Land Grab Scams

All Easements are bad for property owners.

State Law allows for easements of all sorts. Homeowners have easements noted on the plats of their property. Farmers have easements as well. These easements restrict what the property owner can do in the areas where the easements exist. Easements from the centerline of roads can be “taken” by local government to widen roads without compensating the property owner for the “taking” of their land. Most of these easements are excessive. The law needs to be revised to conform to the US Constitution (as written) that guarantees “just compensation” for a government land grab. Unnecessary environmental laws also render land unusable. See:  The article below

Attorney calls easements a ‘government land grab’ Posted on April 29, 2015 Written by hpj.com

In recent years, con­ser­va­tion easements—agreements between landown­ers and non­profit organizations—have gained pop­u­lar­ity as a way to pro­tect wildlife, pro­vide var­i­ous kinds of tax exemp­tions as well as pre­vent land and min­eral devel­op­ment with an eye toward per­ma­nent preservation.

At the same time, there has been con­cerns these ease­ments have caused ero­sion of local tax bases and prop­erty deval­u­a­tions, along with imposed man­age­ment restric­tions, arbi­trary con­trac­tual lan­guage and fears of close rela­tion­ships between multi­na­tional envi­ron­men­tal groups, fed­eral agen­cies and land trusts.

The Kansas Nat­ural Resource Coali­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion of 32 county gov­ern­men­tal units orig­i­nally joined together to fight the list­ing of the lesser prairie-chicken onto the Endan­gered Species List, has since expanded its mis­sion to include what a brochure said is the “col­lec­tive coor­di­na­tion of nat­ural resource con­ser­va­tion and envi­ron­men­tal pro­grams with fed­eral and state gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies,” recently spon­sored a forum at Oak­ley, Kansas, to “unearth facts, facil­i­tate pub­lic dia­logue and develop aware­ness of con­ser­va­tion ease­ment pro­grams, ben­e­fits, restric­tions and ramifications.”

The con­fer­ence included pre­sen­ta­tions from:

—Har­ri­ett Hage­man, a Cheyenne, Wyoming, attor­ney whose prac­tice is actively involved in address­ing the impact of fed­eral and state reg­u­la­tions on land and water use;

—Jesse Richard­son, a land-use pro­fes­sor from the West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­sity Col­lege of Law;

—Kimmi Lewis, a Kim, Col­orado, rancher who is the imme­di­ate past pres­i­dent of the Col­orado affil­i­ate of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stock­grow­ers of Amer­ica, and;

—Ric Frost, a for­mer reg­is­tered water rights adju­di­ca­tion medi­a­tor for the New Mex­ico Third Dis­trict Court and for­mer senior pol­icy ana­lyst with Land and Water USA.

Hage­man, as keynote speaker, said there needs to be more pub­lic dis­cus­sion about the value of con­ser­va­tion ease­ments and the impli­ca­tions they bring to coun­ties in terms of tax­a­tion and long-term prop­erty man­age­ment issues.

Those issues include par­tial own­er­ship of the land by the grantor of the ease­ment while relin­quish­ing the right to use the land for development.

“It often lim­its all devel­op­ment,” Hage­man said. “That includes min­eral devel­op­ment and that sort of thing.”

Ease­ments are con­tracts, and the lan­guage that is used, Hage­man said, will dic­tate how the con­tract is enforced. Often, the ease­ment can be trans­ferrable by the grantee, and some­times, the per­mis­sion of the landowner-grantee is not needed.

“That means you may very well find your­self as the landowner being a part­ner with some­one you never entered into that con­tract with. That can be the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, it can be another land trust, all dif­fer­ent things,” Hageman said.

If the land is sold, the ease­ment remains in perpetuity.

“It doesn’t mat­ter who the land is sold to. It runs with the land,” Hage­man said. “It is held in per­pe­tu­ity. In Wyoming, we inter­pret that to be 999 years. All future landown­ers are bound by the terms of that deed.”

There are tax incen­tives asso­ci­ated with ease­ments and dis­as­ters, too, Hage­man said.

“In Col­orado, when they started pushed (sic) these conserva­tion ease­ments, one of the things they did was require peo­ple to have their land appraised,” Hage­man said. “The land was appraised at higher val­ues than what they ulti­mately were worth. So they got high tax incen­tives. Now, the IRS is attempt­ing to claw back those tax incen­tives. Farm­ers and ranch­ers are now going broke pay­ing the gov­ern­ment the tax relief they never should have received in the first place.”

Hage­man said ease­ments devalue the largest sin­gle hold­ing farm­ers and ranch­ers have.

“The rea­son there is a tax con­se­quence is that there is a dif­fer­ence between the value of the before the ease­ment is granted as com­pared with the value after it’s granted,” Hage­man said. “Ease­ments are inten­tion­ally designed to devalue your property.”

