S O U N D   O F F

Senator Crowder,

Our side is losing in the easement battle with the State. The DOR and the Attorney General's Office are using fear and coercion to force settlements from our folks. They are offering settlements of ten to twenty percent of the appraised value of the easement forgoing penalties and interest prior to going to court, as well as influencing the landowner to bargain with the tax credit buyer to assume half of the settlement; this is being done in most, but not all, cases. On a $250,000 easement, for instance, the landowner sold the generated credits at a twenty percent discount to the buyer, netting $200,000. However, it cost the landowner $45,000 to put the easement in place and $10,000 as a stewardship fee to pay the land trust, leaving $145,000 realized to the landowner. Furthermore, the landowner has to pay back half of eighty percent of the $250,000, which equals $100,000 + attorney fees of $40,000 to get to this point, forcing the landowner to come up with $140,000. This leaves the landowner with an easement on his place forever, along with only $5,000 in his pocket if he is lucky (that was probably spent long ago), all after he has already had to endure eight to ten years of stress and worry.

The other alternative is to spend another $120,000 in attorney fees and have a 50/50 chance of winning the case to go to court. If the landowner loses, the State is going to demand the full $250,000 plus penalties and interest for several years, most likely around forty to forty-five percent, which makes for a grand total of $482,000 that he cannot pay. The landowner is at this point liquidated and on the street. The tax credit buyer is on the hook for whatever the liquidated landowner could not pay. On the other hand, even if the landowner wins the first phase of the case, the validity part, there are still three other phases he will have to go through at an overwhelming cost.

We can't win; the landowner broke no laws, never intended to cheat or be dishonest. It is our position that the Lower Arkansas Valley is being purposely singled out because of its natural resources: water and gravel. The appraised values of the easements, we feel, are true values and are more than the developers are willing to pay.

There is a long history of events supporting our position, the overwhelming percent of the cases being in the Valley. We had to go all the way to the Supreme Court, which took several years, to obtain open records concerning the sanctioning of our appraisers, who were licensed by the State and in good standing until they made the mistake of involving themselves and we landowners in a program controlled by special interests, namely the Front Range developers. The case against the appraisers was and is very questionable and subjective, as we had suspected. It has been and still is our hope to have an unbiased hearing on the merits of the appraisals. 

Is it unreasonable to believe that the Colorado Department of Revenue and the Division of Real Estate are not subject to corruptive influence by special interest power brokers? The State government is embroiled in an excessive amount of serious controversy, including unpopular gun laws, energy laws injurious to rural Colorado, water laws and agency rules favoring Front Range municipalities over farming interests. Our group, Land Owners United, representing over 400 landowners in the Lower Arkansas Valley and other Eastern Colorado communities, is not the only objector when a state is faced with the issues ours currently is. For one, there is the threat of secession by enough counties to form another State; moreover, recall efforts are underway to remove high ranking politicians from office. It leaves one to fear State Government.

Is there any way to convene a formal legislative hearing to determine what is right or wrong on the subject of conservation easements?

J.D. Wright