opinion

Our view: BLM's botched Burning Man plan





The Bureau of Land Management does not seem to have many friends in Nevada, and it lost a few more this past week.

Wild horse advocates and ranchers regularly find BLM actions troubling. Now Burning Man organizers have rightly expressed outrage over a preposterous set of demands for government officials to receive luxury accommodations at the annual Black Rock Desert event.

The story came to light in a series of exclusive articles by RGJ Burning Man reporter Jenny Kane. The details are distressing and, at times, more than a little funny in their absurdity.

After the RGJ stories were published, the BLM said it would review the proposal and maybe scale it back. The self-examination should not stop there. The federal agency also needs to look at the culture that led them to submit such a foolish proposal. Why these officials believed they could demand — and were entitled to — 24-hour access to ice cream needs to be better understood.

Looked at simply, this was an attempt to gouge a group asking to use public land for an event. Although Burning Man is the largest event on public land in the United States — with 70,000 people expected this summer — that doesn't make the gouging any less troubling. (Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, says he wants to look into the case's ethics.)

To understand how inappropriate the BLM proposal was, one need only consider whether BLM officials would have demanded these same items if the cost were coming out of their own budget:

•Salsa, hot peppers, brown sugar and raisins or other dried fruit at every breakfast and lunch — in "appropriate" serving containers, not individually packaged

•Mandatory 24-hour access to Golden Grahams, Fruit Loops, Chobani Greek yogurt, chocolate milk, personal pizzas, Hot Pockets, burritos, M&Ms, Snickers, Paydays, Skittles, licorice, cookies and brownies

•Mandatory 24-hour access to a standalone freezer containing ice cream sandwiches, Drumsticks and Choco Tacos

•Flushing toilets to be cleaned daily by Burning Man staff

•Washers and dryers

•Showers with instant hot water

•Air-conditioning, couches and refrigerators.

A few readers have defended the BLM requests as needed to keep rangers well-rested and well-fed so they can do their jobs during a hectic and sometimes grueling event that often sees temperature extremes and blinding dust storms.

This argument has some merit, but it is worth noting that many of the luxury items — such as washers and dryers — were demanded for VIP officials attending for only two or three days but not for the 150 rank-and-file BLM workers staffing the event.

Stephen Clutter with the Nevada state BLM office made the situation worse when he said, "This is the same stuff they have for deployments in Afghanistan."

The comparison is insulting. These are officials attending one of the world's great parties, with music, dancing, art and lots of naked people – not soldiers in a war zone facing snipers, improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.

BLM staff say the demanded items are needed so they can assess safety at the event after a woman was killed last year when hit by an art car.

Burning Man staff estimate these new BLM requests – which are above and beyond what was provided last year — would add $1 million to $1.2 million to its permit cost. This is an increase of about 25 percent, to around $5 million.

If the BLM were footing the bill, it's a certainty the agency never would have demanded round-the-clock Choco Tacos. It also would have been laughed at by federal bean counters if it proposed spending $1 million on food and accommodations to do a two-week safety assessment.

But if they can stick it to Burning Man organizers – who have turned Northern Nevada into the site of the world's greatest annual art event – then these luxuries suddenly become necessities.

Government VIPS may even be lucky this story came out when it did. Their compound is two miles from the Burning Man site, but Burning Man staff are required to clean up after them. Video easily could have emerged showing them luxuriating in a way that makes people forget the Secret Service scandals.

If it wants to restore some public trust, the BLM needs to do more than prepare a scaled-back proposal.

So far, too much vagueness has surrounded what the BLM expects to deliver from its million-dollar demands. It must spell out what officials will do at the event, why this is needed and what the benefits are.

The BLM must then go one step further and provide an open and honest assessment of how in the world this luxury Burning Man proposal happened in the first place.