Utah state and county leaders pushed federal officials and park superintendents for expanded access and increased visitation at the state’s national parks in a closed-door meeting on Monday, according to those who attended.

The meeting covered a wide array of topics, including the federal government shutdown, timed entry systems at Arches and Zion National Parks, trails, roads and off-highway vehicle use, according to reports from city, county and state officials.

“It really was just a whole day of wish lists” from county and state officials, said Barbara Bruno, mayor of Springdale, a gateway community to Zion National Park.

The state’s Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office convened the meeting, which included leading federal and state officials such as Interior Department Deputy Secretary Karen Budd-Falen and Lt. Gov. Diedre Henderson, according to city and state officials. Representatives from Utah’s outdoor recreation, state parks and tourism offices were also present, as well park superintendents, county leaders and mayors of national park gateway communities.

Grand County Commissioner Trisha Hedin, who attended the meeting, criticized the “top down” approach and said the overarching theme of the meeting was about increasing access to the parks and getting “as many people in there as possible.”

“I thought it was really backward, and so it made people very weary and leery,” Hedin said. “I think it could have actually been a really productive meeting, but when you go in with your hackles up, it doesn’t feel good.”

The meeting sparked some concerns that this may be another move by Utah to seize control of federal public lands after three failed attempts earlier this year. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called the meeting the state’s “latest effort to undermine and dismantle the nation’s public lands system” in a news release on Tuesday.

The state dismissed such claims. “This was not about the state taking over management of the national parks. We are the Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office, so we coordinate with all of our federal partners, and we do it on a regular basis,” said Redge Johnson, the office’s director.

While county and state leaders often meet with Interior and the National Park Service, Johnson did acknowledge it’s “unique” for the state to convene representatives from all the parks in one meeting.

“It was not a full-on land grab or anything like that,” said Bruno, “but it was clearly an opportunity to start talking about some of the things that the state would like to see happen with those parks.”

The wish list

Throughout the meeting, county and state officials presented their desires for Utah’s national parks, monuments and recreation areas. The reservation systems at Arches and Zion National Parks were a major topic of discussion.

Washington County and Kane County expressed their opposition to a timed-entry system at Zion, Bruno said. The park is currently developing its visitor use management plan, and a reservation system is a possible path forward. State and county leaders said earlier this year that they want a timed-entry system off the table, raising concerns that it could turn visitors away and hurt the local economy.

Bruno was not invited to present, despite representing the gateway community most affected by park crowds. She still shared how high visitation affects her community from the audience, though, she said.

“When [visitors] arrive on Labor Day weekend at 9 a.m. and they’re in a line, they’re in a line that’s on the one road in and out of our town, and our folks don’t get home, and we don’t get mail delivery at our homes, and we don’t get to the post office,” she said in an interview with The Tribune.

Bruno said she wants the planning process to continue so the park can figure out the best path forward to accommodate growing crowds. Zion was the second most visited national park in the country last year.

For Arches, Grand County Commissioner Brian Martinez presented a proposal a majority of county commissioners would like included in the park’s visitor use planning process, the Access and Capacity Enhancement Alternative, according to Hedin. The proposal includes a package of non-reservation ideas to manage crowds, such as expanded parking, new trail connections and greater use of real-time traffic and visitation data.

For the past four years, Arches has been testing a timed-entry pilot system. The system has drawn mixed reactions locally. Some county officials like Martinez are concerned it may be hurting the economy.

Moab Mayor Joette Langianese doesn’t want timed entry to go away, though, and expressed her support of the system during the meeting on Monday, she told The Tribune. “We’re not seeing any kind of economic impact to the city of Moab from the timed-entry,” she said.

She said the conversation around Arches felt “balanced” and she was grateful that mayors were included in the meeting. “It was really good to meet the deputy secretary and have her hear our perspective on what’s happening at Arches and Canyonlands National Park,” she said.

Deputy Secretary Budd-Falen shared that the Interior Department is currently working on a mobile application that would help park visitors find nearby attractions, such as hikes outside the parks or restaurants in nearby communities, as they’re waiting for their reservation slot or turned away because of long lines, according to Langianese.

Other ideas discussed include opening more areas to off highway vehicle use in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Capitol Reef National Park, as well as paving the entirety of the Burr Trail in Capitol Reef, according to a report from Hedin that was published in the Grand County Commission meeting agenda Tuesday.

The state would also like to see park areas that close seasonally open more, according to Hedin’s report, including Rainbow Point Road in Bryce Canyon National Park, the visitor center at Hovenweep National Monument and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which is in Arizona but near southwest Utah towns such as Kanab.

“The overarching theme was … more access and getting as many people in there as possible, which is discouraging,” Hedin said.

Bruno noted that environmental concerns were absent from the discussion. “It was all about how these properties are economic drivers for the state. … Nobody talked about preserving the natural resources,” she said.

That focus is “extremely concerning” and is drifting from the reasons parks were protected, Cory MacNulty, southwest regional campaign director with the National Parks Conservation Association, told The Tribune.

“They seem to be really focused on short term economic gain with a willingness to sacrifice long term park planning, park resources, as well as the visitor experience,” MacNulty said.

Collaboration going forward

The meeting also covered how the state, national parks and Interior Department work together going forward, particularly during a government shutdown.

