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In conversation with a visitor, Nye County administrator William Offutt at first tries to minimize the county's rebelliousness. "I'd say there's maybe a dozen people who are really charged up on this issue," he says. But as the conversation evolves, his own hostility becomes clear, as does that of three other county officials present in his office. They spin out stories of federal snubs and restrictions, including the BLM's refusal to allow the county to run a phone wire through a roadside ditch to the county landfill without first having an archaeological appraisal.
As Offutt cites his litany of federal offenses, his anger builds. He believes federal land managers are engaged in a deliberate campaign to stifle development in the county as revenge for its passage in 1993 of two resolutions declaring its authority to manage federal lands. Offutt stands angrily smoking a cigarette. "There's no rationale for doing an archaeological study there. None at all. It's just a way of sticking an ice pick in the county."
Federal employees feel caught between empathy and the law. Ted Angle, an associate district manager of the BLM who once supervised its Nye lands, says the National Historic Preservation Act tied his hands. The law requires an archaeological review for any construction project on federal lands; the BLM's recommendations must in turn be reviewed by a state historic-preservation office, which must then report back to the BLM. "It's just not a negotiable thing for us," he says.
THE PHONE-LINE CASE TILTED toward absurdity, however, when the initial BLM report got lost--and nobody knew it until weeks later. The BLM resubmitted the report and got an expedited review, but in the meantime, Angle says, the county chose a newly available cellular service and blamed the BLM for taking too long. "You've got to understand local politics," says Angle, a self-described conservative Republican. "Dick Carver would love to embarrass the BLM as much as he can."
Offutt and his staff are still smarting from what they see as the latest vengeful snub by the government. Jim Nelson, supervisor of the Toiyabe and Humboldt national forests, was scheduled to meet with Nye's commissioners one day this summer to try to ease the mounting hostility. That morning one of Nelson's employees delivered a letter to the gathered commissioners stating that Nelson would not be coming after all; he says now he couldn't attend because of the pending Justice lawsuit. The commissioners weren't terribly surprised, says Rachel Nicholson, a county attorney also present in Offutt's office. Says she: "They expect to be kicked in the teeth every time, so they're used to it."
At one point the county offered an olive branch. Shocked by news of the bombing of Guy Pence's family van, the county called an emergency meeting and voted to offer a $100,000 reward to help find the culprit. But Nelson and Pence belittled the reward and blamed the county for helping conjure the lawless climate that led to the bombing. Stung, the county met again and unanimously withdrew the reward. "We didn't really expect gratitude," says Cameron McRae, chairman of the commission. "But we surely didn't expect to get it thrown in our faces."