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Show Page 2 The Ogden Valley News Volume XXX Issue IX July 15, 2023 The Ogden Valley News Staff: Shanna Francis Tel: 801-745-2688 Fax: 801-745-2688 Cell: 801-791-4387 E-Mail: slfrancis@digis.net Jeannie Wendell Tel: 801-745-2879 Fax: 801-745-2879 E-Mail: crwendell@digis.net crwendell@msn.com Opinions expressed by advertisers, columnists or letters to the editor are not necessarily the opinions of the owners and staff of The Ogden Valley News. Guidelines for Letters to the Editor Letters should be 300 words or less. Letters must be signed and the address of the writer submitted. The Ogden Valley News reserves the right to edit or decline printing of any submissions. Announcements Sought As a community service, The Ogden Valley News will print local birth, wedding, obituary, anniversary and missionary farewell & homecoming and Eagle Scout announcements free of charge. 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Note: The contents of The Ogden Valley News are copyrighted. To protect this publication and its contributors from unlawful copying, written permission is required before any individual or company engages in the reproduction or distribution of its contents, by any means, without first obtaining written permission from the owners of this publication. The deadline for the OVN August 1 issue is July 15. Guest Commentary I Choose to Believe My “Lying Eyes!” By James O’Brien I once appeared before an old Tennessean judge, who had to weigh video evidence against contradictory testimony by a witness in rendering a trial verdict. He leaned back and mused “this reminds me of a story about one of our state’s earliest U.S. Senators, who used to leave his wife at home in Tennessee each legislative session due to travel hazards, cross the Appalachian Mountains alone on horseback, and take temporary quarters in Washington, D.C. One spring his wife wanted to surprise her husband on his birthday and despite the rigors of travel, rode her carriage to the Capitol. When she burst into the Senator’s quarters, she found a beautiful woman and the Senator in their morning robes having breakfast together. Before his wife could open her mouth, the Senator snapped: ‘Are you going to believe me or your Lying Eyes?’” As the judge wisely concluded, both the Senator’s wife and the judge chose to believe their Lying Eyes! Since August 2022, I repeatedly have questioned whether Commissioner Gage Froerer violated the State’s conflict of interest disclosure Act by not timely and forthrightly disclosing that his company Nordic Valley Land Associates LLC (“NVLA”) was one of a three-developer consortium seeking County approval for the Nordic Valley Village Project since October 2021, and that his 51-acre old golf course properties would be developed as the site of the larger South Village in the Project. For fourteen months after the consortium filed the Village Project proposal with the County, Froerer made absolutely no sworn, written disclosure of these potential conflicts of interest as required by the Act. When he deigned to file a written disclosure in November 2022, Froerer still failed to disclose that his company NVLA was doing business with the County seeking a multi-million-dollar Master Development Agreement. He also disclosed the conflict arising out of his land ownership as “land surrounding the ski resort.” This disclosure was misleading because the conflict arose as result of this land being the proposed site of the commercial and residential village, not because this land surrounded the resort. Then, on March 20, 2023, Froerer amended his written disclosure to proclaim that he is “no longer owner” of the old golf course properties, which he disposed of in a transfer to Nordic Village Venture LLC (“NVV”) on January 27, 2023. NVV was a new company organized in December 2022, for the purpose of taking over as the Master Developer from the consortium. After filing the amended disclosure, Froerer resumed voting on issues relating to the Village Project as he claimed to be conflict-free. Trouble is, the January land transfer does not eliminate his conflict of interest for the reasons stated below. Before focusing on Froerer’s amended disclosure, however, I should recount that an ethics audit into Froerer’s conflicts disclosure was commenced by the Office of the State Auditor under the direction of the Weber County Auditor with assistance from the Weber County Attorney’s Chief Civil Deputy. On March 28, 2023, the Chief Civil Deputy advised the Ogden Valley Planning Commission that the County Auditor and he had conducted a “thorough” review and concluded Froerer had done “nothing wrong” under the Act. It appears that no formal audit report will be issued by the State Auditor. This audit was far from “thorough.” In response to GRAMA requests for interview notes and other audit records, both gentlemen admitted having no such documents other than emails scheduling interviews/discussions and circulating a couple of my supplemental complaint letters. Absent an audit trail, the audit’s thoroughness is a naked allegation. Also, the audit emails reference only a single interview of Froerer on or about October 26, 2022. If true, the inquisitors never interviewed Froerer regarding the several reporting defects in his November 20, 2022 and March 20, 2023 written disclosures, because they were filed after Froerer’s interview. The audit finding that Froerer did “nothing wrong” is even more suspect. The Chief Civil Deputy appears willing to excuse Froerer’s failure to report as an “innocent error,” which Froerer “promptly” remedied. This innocent error inference misses the mark for two reasons. First, this conflict of interest arose no later than October 1, 2021, when the consortium filed the Project’s detailed proposal with the County. By that date, Froerer certainly was aware of his conflict of interest. Nevertheless, Froerer did not disclose this conflict until fourteen months later on November 20, 2022, after an ethics complaint had been filed with the State Auditor on October 24, 2022. Froerer’s disclosure was far from prompt and provides no basis for the innocent mistake inference. Second, this innocent mistake inference does not take into account the several errors in Froerer’s subsequent written disclosures The long overdue disclosure filing and the multiple reporting errors cannot all be dismissed as so many innocent mistakes. Even a batter is ruled “out” after three strikes! So, let’s return to Froerer’s reporting himself free of conflict on March 20, 