Well, first off, jean, thanks for that great introduction. I really appreciate the chance to visit with you all today. Is a tremendous honor to serve in the Trump Administration and its a tremendous honor to serve as the secretary of the interior. Frankly, its also great to be back in colorado to discuss my member my experience as a member of the Trump Administration and describe the work that were doing at the department to bet heter serve t American People. Now, i grew up as jean said only a couple of hours from here outside of the town of rifle. Has anybody been to rifle . Oh, wow, well that never happens. You know, rifle, like steamboat is largely surrounded by lands that are managed by either the Forest Service or the bureau of land management, and i grew up playing, hunting and fishing on those lands, and that instilled in me at a young age the importance of Public Access and protecting the Natural Beauty of those landscapes, but the reality is that the culture, the history, and the economies of Rural Communities along the western slope and throughout the west depend on both the development and use of those Natural Resources as well as the conservation and recreation associated with them. The truth is that i love this area, and in fact, the last time i was here i was just outside of town on an elk hunt on Election Night in 2016, and about 9 00 p. M. I realized that i was going to be required to attend a meeting regarding the president ial transition the next day. So hot footed it out of here, and that was actually the last time i was in steamboat. Now, i can assure you that as i drove from steamboat to denver that night, i began to put my thoughts together on what the transition and Implementation Plan might look like for the department of the interior, and i really was struggling with one simple question, and that question was was the president going to keep the promises that he had made to the American People. And heres why, because during the campaign the president was extraordinarily clear and detailed on what he said he would do for the American People as it related to the department of the interior. It turned out that a few weeks into the transition effort, it was apparent to me that the president and his senior team were absolutely going to deliver on the promises that that i had made to the american public, and to do that my next thought was whats the team going to look like that he needs . And we knew that we would need and have a large majority of the folks who had won an incredible election. Wed also need great actors that had experience in State Government and public lands, and wed also need a complimeement some experienced hands who knew the department of the interior, and so that is the team that i worked with ryan zinke to assemble and ultimately propose to the president. Let me tell you, that team has spent every day working to implement the president s vision as it relates to the department of the interior, and weve done it at quite a clip, and the reality is that we were able to do this because the president has been fearless when making decisions, and he does not weather but he actually leans in when things get a bit heated, and i believe by the end of his term throughout government, we will have a historic legacy of accomplishment. Now, if you look at a Progress Report today, things look pretty good under the president. The u. S. Has added 6. 2 million jobs since january 2017, including over 1. 1 million created this year. The Unemployment Rate is at a historic low of 3. 7 , and july marked the 17th consecutive month that employment has been below 4 with minorities and low income individuals seeing the biggest gains. Now, interior is not sitting back during this period either. So far in our first two years, 2017 and 18, weve delivered over 3. 7 billion of deregulatory relief to the American People. Weve helped america become the number one producer of oil and gas and revenues on federal lands have soared to 8. 93 billion which is an increase over 2 billion above what it was in fiscal year 2017, and we have the highest number of oil and Gas Producing on federal leases since 2008, but its also worth noting that were we have leased the least amount of acreage during that time, so what has happened is American Technology and innovation is actually generating more production from fewer acres of land, hi, ted, its great to see you. Ted and i were law school not law school associates, we were associates at a law firm together, i havent seen him in 20 years. Glad i came. The list goes on and on leading to greater jobs. The president s deregulatory agenda has rollback regulations and cut red tape. We have been number two and number three and interior and number two and three in the entire government for our deregulation efforts. What have we done . We have streamlined the process for Infrastructure Projects and dramatically reduced the timeframe it takes to go through what is called the need for process. Has anyone heard of the niebuhr process . Let me tell you a fascinating story. When i got to interior, if a state director, someone in denver sent us a document, on average, it took us 199 days to deliver that document across the street to the federal registrar. Now right now, we are averaging about 32 days. How did that happen . We didnt change a single environmental standard, but we said, why does it take 199 days . And do you know what everyone, they didnt want to ask the question. They said we really dont know. And i said no, show me how this process got set up. And they said well, we really dont know. So i have kind of pieced it together. Let me tell you how it got set up. Up until the 1990s, a state director from blm could just send the document to the federal registrar anytime they wanted. That worked for a while. And then one day the chief of staff, that is a very important person if you ask the chief of staff. [ laughter ] so the chief of staff went to his nice office, actually its right next to my office, and he went in and sat down and im sure he had a cup of coffee. And there were at least three newspapers on his desk because these are the only three papers you can get, the washington post, the New York Times and the wall street journal. Ive tried to order anything else and you cannot get it even if you are the secretary. I know