This is an update on an article of mine from a couple months previous, that is newly relevant with the Bundy Militia Oregon Standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. 

The standoff is part of a dubious legacy that lacks Constitutional merit, and which often appears more about self-enrichment  and self-aggrandizement than about commitment to principles. 

WESTERN SLOPE, COLO. - 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 hare-brained scheme from the Utah-based American Lands Council that most legal scholars note is based on fiction and wishful thinking to seize control of millions of acres of America's public lands. 

Consider 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.

And the Colorado Secretary of State's office, led by Republican Wayne Williams, had reason to think that likely enough it 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 questionably generated was sponsored in the state 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, Sen. 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.

That complaint was dismissed by the Secretary of State's office in December, according to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Colorado Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert concluded on Dec. 23 that the email expenditure was too minor "and thus did not implicate either the professional lobbyist registration or the prohibition in [statute] against employment of unregistered persons."

Nonetheless the complainant remains unconvinced that this activity meets the spirit of Colorado’s public ethic laws. 

Colorado Ethics Watch's Luis Toro said he was disappointed to see the secretary of state "keep opening the door to more unregistered lobbying that violates Colorado's strict law requiring disclosure of all corporate spending to influence legislators."

In any case, dodging the more blatant allegations of fraud or illegality doesn't strengthen the weak underpinnings of the basic argument. Nor make the investment of scarce tax dollars on this scheme any wiser of an expenditure of public funds. Nor does it remove the overall appearance of shady behavior on the part of seizure proponents.

Far from a grassroots, rural-inspired movement 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.

That claim is questionable to many. 

Based on the reporting of 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.

So far the American Lands Council has steered clear of getting caught for violating the letter of the law.  But the questionable practices of its principal, Utah legislator Ken Ivory, continue according to recent reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune.

[Utah] State Rep. Ken Ivory was paid $135,000 last year for his work as president of the American Lands Council — a group dedicated to winning state ownership of federal lands — and his wife was paid another $18,000, according to the group's most recent tax filing.

And as more and more cash-strapped rural counties buy into the scheme, Mr. Ivory’s rewards have also grown. 

Ivory's salary shot up by $40,000; the state representative estimated he spends about 60 hours a week working on issues for the American Lands Council.

The movement behind events that manifest in incidents like the Malheur Trespass is paying off for the American Lands Council. 

The filing also shows that the group is growing, bringing in $336,524 in the 2014 tax year, an increase of almost 50 percent over 2013 and nearly as much as it raised in the prior two years combined.

Even as tax payers get stuck with the bill.

The group primarily raises money by selling memberships to corporations or Western counties for between $5,000 and $25,000.

The American West has the preponderance of national public lands, belonging to and paid for, not by Mr. Sonnenberg, DC lobbyists, Ken Ivory, or Ammon Bundy but on behalf of all the American people now and in perpetuity.

America's public lands are a treasure. The idea of turning them over to the likes of the State of Utah, into the hands of a highly partisan Colorado State Senate committee, or to a bunch of self-selected "sovereign citizens" that have arrived mostly unwelcome in the Oregon high desert to lay claim, 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.

And that it all might be a scam is certainly not a recent revelation, as the Salt Lake Tribune has earlier 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.