2023, because he no longer owned the golf course properties. In the normal course, we would have to take Froerer’s word at face value because Utah is one of the few states that does not require public disclosure of the final price paid in dollars or other consideration to purchase real estate. But, given the above concerns about Froerer’s disclosures under the Act, we’d appreciate some corroboration. What did we find—a Trust Deed filed with the Recorder’s Office on January 27, 2023, as part of the NVLA-to-NVV land transfer. The Trust Deed referenced NVV’s issuing to NVLA a $2.0 million promissory note, payable on future dates, as consideration for the purchase of the old golf course properties. Whether the note is partial or the entire purchase consideration received by NVLA is not stated in the Trust Deed. The Trust Deed provided that NVV as Trustor transferred the old golf properties to the US Title Insurance LLC as Trustee to hold for the benefit of NVLA as Beneficiary. The Trust Deed listed a half dozen security interests granted by NVV to NVLA to ensure payment on the note. Chief among these security interests are NVLA’s right to rental income from the old golf course properties, and, in the event NVV defaults, NVLA’s right to seize and sell the old golf course properties. Utah Code Ann. §17-16a-8 requires disclosure of “any personal interest or investment by any elected or appointed official of a county which creates a potential or actual conflict between the official’s personal interests and his public duties.” NVLA’s ownership of the old golf course properties gave Froerer an indirect personal interest and investment in the Village Project that might conflict with his public duties related to the Village Project. Accordingly, Froerer reported the old golf course properties under this provision. This provision is not limited to real estate investments, however, but applies to “any personal interest or investment.” After the January land transfer, Froerer (through NVLA) held a $2.0 million personal investment in NVV and security interests in the old golf course properties. The note and security interests gave Froerer a continuing personal interest in the Village Project’s success to fund NVV’s payments on the note and preserve the residual value of the old golf course properties that might revert to NVLA if NVV defaulted. Just like NVLA’s original land investment, Froerer’s ongoing personal interest and investment might conflict with Froerer’s public duties related to the Village Project. Froerer should have disclosed his continuing conflict as part of his March 20 amended disclosure. The amended statement again was misleadingly incomplete. So where are the County Auditor and Chief Civil Deputy, who declared eight days later that Froerer has done “nothing wrong” under the Act? This information was presented to them in letters dated March 23, June 12, and June 21: they never have responded by agreeing with, or disproving, these allegations; and Froerer never has corrected his amended disclosure statement. In the words of my sage Tennessean judge, I choose to believe my Lying Eyes and the Trust Deed. The Trust Deed establishes that Froerer has a continuing conflict of interest contrary to his amended disclosure statement. It appears the County Auditor and Chief Civil Deputy chose to accept, at face value and without any critical inquiry, Froerer’s amended disclosure statement. My question for them is “why?” But for logical inferences, that question remains unanswered. Rural-Urban Divide is Oversimplified By Brian Depew, Executive Director of Center for Rural A昀昀airs For the past decade, the media has been obsessed with the idea of a growing divide between rural and urban areas, often portraying it as a deep chasm separating the nation’s citizens. I’ve come to see this narrative as more about entertainment than a serious attempt to understand or address the actual issues at hand. A recent example of this coverage took it a step further. Not only are we portrayed as divided, but there are now suggestions that we should make it official through a divorce. Case in point: the Greater Idaho Movement, an effort by its supporters in eastern (rural) Oregon to secede from Oregon and join Idaho. The grounds for the divorce? The rural-urban political divide. The narrative is over-simplified and makes three critical errors. First, the typical coverage fails to acknowledge the nuances that exist within our political landscape. It is easy to categorize entire counties or states as either red or blue, but this overlooks the reality that every geographic area in our country has a mix of Republican, Democrat, splitticket, and non-voting individuals. No county or state is a monolith. In suggesting that the solution to political difference is to divorce along geographic lines, the narrative ignores the diversity that lies beneath the surface. Any divided geography remains politically diverse, so not much has been achieved. The near complete absence of this analysis in the popular coverage boggles my mind. Second, the narrative of division wrongly assumes that all rural people share a common political agenda and cultural interests, while all urban people have a contrasting agenda and interests. This generalization is inaccurate. In fact, rural communities experiencing decades of disinvestment often share a lot in common with urban areas facing disinvestment. In many ways, Lyons, Nebraska, has more in common with Detroit than Detroit does with San Francisco. Political and cultural interests do not neatly align along rural and urban lines. Finally, and perhaps most important, when national leaders or media outlets suggest that the solution to difference is to get a divorce, they fail to grapple with the more interesting and difficult challenge of committing to the work of living in a pluralistic democracy. Unfortunately, the narrative itself has become self-fulfilling, perpetuating a sense of division and otherness. In order for a pluralistic democracy to survive, we must be committed to the principles of democracy itself. We must commit to working together and seeking to understand one another, even in the face of disagreement. This requires engagement by journalists as well as teachers, civic organizations, political leaders, and each of us. While politics at all levels are currently strained and difficult, distancing ourselves from one another is unlikely to be the solution. Instead, we must continue to strive to engage the democratic process and work toward a society where everyone can be a full participant. |