Former BLM chief slams long-term plan The former head of the Bureau of Land Management accused the director of Utah's BLM office Tuesday of bowing to the "raw political power" of the Bush administration in preparing long-term plans for 11 million acres of red-rock desert in the state. Jim Baca, who served as the national BLM boss during President Clinton's first term, warned that the agency's six resource-management plans expected to become final next month would lead to pillaging public lands in Utah. The plans, Baca said, are "really, really disastrous. I think there is malfeasance involved in putting these things forward. . . . What's happened here is just raw political power that wasn't in the public interest." During a teleconference, Baca - New Mexico's natural-resource trustee and a Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance board member - sharply criticized BLM state Director Selma Sierra. Baca and representatives of The Wilderness Society, SUWA, the Colorado Plateau Archaeological Alliance and a spokeswoman for Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., organized the news conference to call attention to the Bush administration's lame-duck push to finalize land plans that would open 80 percent of the 11 million acres to oil and gas drilling....