Say Anything Blog

Here’s an interesting tidbit of information on the National Heritage Areas controversy (if you’re not up to date on the story, read my past posts here).  Looking through lobbying disclosure reports from the House of Representatives I see two Greystone Group lobbyists mentioned has having lobbied for the Northern Plains Heritage Foundation, the quasi-government board controlled by state Senator Tracy Potter that will be in charge of the NHA lands.  Those lobbyists are:

Rachel Emmons
Aaron Hunter

Hunter was a former staffer for Senator Kent Conrad.  Rachel Emmons is a frequent contributor to Senator Conrad (financial disclosures here).

Also of interest is the founder of the Greystone Group lobbying firm, Sarah Garland.  Garland worked as Senator Conrad’s chief of staff and was also on the staff of Conrad’s predecessor, Quentin Burdick.

So why is all of this significant?  Let’s follow the money.

According to disclosure forms, state Senator Tracy Potter’s Northern Plains Heritage Foundation’s only income was a $62,000 federal grant.  Yet the group hired the Greystone Group to lobby Congress for the land grab that’s at the heart of this controversy.  Meaning that it appears as though the NPHF used our tax dollars to pay a lobbying firm owned by Senator Kent Conrad’s political allies to lobby for a bill put before congress by North Dakota’s other senator Byron Dorgan.

And once the bill was passed it created a gigantic land designation with Democrat Tracy Potter in charge.  And now that the land designation is in place?  Well, Senators Dorgan and Conrad can now start porking the area up with lots of appropriations for bike paths and boat landings and interpretive centers.  And who will be in charge of who gets that money?

Why, Tracy Potter of course.

So these Democrats funneled your tax dollars through Potter’s foundation to Conrad/Dorgan friendly lobbyists to get a bill passed that then will allow them to control and hundreds of millions in pork money in the newly created National Heritage Area.

Nice set up, no?  And Tracy Potter will no doubt be taking home a nice salary for being in charge of it all.  And the land owners?  They don’t get a choice, really, in any of this.

Your tax dollars hard at work.