SALT LAKE CITY — Steady, true and kind. Soft spoken with memorable one-liners. An artful diplomat when it comes to negotiation, collaboration and finding the “win-win” for the players involved in complicated deals.

Those descriptors fit the persona of Kim Christy, who for 18 years has been a guiding force at the Utah Schools and Institutional Trust Lands Administration, which has seen its permanent trust fund grow from $50 million in 1994 to over $2.6 billion this year, in time for its 25th anniversary year of its reorganization.

Christy retired at the end of the year and took a few moments to reflect on his career with the little understood agency that manages 3.4 million acres of school trust lands with an eye to making revenue to benefit public schools.

Even before Christy started with school trust lands in 2001, he played a part in shaping its destiny and growth, working as a policy analyst for the Utah Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel, staffing a two-year task force that looked specifically at the trust lands administration and how to restructure it so it would become more fiscally sound.

The task force was chaired by Utah legislator Mel Brown, tackling the thorny issue of how to keep the trust fund out its entanglement with the general fund, and shield it from lawmakers eyeing the money for other parts of the budget.

“From (Brown’s) perspective we were engaging in an experiment that had a lot of skeptics,” Christy said. In the end, the school trust lands administration was transformed into a quasi-governmental entity that still has legislative oversight, but with a pot of money unreachable by lawmakers and a mandate to manage trust lands for the maximum benefit to generate revenue for its beneficiaries — public schools.

Years later, Brown would remark on the House floor that if the fund had been managed that way since statehood, it is very likely Utah would not need to have a state income tax to fund education.

“Today, due the foresight of the Legislature, we have $2.5 billion in those permanent funds,” Christy said. “It is a modern-day miracle.”

Christy added it was a huge turning point for SITLA, and the task force experience steeped Christy in the intricacies of SITLA’s strengths and its vulnerabilities.

“Little did I know that seven years later I would get a call from Kevin Carter (SITLA’s director at the time) to come work for them.”

This coming year, the trust lands administration will funnel $88 million to public schools, money that is given to community councils made up of teachers and parents who can uniquely decide how the dollars are spent given the needs of the particular school.

That model, Christy said, is one that other states with school trust lands look to emulate.

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“We are the only state in the union that has put this model to work where we have a chance to have a greater constituency understanding of these lands and their purpose,” he said. “They become a strong advocate for our purpose. That is the beauty of the model.”

Christy, who has a bachelor’s degree in range management and a master’s in agricultural economics, also worked as vice president of public policy for the Utah Farm Bureau, an experience that also had him immersed with the Utah Legislature, shepherding upward of 95 bills in a given legislative session.

That experience helped groom him for his 18 years at SITLA, becoming the face of trust lands in countless legislative sessions as he briefed lawmakers on varied and critical issues.

“We have a good reputation with the Legislature, which we don’t take for granted. It is very important that we cultivate that relationship because obviously the majority of those lawmakers present in the 1990s are gone,” he said. “It is a constant education process. We try to to give trustworthy and accurate information.”

Christy’s employment at the Utah Farm Bureau would help prepare him for negotiations on grazing fees hikes for ranchers who ran cattle on school trust lands.

At the time, the school trust lands administration was charging grazing fees similar to those charged by federal agencies, and not treating the arrangement like a business partnership to maximize revenue.

“We needed to get closer to private market rates more closely aligned with our mandate,” Christy said. “We tried to come to an area of private ground that we think was defensible.”

The result was an increase in the grazing fee formula that produced a 325% increase in annual earnings.

“It it was a very sensitive and emotional issue for many of Utah’s ranchers,” said Sterling Brown, the current vice president of public policy for the Utah Farm Bureau.

“I remember thinking he handled it with grace. He went into it having done his homework by reaching out to the ranching industry with transparency and boldness. He clearly wanted feedback,” Brown said, adding that Christy held multiple grassroots meetings out in ranching country to help them understand why negotiations were on the table.

“He erred on the side of slow and steady communication and coordination, and in time he got the proper support together to put together a short- and long-term plan,” Brown said.

Christy has also been a major architect behind complicated, protracted negotiations over land trades involving the federal government and multiple other partners.

School trust lands, because of their checkerboard placement across the state, are often isolated in islands, locked up in sensitive landscapes not appropriate or even accessible for revenue generation.

“I dare say we are the most proactive state in the western United States on these land exchanges,” he said, with one such agreement that took nine years before it came to fruition. “I’ve always said it takes a freight train to pass these things and a toothpick to derail them.”

Over the years, the school trust lands administration has traded out close to a million acres of land in sensitive landscapes and wilderness in favor of land it can use to generate revenue.

They also cobbled together a first-of-its-kind animal mitigation bank west of the Mississippi to compensate property owners struggling with the protected Utah prairie dog and its impact on private property and public infrastructure like cemeteries or airports.

Christy was one of the negotiators to protect the Great Hunt rock art panel in Nine Mile Canyon.

The administration owned the land in which a road passed right next to the rock art — so close vehicle occupants could reach out and touch the panel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jerry Spangler, executive director of the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance, called SITLA’s willingness to protect the rock art panel a “milestone” shift within the administration because it was nod to recognizing the importance of protecting a cultural resource for future generations.

“It never would had happened if SITLA had not given the green light because it was their property,” Spangler said. Beyond rerouting the road and establishing an area where people could park, the cooperative project also included the installation of benches and interpretative signage.

“It was hugely important step for the preservation of Utah’s cultural heritage,” Spangler said.

Christy called his career with SITLA a blessing, full of wonderful opportunities, even as the quasi-governmental entity has come under criticism for its razor-sharp focus on producing revenue.

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“As you know we are opportunists, and we take advantage of the market when opportunities present themselves,” Christy said, including the embrace of renewable energy where it is a good fit.

“We are very bullish on renewables. I don’t think it takes the place of oil and gas, and a lot of that is driven geographically,” he said, pointing to western and southern locations where wind and solar make sense in Utah, and the northeast area of the state which is prime oil and gas country.

Christy was also in the midst of some tough negotiations related to chunk of land under lease by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to provide public hunter access.

“I won’t deny that was a very contentious issue,” Christy said. “Admittedly, we stepped on some toes.”

SITLA raised the lease payment for wildlife services from $500,000 to $1.8 million — a price Christy said was arrived at by an independent third party.

“We considered this to be fair market. ... I think we had a very defendable argument. There’s no question access to premier hunting is definitely a marketable commodity. Most people don’t understand our mandate, and it creates a lot of misunderstanding.”

The administration could have charged that same fee for a private venture, denying public hunter access — like many neighboring states do — but negotiated continued access that was secured with additional funding from the Utah Legislature.

Brian Cottam, Utah’s state forester and director of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, has been at the negotiating table with Christy quite a bit.

“He’s a straight shooter. I have always known he will come in and negotiate in good faith and be forthright.”

At 62, Christy says he does not rule out returning to the workforce, but for now wants to focus on being with his wife, children and grandchildren — plus do a little traveling.

“It has been a great ride,” he said. “I don’t think I have could have asked for a better career. I think it is time to pass the baton on to others.”

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