The citizen councils in Colorado created to advise the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on local issues have been blocked from meeting for a year by Trump administration reviews and delays, setting off protests and resignations.

The regional advisory councils, or RACs, were created by statute in 1995. There are three in Colorado-one each for the Northwest, the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions.

The councils try to develop consensus positions to offer the BLM on local issues from wild-horse and burro management to regulating heavily used recreation areas to oil and gas development.

Frustrated with the situation, two members of the Northwest RAC have resigned, and members of the Rocky Mountain council have drafted a letter of “concern” to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. The letter is being circulated among all RAC members in the state.

The delays in getting meeting dates, issuing council charters and filling council vacancies is part of a pattern, said Nada Culver, director of the Wilderness Society’s BLM Action Center.

“It is part of a pattern of cutting out input from a broad range of people,” Culver said. “We are seeing people get the message that their services are no longer required.”

In January, 10 of the 12 members of the National Park System Advisory Board resigned in protest after failing to get a meeting on issues of concern.

“Our requests to engage have been ignored and the matters on which we wanted to brief the new Department team are clearly not part of its agenda,” board chairman Tony Knowles, a former Alaska governor, wrote in a letter to Zinke.

Since last March, only one of the RACs, the Northwest, has held a meeting. A meeting for the Rocky Mountain RAC set for January was canceled by the BLM and a February meeting for the Northwest council was also canceled.

The reason was that the RACs can’t meet until their new charters have been issued by Washington, said Steven Hall, a BLM spokesman.

“Most RAC activities have to be approved by Washington,” Hall said. The charters and nominations for council vacancies are being worked on and will be issued. “I don’t have an estimate for when that’s going to occur.”

Last spring, Zinke suspended the RACs while a review was done. The suspension was lifted in the fall, although no report was issued.

The RACs were permitted to meet in December, but they need new annual charters to begin meeting in 2018. A third of the seats on the Northwest and Southwest RACs are vacant and have to be filled.

Two members of the Northwest council have resigned. In November, Pitkin County Commissioner George Newman left the board, and in February, Barbara Vasquez, the chairman of the RAC, resigned.

“It didn’t make sense to sit on an advisory committee whose advice wasn’t going to be asked for,” Newman said. “The administration is one sided that side is to do whatever they can do to deregulate for the benefit of the oil and gas industry at the sacrifice of the long-time environmental needs.”

Vasquez said, “It is rather discouraging that on one hand, they say that public input is desired and on the other, one of the best ways of doing that is shut down.”

One of the issues the Northwest RAC has been involved in was the Greater Sage Grouse Plan developed by the western states and the Obama administration. When Zinke announced in the fall that Interior was looking to revise the plan, the RAC was on hiatus.

“It became clear that the ‘public’ input was chosen to further directions already decided prior to the reviews. That the Greater Sage Grouse Plan was summarily put aside is a sad example of ignoring public input, as it was the result of intense stakeholder involvement with significant public input over multiple years. The NW Colorado District and RAC had significant involvement in that effort,” Vasquez said in her letter of resignation.

David Ludlum, the executive director of the West Slope Colorado Oil & Gas Association and a Northwest RAC member, said that his council colleagues are overreacting.

“For many years, there were people on the RAC who didn’t agree with policies and ideology, but felt it important to stay as a voice of dissent and keep the RACs balanced,” Ludlam said. “When the administration changed, they take their ball and go home.”

Ludlam said that there are major reforms underway at Interior and the BLM, including proposals to relocate BLM headquarters and restructure programs.

“It makes sense that with all this going on the RACs would also see some delays,” Ludlam said.

After its meeting was canceled in January, a group of Rocky Mountain RAC members held an “impromptu” meeting and drafted a letter a letter to Zinke, which is being circulated for signatures among all the RACs, according to Bill Dvorak, a Rocky Mountain RAC member.

“We are concerned about the inability to perform in our official role as stakeholder advisers to the BLM,” the letter said.

Two Northwest RAC members’ terms have expired, and they are awaiting reappointment, added to the five vacancies, seven of the 15 seats on the council are not filled.

“We are just waiting,” said Luke Schafer, the West Slope director of Conservation Colorado, whose term on the Northwest RAC expired last November. “We have very little idea of what’s being done.”