Kansas is the state with the fewest num­ber of fed­er­ally owned acres, Hage­man said.

“I envy you, because com­ing from a state that is made of 50 per­cent gov­ern­ment land, you have a heavy fed­eral impact on what hap­pens in your state,” Hage­man said. “There is an $11 bil­lion main­te­nance back­log in the national parks, which means the coun­try can­not take care of the lands it already has. It’s one of the rea­sons I believe there is such a push for con­ser­va­tion easements.”

With ease­ments, Hage­man said, the IRS can dic­tate land use deci­sions while some­one else is respon­si­ble for the maintenance.

“We need to be talk­ing to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment about man­ag­ing the resources it already has before we start restrict­ing and imping­ing upon pri­vate prop­erty rights through con­ser­va­tion ease­ments,” Hage­man said.

There are plenty of com­pet­ing demands for pri­vate prop­erty, Hage­man said, rang­ing from agri­cul­tural, to indus­trial, to com­mer­cial, to residential.

“There’s oil and gas and min­eral extrac­tion, recre­ation, schools. We have a lim­ited num­ber of acres and munic­i­pal­i­ties that are grow­ing along with high demands for food pro­duc­tion and higher demands for lands for recre­ational use,” Hage­man said.

“So we have to be care­ful about what kinds of restric­tions we want to put on pri­vate prop­erty ownership.”

Amer­ica is fed­er­al­iz­ing its pri­vate prop­erty rights, Hage­man said.

“We are allow­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies and non-profits to make deci­sions regard­ing land use and we are slowly allow­ing the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to take our pri­vate prop­erty rights by tol­er­at­ing per­pet­ual con­ser­va­tion ease­ments. The man­ner by which this is hap­pen­ing is largely under the radar,” Hage­man said.

She listed a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tions that receive fed­eral dol­lars annu­ally for man­ag­ing ease­ments, rang­ing from $1 mil­lion to the Amer­i­can Farm­land Trust to $100 mil­lion to the Nature Con­ser­vancy, as well as the NRCS award­ing $328 mil­lion for 328 ease­ments in the 2014 allo­ca­tion in the Agri­cul­tural Con­ser­va­tion Ease­ment Program.

“I believe it’s a gov­ern­ment land grab. I’m going to be blunt,” Hage­man said. “Ease­ments become not a means to pro­tect private-sector land through a part­ner­ship between landowner and land trust but are a non-transparent tool for gov­ern­ment to obtain pri­vate prop­erty with­out pub­lic knowl­edge or approval.”

Round­ing out the con­fer­ence was a ques­tion and answer panel dis­cus­sion between Hage­man and Lewis along with Lynn Thur­low, U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture Nat­ural Resources Con­ser­va­tion Ser­vice Kansas soil con­ser­va­tion­ist and ease­ment pro­grams coor­di­na­tor; Mike Beam, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent of the Kansas Live­stock Asso­ci­a­tion; and Stan­ley Ras­mussen, act­ing direc­tor of the Cen­tral Regional Envi­ron­men­tal and Energy Office for the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of the Army for Instal­la­tions, Energy and Environment.

Jim Carl­son of Gar­den City, Kansas-based Still­wa­ter Tech­ni­cal Solu­tions, who serves as KNRC exec­u­tive direc­tor, led the discussion.

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  Filed Under: Corporatism/Fascism, Natural Resources, Property Rights
  http://agenda21news.com/2015/04/attorney-calls-easements-a-government-land-grab/
  Comments
  In recent times we have seen a resurgence of aggressive actions taken by government to seize property and water rights from private property owners.  They are implementing UN Agenda 21 and the Wildings Project aimed at eliminating all private property ownership. Voters need to push back on this unconstitutional activity that violates private property rights. This affront can come from “endangered species”, EPA, BLM, Forest Service, Interior, or State agencies.
  Government has seized pigs and had them destroyed because they were different, seized milk and destroyed it for no good reason, attempted to ban free-range chickens, attempted to declare wetlands that weren’t wetlands, closed fisheries and relocated wolves next to cattle ranches.
  State laws fail to protect property owners from city and county government.  Instead, state laws allow municipalities to do anything they want without voter approval.  UN Agenda 21 implementing consulting and engineering firms are writing city ordinances and running the cities. Cities are increasing the scope and cost of permits, fees, inspections and fines to increase their revenue. City Councils and County Commissions rarely push back and rarely side with the voters.
  Even sidewalk installation is imposed by cities, taking part of everybody’s front yard to build “public space” based on centerline easements. But the property owner gets to continue to pay the same property tax and is responsible for replacing the sidewalk when it breaks or be subject to fines. Cities have plans to put permanent multi-use trails through homeowners’ lots (public space) reducing the value of their home. Voters need to push back.
  Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader