Let’s Not Pretend Like The Dakota Resource Council Is A “Grassroots Group”

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Written By:
Rob Port

Oct 28, 2012
12:23pm

The Associated Press, in reporting on the group’s demands for an oil-tax-funded slush fund for environmental activism and “renewable energy,” calls the Dakota Resource council a “a grass-roots environmental group.”

That’s laughable after you get a look at the form 990 the group files with the IRS.

Despite engaging in what is clearly very political activism, the DRC gets most of its funding from the taxpayers. Or did in 2011 anyway. According to the group’s 990 form filed with the IRS they took in a total of $288,948 in revenue in 2011, with $197,950 of it (just over 64%) coming from government grants.

This didn’t just happen in 2011 either. I can’t find the 2010 form, but in 2009 the group got $298,950 (over 86% of their total) from the government, and in 2008 the group got $413,748 from the government which was 98% of their total revenue.

That’s right. In 2008 this very political, very leftist group was 98% funded by the taxpayers.

Keep in mind that this is also the group currently asking the federal government, in a lawsuit against two members of the Public Service Commission over trumped-up ethics charges, to remove North Dakota’s local control of surface mining regulations.

I don’t begrudge the DRC their right to engage in way-to-the-left environmental activism, but I think there needs to be some serious scrutiny of the amount of federal tax dollars they’re getting. If they want to engage in activism, if they want to be a “grassroots” political group, let them use their own money and not our tax dollars.