he had one of those three. So he opened it up. And guess what he saw . An article about the department of the interior. And as he read the article, he was surprised. He didnt know that we were about to announce this thing in the federal register and i dont know what it was for sure, but i know what happened next. He said i want to see every federal register notice that goes out. And im 100 confident that he had no idea what that meant, none. No idea. But immediately, he starts working on the federal register notices. So a couple days later, the deputy sector walked into his office and sees this guy with piles of paper and he says what are you doing . And he says, im reading federal register notices so im not surprised. And the deputy secretary says well, you cant do that, that is an operations issue. I do operations. So i need to read the federal register notice. Immediately, the chief of staff says okay, well you can read them also. So once that happened, the solicitor of the department which is the third ranking official in the Department Said wait, deputy secretary, you cant read anything unless i read it first. This is not an exaggeration. And so once that happened, then the assistant secretaries, they are below the deputy secretary, they have their portfolios, they are like well, what is the deputy secretary reading . The federal register notice. So they immediately start reading them. When that happens, the Bureau Directors at the blm, the park service, the fish and Wildlife Service start reading them. Once the Bureau Director read something, about 100 people, it is actually 35, i dont want to exaggerate. 35 people in the bureau decide that they ought to read them also. And suddenly, what you have is 199 days. And i looked at that, and i said maybe we could have a briefing. And just put everybody in a room and go through it, have a little bit of time to read it. And you know what, thats what we did. And that is what we are doing. I challenge the folks on the field, i said look, i will speed this up for you, but heres the problem you have now, you have me. So you have to read the document before i send it. Because i went to the first meeting and asked them what theyre doing and if they are reading it and they all raised their hands. And i said well, ive read it, so ive some questions and all of their hands went back down. [ laughter ] so i engaged in a series of meetings where i would read these things, they are dense. I would cut the pages out that i wanted because they are duplicate, and i realized they could be about one third the size they actually were if you got rid of that. So now we have the documents to take a lot less time. That is just one simple example of what we are doing at the department of the interior. And to give you another example, a couple weeks ago, we, well, actually its been 30 something days ago, i sent a letter to congress. And i said i have a plan. And my plan is that we move folks and capabilities from washington dc to the west, to reorganize and realign and strengthen the bureau of land management. Now why did i think about doing that . First off, you have some folks like cory gardner and others who have been talk about this issue for years, jerry paulus, mike bennett, and they been talking about it and they talked to the secretary about it and he was excited about it and i had a different robin, my lease was about to expire. And in dc, leases are pretty expensive. And this one was so expensive that gsa said there is no way we are doing that one. So i said well, if the lease is up, we have to think about what we are doing. And it also turns out that when we have people in dc, we pay them additional money called locality pay to try to keep them in some degree of parity with the rest of the government. It really doesnt work that well. But we do that, and i said why dont we do this . We need to get resources to the ground, the front lines where the operation folks are struggling. The state directors need more resources. Lets ask two simple questions. First off, do we need this particular job . And if we do, great. If we dont, maybe we ought to think about that. Number two, if we need this particular job, where is the best place in the world for it to be done . And in asking those questions, it led to some interesting things, for example, we have, some of you from the west may know this, we have a serious challenge with wild horses and burrows. Anyone familiar with that. If you people. Would you want to take a guess at where the wild horse and borough leadership is . Actually the leadership is in washington, there arent very many wild horses or burrows there. So the question may be, well, maybe they should be somewhere else. We have a wonderful training center, do you know where the top training folks were . Washington dc. Most of our mining is done in nevada. And arizona. But our top mining folks, we have operations folks in nevada, but most of our mining policy folks were in dc. And i am like, we could create centers of excellence and solidify those areas. And so that is what we proposed to congress. We said this is what we intend to do. I didnt ask them, i said this is what we are doing. They had 30 days to get back to me on it. And that 30 days has expired. So we will be beginning the Implementation Phase of that. It turns out that we will house the headquarters in grand junction. And that is significant. [ applause ] and i got a lot of questions about that. So let me tell you a true story. For years, the department of interior struggled to get the upandcoming management to dc. Those guys and gals that are extraordinary managers in blm and the park service, fish and Wildlife Service, they are not really excited about moving to dc. Why would that be . [ laughter ] so the on the obvious reasons, the reality is that they are almost guaranteed that the Square Footage of their house will shrink dramatically. Their commute will expand. And i think we will see our best and brightest begging to get in. So those are just two of the things that we are working on that i wanted to give you a little bit of perspective on, because i think we are setting a track record and the pace that is really unparalleled. And the reason that is is because the president is clear on where he wants us to go. He doesnt vacillate on a daily basis, and