October 15, 2015 04:49 PM UTC

Public Lands Land Grab Group in Hot Water

• 9 Comments
• by: PKolbenschlag

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Montrose County is not a rich county. Mesa County is currently concerned that the latest bust in the chain of boom-and-bust that is its self-fulfilling economic legacy will leave it unable to fund all its commitments.

But that did not stop both from spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on a hair-brained scheme from Utah that most legal scholars note is based on fiction and wishful thinking. Such as this analysis by the American Constitutional Society.

The Supreme Court has regularly upheld this plain text understanding of authority over American public lands.  In its 1840 case, United States v. Gratiot, the Supreme Court held that “[t]he power over the public lands is vested in Congress by the Constitution, without limitation.”

A hundred years later, the Court held the same in United States v. City & County of San Francisco: “Congress may constitutionally limit the disposition of the public domain to a manner consistent with its views of public policy.”

The Constitution grants the United States exclusive legal control over American public lands.  Congress may initiate a transfer or sale, but demands by state or local governments have no constitutional foundation.

In addition to putting Colorado cash-strapped counties on the hook for its Constitutionally dubious and Quixotic quest, the American Lands Council apparently has also steered foul of good government laws. Its efforts to grease the skids in at least one state legislature were contrary to lobbying and disclosure laws, Colorado Ethics Watch is claiming.

It looks like the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, led by Republican Wayne Williams, has reason to think that likely.

The SOS has filed a notice of a hearing to hold Mr. Ivory to account.

It has ordered Ken Ivory, a Utah state legislator and the force behind the American Lands Council land grab movement, to answer charges that his organization violated at least three Colorado laws.

In Colorado the legislation that appears to have been illegally generated was sponsored in the Senate by Jerry Sonnenberg.

Colorado SB 13-142 Cede Federal Agricultural Lands: Concerning the requirement that the federal government extinguish title to all agricultural public lands and transfer title to the state.

For his part, Senator Sonnenberg acknowledges that the American Lands Council was working with him to contact other legislators, as the document issued by the Secretary of State’s office notes:

“I asked for American Lands Council to help me with contacting the other legislators on the Senate Ag Committee in which I chair as well as I was the bill sponsor for the bill in question,” Sen. Sonnenberg responded to an inquiry from the SOS documented in the filing.

The land grab effort appears to be coordinated, at least in part, out of a Utah/Washington DC consultancy. Swenson Strategies, Inc. is following similar efforts across most of the West.

We are founded on the values of absolute honesty, professional conduct, genuine relationships and smart strategic planning.

These states have the preponderance of national public lands, belonging to and paid for, not by Mr. Sonnenberg, DC lobbyists, or Ken Ivory, but on behalf of all the American people now and in perpetuity.

Based on reporting by the Salt Lake Tribune it appears that the American Lands Council has run afoul of “professional conduct” in several of the states where Swenson Strategies is tracking similar public lands land grab legislation.

This is not the first time Utah Rep. Ken Ivory has been accused of selling “snake oil.” But now his critics are calling him a crook.

In formal complaints filed Monday in three states, a watchdog group alleges Ivory, a West Jordan Republican, uses phony facts and arguments to scam local governments into giving taxpayer dollars to American Lands Council (ALC), the nonprofit he started in 2012 to champion the transfer of Western public lands to states.

The complaints focus on Ivory’s practice of traveling the West, promoting land transfers to county commissioners and conservative groups and signing them up as dues-paying members of ALC.

Of course America’s public lands are a treasure that belong to all of us. The idea of turning them over to the likes of the State of Utah or into the hands of a highly partisan Colorado State Senate committee, for disposal or otherwise, is objectionable on its face. It is an affront to democratic values and a theft from American taxpayers.

It is a shame that charlatans can part gullible elected officials from public monies. Or send others on a legislative goose chase after their anti-government dreams.

That it all might be a scam is certainly not a recent revelation, as the Salt Lake Tribune has reported.

“It’s not simply a question of Rep. Ivory speaking his mind about what he thinks should happen. He is soliciting on the promise that if you give us money, we can get public land returned to your state,” said attorney Anne Weismann, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Accountability.

“More than half of the money they raise goes to him and his wife [Becky].”

The American Constitutional Society points out what we might hope a State Senate Chairman would understand, or at least learn about without asking the (unregistered) lobbyist writing the bills.

If transfer demand supporters want a change in United States land policy, they should petition the United States through Congress.  Under the Constitution, state transfer demand laws can amount to little more than spent paper.

Unfortunately in this case the ‘spent paper’ came with a tax-funded price tag.  And apparently was ill gotten to boot.