Our county commissioners’ joining the American Lands Council last year without citizen input was a bad decision, considering many of the people in this county love our public lands and many make their living from them. Now that membership is coming up for renewal, I am amazed that they are thinking of re-upping. There has been lots of controversy since the Council’s founding. Founder Ken Ivory took the $546,000 collected from county commissioners and paid himself and his wife $268,000.
He had been under investigation for other shady deals with the Council, and conflict of interest. He turned over the leadership (the Koch brothers are big supporters) to Sen. Jennifer Fielder from Montana who is just as shady a character. She supported the Oregon refuge takeover.
The commissioners remarks that they can take better can of the land than the federal government are just not true. Commissioner Suckla said they would not sell off the land because if they did they would have to turn over 95 percent of that money back to the feds. That’s true for Utah, not sure for Colorado. What he didn’t say is they will get the tax revenue for that land forever and get to do what they please with it: grazing, oil/gas drilling, etc.
They don’t have the manpower to manage it in a scientific manner. It is our watershed. I called Mr. Suckla and asked him if that land is turned over to the States can the State or whomever leases it from the State put up No Trespassing signs, he had to admit the answer is yes. Go ask someone who has a state lease for their cattle if you can hunt elk on it and see what happens.
Dealing with these commissioners and their chosen Planning Commission, I know they only listen to their far-right supporters, anti-public lands folks and anti-federal government folks — pretty much all the same people — and couldn’t care about the rest of the county. They will not listen, so the only thing we can do is vote them out when the time comes.
Larry Berger
Cortez