we just get to shoot at our targets, and we are doing that, and i think america will be better served for it. , so with that, i tell you thank you much and i will sit down here and have a conversation. [ applause ] nice to see you. I wanted to kick this off by talking about a topic that i know theres a lot of interest in in colorado. And that is Forest Fire Prevention on federal land. I know that that is something the trumpet menstruation has made a priority. Can you talk a little bit about how the approach to that has changed and some of the obstacles that you face with it . The president has been pretty clear that he feels very strongly that we need to have active management of our forest and range lands. So he issued an executive order that gave us pretty clear direction on that. In january, secretary sankey issued another order that is pretty clear on that. And in the interior, we have about 4500 folks that are dedicated to firefighting in a regular fire season, and this year, we have about 2500 different active management projects that we have going on throughout the year. We have also Just Announced and began analyzing underneath a proposal for 11,000 miles of fire breaks. And so we have received the message of the president very clearly. We are moving at a very big clip. And i think we will have treated this year at least 1. 2 million acres. That is incredible. I wanted to touch base a little bit on the reform. I know that you touched on this. So i was kind of staggered to see how much paperwork and Regulatory Burden that youve cut back on. So not just walking across the street and handing it over to the federal register, but the amounts of sheer paperwork and size that is going into maintenance, something with a burden on business or something legible that can result in a decision. Can you talk a little bit about your efforts to make Environmental Impact statements for use of federal land something that is actually useful to businesses and useful to Environmental Protection . Im a big believer in the National Environment policy act. And it has two primary purposes, the first purpose is to ensure that there is an element of Public Participation before we make decisions that have environmental consequences that are significant. The other is to ensure that a decisionmaker looks at a reasonable range of alternatives before making the decision. And when i got there, a couple of things happen. First, i had the career staff actually saying, we need some time frames and page limitations. And then they started handing me their documents. Some of these are eight, seven, 12,000 pages. Just to clarify, this is the Environmental Impact statement that a business has to look at . Everything they need to comply with to use federal land . Thats right, in order to make a decision on federal land, we have to go through this process. And if it is significant, before we make a decision, we have to prepare it. And my first question was, does anybody read these . [ laughter ] and it turned out that not that much. And so then the question is, okay, well, does that even further the purposes of the act . So i set a goal of a timeframe of a year where we get lots of waivers, but a goal of a year and 150 pages. Why did i pick 150 . That is first off what the regulations that were developed for the ordinary dis should look like, but it was also the amount that i could read while i was drinking a cup of coffee on a sunday morning. And it seemed that it would be necessary for the Decision Maker to actually utilize a document to make a more informed decision. So that was our target. And we are not at 150 for everything. We have 300, we have other bigger ones. And we find a lot of waivers. But we pushed it that way, and the timeframe has dramatically shrunk. We had eiss that were taking 7 to 8 to 9 years and that is just a paralysis of analysis in the government. And an applicant should get a yes or no. If they have that project, we should tell them know as fast as we can. But we dont need to waste 7 years telling them nothing. So that is dealing with use of federal land. Another thing i wanted to talk with you about is how you are using the endangered species act. I know that is something that has been abused to restrict private property rights. Can you talk a little bit about how your approach to this is different from the obama administrations approach and how it is actually better for endangered species . So we just, just this week as a matter fact, published three rules, two of the rules we published, we published jointly with the department of commerce, because we manage, i guess it was actually last week, we manage the endangered species act jointly with the department of commerce. And the act is, the purpose of the act and the goals are phenomenal. I think it says a lot about a country, species for protection matters and we need to be cognizant of it. That is a good thing. At the same time, the limitation of the act, we believe that there were a number of places where it was unnecessarily conflict driven and not really focused on the efforts that would optimize conservation and protection of species. One of the things we did, one of our rules, it basically clarifies that if you are a threatened species, if you are designated to be a threatened species, that means you are likely to be in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future but you are not there yet, in terms of endangered extinction, we could tailor the regulation to precisely state what type of activities can occur, and one of the reasons of doing that is that actually can facilitate things and you can tailor the regulation in a way that actually facilitates private conservation efforts. We have used that for the northern spotted owl and other things. And they use that practice every day already. So we think that that is an additional measure. We have also streamlined the way our consultation process will work with other agencies. We created a number of flexible measures to take away just the need to duplicate documentation and stuff like that. And then we have clarified the scope of our consultation efforts. What i think this will do more than anything, these regulations together, i think they will really sand some of the rough edges that are necessary while ensuring the conservation of the