Ken Ivory Complaint: ARIZONA
The Campaign for Accountability (CfA) has asked Mark Brnovich, the Attorney General for the State of Arizona, to investigate Utah State Representative Ken Ivory for fraud. Rep. Ivory is engaging in a scheme that defrauds taxpayers and misleads local officials into supporting an effort to return federal lands to the states that is patently unconstitutional and would impose prohibitively expensive costs on the states. In addition to his job as a state legislator, Rep. Ivory runs the American Lands Council (ALC) — a nonprofit with a stated mission to transfer federal lands to state governments. According to IRS tax records, funding for this organization comes primarily from donations from county governments; ALC in turn pays out a hefty amount to Rep. Ivory and his wife. In 2013, the two received over $100,000 in compensation from ALC funds.
In 2013 and 2014, Rep. Ivory made presentations throughout Arizona attempting to convince local officials to join ALC. He spoke in front of audiences in Phoenix, Mohave, and Kingman. Leveraging his position in the state government to elicit support for ALC, Rep. Ivory has falsely claimed there would be an economic windfall for states with the return of public land. According to CfA’s ED Anne Weismann, Rep. Ivory’s solicitation of funds from local government officials is “tantamount to selling unwitting victims the Brooklyn Bridge.”