Envision Corruption

Yet Another Ogden Election Scandal

by Dan Schroeder

How would you feel if you contributed to a "nonprofit" organization -- only to learn afterwards that it's actually a political action committee, channeling your contribution to candidates?

How would you feel if this organization had used government resources to hold a fundraising event?

And how would you feel if the news media had no interest whatsoever in reporting these facts?

Welcome to Ogden City and the Envisiongate Scandal.

Remember Envision Ogden? They're the group that organized last February, supposedly to "push the idea of high-adventure recreation" in Ogden. They held a big fundraising dinner in February, announced their formation in a front-page article in the Standard-Examiner, and set up a web site. Then, as a second fundraiser, they put on the big "Sneak Peek" event at the Salomon Center on June 15.

Oh, and on September 7 they contributed $1500 to Blain Johnson's campaign for Ogden City Council.

That's right: Envision Ogden is a political action committee (PAC). More precisely, it's a political organization subject to Section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Just who is Envision Ogden? The head of the organization seems to be realtor Abe Shreve.

Shreve has "declined to identify" Envision Ogden's other members, but there's also a connection to Amer Sports, and to Cindy Patterson (wife of Ogden CAO John Patterson), who works for Amer. Mayor Godfrey seems to be quite familiar with the organization.

Because Envision Ogden contributes only to local candidates, it isn't required to file any financial disclosure statements with the state or federal government. And the city's ordinances require financial disclosure only from candidates, not from PACs. So if you want to contribute anonymously to a local candidate, you can easily do so by laundering the money through a PAC.

And as far as I know, there's no legal requirement that a local PAC disclose its purpose to contributors. So although you could raise ethical questions about Envision Ogden's deceptive fundraising solicitations, the organization probably hasn't broken any laws.

Ogden City, however, probably did break the law by allowing Envision Ogden to use the Salomon Center for a fundraising event. According to Municipal Code 2-6-13(c)(2), it's illegal for any officer or employee to "use, or allow to be used, any city equipment while engaged in any political activity". (Ironically, this is the same ordinance that the city attorney accused Van Hooser of violating when her campaign sent emails into city-owned computers.) Other laws may have been violated as well.

When asked about this impropriety, both the city and Envision Ogden have claimed that it was the tenants of the Salomon Center (Gold's and Fat Cats) who allowed their facility to be used for the event, and the city played no role. The only problem with this explanation is that the tenants did not legally take possession of the property until three days later, on June 18.

All of the facts above are thoroughly documented, and I'll gladly provide the documentation to anyone who asks. Several different people dug up these facts and brought them to my attention. I then passed the information on to both the Standard-Examiner and the Salt Lake Tribune, but neither was interested. At first the excuse was that we didn't have any evidence that Envision Ogden was actually giving money to candidates. We found the smoking gun--the Envison Ogden contribution listed on Johnson's October 26 disclosure statement--only a few days ago.

But as far as I can tell, the newspapers still intend to ignore this story.

So many scandals . . . so little time.

We link here an appendix to this article, which lays out the facts chronologically, for those who want to see this level of detail.