Ken Ivory Complaint: UTAH
Campaign for Accountability (CfA) has asked Sean D. Reyes, the Attorney General for the state of Utah, 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.
Ivory and another ALC board member have traveled around Utah making presentations to local government officials to order to pitch them on the benefits of becoming paid members. 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.”