{"id":108412,"date":"2015-11-05T17:25:25","date_gmt":"2015-11-06T00:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/american-lands-council-faces-investigation-over-lobby-laws\/"},"modified":"2015-11-05T17:25:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T00:25:25","slug":"american-lands-council-faces-investigation-over-lobby-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/american-lands-council-faces-investigation-over-lobby-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"American Lands Council faces investigation over lobby laws"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Utah
Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory\u2019s American Lands Council, might have violated state lobbying and disclosure rules for failing to report political spending or to register as a lobbyist, according to the Colorado Secretary of State.<\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Colorado Secretary of State recently announced that it has \u201creasonable grounds to believe\u201d the American Lands Council may have violated state lobbying and disclosure rules for failing to report political spending or to register as a lobbyist.<\/p>\n

The ALC, which leads the West-wide movement to transfer federal lands to states\u2019 control, emailed Colorado supporters in spring to build backing for a bill that would have created a county commissioner-led task force to study the benefits of public-lands transfer to Colorado. (The Senate bill failed by one vote.) The ALC has ushered similar bills through nearly every Western legislature.<\/p>\n

The notice of possible violations followed an April complaint from Colorado Ethics Watch, a nonprofit watchdog. When the secretary of state inquired, Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory said he sent the emails to galvanize support around the land transfer task force at the request of Colorado state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg. Thus, Ivory believed, the emails \u201cdid not constitute lobbying.\u201d However, further email, postal mail and phone requests for information, including how the ALC raises funds and what sorts of dues member counties pay the organization, went unanswered. Eventually, Ivory claimed \u201cthe ALC had a new office manager who took the letter to (Ivory\u2019s) house and left it under the doormat,\u201d and Ivory \u201cjust now found it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ivory\u2019s explanation doesn\u2019t hold water, according to Luis Toro, Colorado Ethics Watch director. \u201cIf, as it appeared, any staff time was used to create this email to urge Coloradans to contact their legislators on this bill,\u201d Toro said, \u201cthat meets the definition of lobbying in Colorado and triggers reporting requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state will investigate the case and could charge the ALC with a misdemeanor willful lobbying violation or sanction the group to halt outreach efforts in the state.<\/p>\n

The ALC office and Kane County, Utah commissioner Doug Heaton \u2013 chair-elect of the ALC\u2019s board of directors, according to its website \u2013 did not return calls from High Country News.<\/p>\n

The Ethics Watch complaint and rebuke from the Secretary of State is just the ALC\u2019s latest political action being questioned by watchdog groups.<\/p>\n

In June, a new, D.C.-based ethics group, Campaign for Accountability, filed a separate set of complaints against Ivory and the ALC in Utah, Arizona and Montana. The complaints allege the organization is bilking counties out of tens of thousands of dollars by \u201cfalsely claiming the federal government can be forced to transfer public lands to states.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only Montana\u2019s attorney general responded to the false-claims complaints, finding no grounds for an investigation. But the ALC muddied its trail in Montana after employing a lobbyist who was working as a legislative aide for state Sen. Jennifer Fielder, a leading proponent of the transfer movement. State legislative rules prohibit staff from lobbying, and the aide was asked to resign. He continues to work for Ivory\u2019s group and cause.<\/p>\n

Since 2012, the ALC has stepped up its official lobbying efforts and registered lobbyists in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Idaho and Montana, as well as Washington, D.C. Those campaigns have led to study bills, similar to the one that failed in Colorado. Most notably, Utah lawmakers passed a law demanding the return of federal lands to the state by the end of 2014. The Salt Lake Tribune reported in June that \u201cUtah now is investing $2 million to advance the fight in the halls of Congress,\u201d and Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, is also forwarding the public-lands transfer agenda at the Capitol.<\/p>\n

The effects of a land transfer would differ widely across Western states. Yet several independent analyses and reports have concluded that transferring public lands to the states would mean a sharp increase in development on those lands to keep up with costs, and many scholars consider the entire concept unconstitutional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Colorado puts American Lands Council on \u2018notice\u2019 for missteps<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,318,109,237],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-108412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-montezuma-county-commissioner","tag-montezuma-county-government"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108412"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=108412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}