The state spent $336,000 to keep visitor centers open at parks across Utah during the recent shutdown, according to Anna Loughridge, communications director for the Utah Office of Tourism.

“I’d like to say we’ll never have another shutdown, but that’s probably not likely, so if and when that happens again, we just wanted to talk about a way that we could do that more smoothly,” Johnson, PLPCO’s director, said.

Officials also discussed maintenance backlogs at parks and how the state may be able to help with those costs, Johnson said. This year, the state helped cover the costs of a new sewer line in Zion National Park to replace a failing septic system.

Cuts to the Park Service’s staff and budget were not discussed at the meeting, according to both Hedin and Langianese. The National Park Service has lost 25% of their staff since the beginning of 2025, and the Trump administration has proposed massive cuts to the agency’s budget.

“They asked for more people to be allowed into the parks,” MacNulty said. “They asked for OHVs to be allowed on roads. They asked for roads to be paved and a number of other things, but they did not ask for the restoration of adequate staffing and funding for the park service.”

State, county and federal officials did not come to any final agreements on future collaboration during shutdowns or park maintenance costs during the meeting on Monday, Johnson said. Deputy Secretary Budd-Falen said she’d follow up with park superintendents on topics discussed, according to Langianese.

“There was nothing earth shattering,” Johnson said, “and no decisions were made.”

Rep. Celeste Maloy, R-Utah, sponsored new bipartisan legislation that would make social media and other platforms legally responsible if they fail to act on abusive deepfake images and cyberstalking.

On Monday, Maloy and Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., introduced the Deepfake Liability Act, a bill that would change how federal law treats websites and apps that host nonconsensual AI-generated sexual images and other intimate content.

“Abusive deepfakes and cyberstalking are harming people across the country, and victims deserve real help,” Maloy said in a press release. “Our bill creates a straightforward duty of care and a reliable process to remove harmful content when victims ask for help. Companies that take this seriously will keep their protections under the law. Those that do nothing will be held accountable.”

Maloy’s office noted that women and teenage girls are the overwhelming targets of nonconsensual deepfake pornography, which now makes up the majority of deepfake content online.

Changing Section 230 rules for AI content

The bill targets Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that has long shielded online platforms from being sued over most user-generated content.

The Deepfake Liability Act would condition those protections on whether a platform meets a new “duty of care.” To keep their immunity, companies would need to:

• Take basic steps to prevent cyberstalking and abusive deepfakes
• Respond to reports from victims
• Investigate credible complaints
• Remove intimate or privacy-violating content identified by those victims

The bill also clarifies that AI-generated content is not automatically covered by Section 230 immunity — a key change as generative tools make it easier to create convincing fake images and videos.

“AI shouldn’t have special privileges and immunities that journalists don’t get,” Auchincloss said in the press release, arguing that using bots or deepfakes to violate or stalk another person “needs to be a CEO-level problem for the trillion-dollar social media corporations that platform it. Congress needs to get ahead of this growing problem, instead of being left in the dust like we were with social media.”

Speaking about his broader “UnAnxious Generation” legislative package, Auchincloss told Time magazine that the Deepfake Liability Act is meant to move platforms from a “reactive” posture to a proactive one: Section 230 protections would hinge on actively working to prevent and remove deepfake porn and cyberstalking, not just responding when forced.

How it connects to the Take It Down Act

The new proposal is designed to build on a law that passed earlier this year: the federal Take It Down Act.

The Take It Down Act was co-sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. First lady Melania Trump also strongly advocated for the bill to be passed. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent and cleared the House on a 409–2 vote before President Donald Trump signed it into law on May 19.

That law makes it a federal crime to “knowingly publish” or threaten to publish intimate images without a person’s consent, including AI-generated deepfakes. It also requires covered websites and social media platforms to remove such material — and make efforts to delete copies — within 48 hours after a victim reports it.

Enforcement is handled by the Federal Trade Commission, and platforms have until May 2026 to fully implement the required notice-and-removal systems.

The Deepfake Liability Act uses that same basic notice-and-removal framework but goes further by tying Section 230 protections to whether companies meet a clear duty of care.

Maloy and Auchincloss say that change would ensure that platforms that ignore reports of abuse no longer have the same legal shield as those that take active steps to protect victims.

Supporters say it closes a gap — critics warn about overreach

Advocates for reforming online liability say the new bill is a needed next step after Take It Down.

“The time is now to reform Section 230,” said Danielle Keats Citron, vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and a longtime scholar of online abuse, per the release.

Keats said the Deepfake Liability Act contains a “well-defined duty of care” that would require platforms to prevent, investigate and remove cyberstalking, nonconsensual intimate images and digital forgeries. She also argued that it would close a loophole by making platforms responsible not only for content they help create but also for harmful content they “solicit or encourage.”

The Take It Down Act from earlier this year had drawn criticism from some free speech and digital rights groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, who said its fast takedown deadlines and broad language could pressure platforms to over-remove content, rely heavily on automated filters and potentially sweep in lawful speech — such as news reporting, protest images or LGBTQ content — in the name of avoiding liability, per The Associated Press.

This new measure is part of a broader, bipartisan push to regulate AI-related harms and tighten rules for how tech companies handle children’s safety, online abuse and emerging threats from generative tools.