal “against existing screening criteria for special uses” of national forest lands. If the agency accepts the proposal as an application, it would then begin the environmental review process as required under NEPA.

Andy Jacobs, a spokesperson for Stilo, said with Tusayan and the national park struggling with a shortage of housing, “hopefully private investment can play a role in solving some of these problems in the area.”

Jacobs said that Brownstein’s legal team has experience with environmental reviews, and that much of their work has involved providing input for the proposal and sharing their NEPA expertise.

“I think Brownstein has offered some pretty good expertise on just getting the ball rolling with this proposal, and I don’t personally consider that lobbying necessarily,” Jacobs said. “We have a better proposal because of it, and hopefully it’ll lead to a better outcome this time.”

Town of Tusayan lobbying expenses

Lobbying disclosure forms show the town of Tusayan has paid the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP $470,000 for lobbying since 2017. Here is a breakdown of the amounts spent and the agencies lobbied, as listed in the reports.

Amount : $30,000

Lobbying issues: Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service

Amount: $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. House of Representatives

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. House of Representatives

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. House of Representatives

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. House of Representatives

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, Department of Agriculture

Amount : $50,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, U.S. Forest Service, Federal Communications Commission

Amount : $40,000

Lobbying issues : Issues related to infrastructure, housing, and utilities

Federal agencies and houses of Congress: Department of Interior, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, Federal Communications Commission, Department of Agriculture

Source: U.S. Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act Database

Reach reporter Ian James at ian.james@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8246. Follow him on Twitter: @ByIanJames

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