species. For example, we have made clear that delisting requires the same standards as listing. Thats what the law says and its changed our look at that and come to a different conclusion with regulations, so we clarify that. Those are a few of the things we are doing. Got it. So i know we will take a couple questions on note cards from you guys in the audience. I would like to get that taking off pretty quickly here. Because i know we are time limited. But i guess the last question i wanted to ask you, with the blm relocation, we hear a lot about draining the swamp. And in a lot of ways, this is bringing people closer to the communities that are being affected by rules and regulations and making sure they have a stake in the communities. Ive been surprised at how even this really practical reform has run into stiff opposition. The one that made me crack up is the retired employees saying that this functionally dismantled blm. I want you to talk about some of the things he did with the institution and bureaucracy of government and how you plan on taking that on. I would say this, first off, i fundamentally think this strengthens blm, and i think it strengthens it considerably. And what ive been fascinated by his on my travels west, i normally go to blm offices on the road, and ive been shocked about how enthusiastic they are about this change. There are folks out there that see things differently. And my view is that is what makes America Great on one hand. On the other hand, the probably havent actually analyze the problem or come up with a solution, because if they had, i would write myself in the process of trying to figure out how to make a system perform much better. All right. I am taking a look here at our questions from the audience. And a lot of interest on greenland. [ laughter ] [ applause ] well, the beauty of greenland is they do have significant critical minerals, im aware of that, but i am with the department of the interior. That is a department, a question for someone else. [ laughter ] i wanted to hear a little bit about how your experience of the, of colorado defines you as an outsider in washington and what specifically you brought to the job that you think washington is missing. What perspectives are they not seeing that a westerner would know. Any decision that im making, i think about what does it mean to that local community . And are we being a good neighbor. And in my confirmation process, i met with the senator. And he said something about federal land. And i said well, its very important that we understand that certain land is used for multiple use and certain land is used for our parks. We follow whatever law you want, but different uses for different purposes, and he said to me, well, there arent that many people out there. [ laughter ] and i was sort of offended by that. So he didnt vote for me. But, but that is the truth. It is very easy to be 2500 miles away and make a decision about a piece of land that you know nothing about. And i think it is very useful, growing up in rifle, living through the boom and bust, living through the ultimate revitalization, i think that adds a lot to ensuring that decisions are sound. I am relook to initiate radical new programs without a really good sense that i understand the pathway and the consequences of that to the existing community. That is important to me. Got it. Another question that im seeing coming up pretty repeatedly in his audience solicitations is they are curious about how you balance the rule as someone that is concerned about the environment and concerned about making the most economically of the incredible resource of federal land. Can you just kind of explain your thinking on that . My thinking on that is pretty easy. Congress has worked very hard over hundred and 50 years to clarify those types of things. So we manage our National Parks differently than we manage our management lands. We manage our wilderness areas differently than we manage areas that are not wilderness. We manage our fish and wildlife refuges differently. Congress sets ultimately the management paradigm, and i must operate in a reasonable way within the paradigm that they give me. And that is our job. Okay. And again, i want to bring up the wildlife issue again, because that is something that there is clearly a lot of interest in this room about. So one question im getting often is whats been done specifically, and what can be done regarding the incredible amounts of dead trees and federally owned land specifically here, in colorado. Well, one real challenge is getting in there early enough. You wait too long and those are ultimately uneconomic opportunities. The Forest Service, which is most of the area out of here, as it has trees like that, the Forest Service is working on doing some of the very reforms that weve done. And in looking at streamlining, but to do that, it needs to be, you have to have a planning process that is effective. You have to ensure that people have an adequate opportunity to participate in that, and it needs to be done in a timeframe that the product is one that you can economically get out of the area. Otherwise, you are just going to have catastrophic fire. All right. Well, i think i know that you are pressed for time, so we will let you go, but i had one last question for you. I got to visit the secretary in his office and interview him, and one of the cool things that i do know was that the department of the interior has all of this really cool art, and other artifacts about interior lands. And my favorite was about probably 12 or 13 foot polar bear right outside your office and i wondered, does he have a name. His name is dale. He has a twitter account. And he is a fan of the caps. Thank you. Goodbye. [ applause ] i think we are supposed to go this way. [ applause ] [ music ] the washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you, coming up friday morning, we are getting your reaction to the third democratic president ial debate. Join the conversation all morning with your phone calls, emails, Facebook Comments and tweets. And then awardwinning documentary filmmaker ken burns talks about his latest project for pbs on the history of country music. Watch cspans washington journal live at 7 00 eastern friday morning. 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