Chapter 24

 Government corruption in Utah:

Our non-Zion could be transformed into Zion

We talk about gathering Israel and building Zion, but we seem to have not the slightest idea about how to do that in reality. We have been given the perfect pattern in the U.S. Constitution, and it has been incorporated by reference into our modern-day Scriptures, but we seem to ignore it completely. The perfect Zion is simply a place where the principles of the U.S. Constitution are in force and where, quite naturally, all of the good freedom-loving people of the world wish to gather together to assist each other in enjoying freedom and "being all they can be."

One might logically assume that in the state of Utah, where the LDS religion is predominant, one would find the closest thing to Zion which is possible. However, that assumption would be false. It is true that governments in Utah is not yet as corrupt as the governments in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but a claim that we are not yet quite as bad as those highly corrupt cities is not much evidence that we are actively seeking Zion here.

Unfortunately, the corrupt nature of Utah government is an excellent indication of how corrupt the church itself is, since, in Utah, the church organization and the Utah government organizations are simply two sides to the same coin, largely staffed by the same people or with people with similar working backgrounds and ideologies. If the LDS church were perfectly pure in its application of Christian principles in Utah, then, necessarily, the Utah state government would also be nearly as pure.

The thoroughly corrupt state of the Utah government and its many authorized and sponsored city governments as subunits became clear to me in a series of events that happened recently. This tale is perhaps all one needs to know to see what is wrong with Utah state and city governments, and how far we have to go to reach any semblance of "Zion."

I lived for 20 years in Spanish Fork, Utah, located on the south side of Utah Valley, with a population of about 30,000, where the typical human tendencies of the city government are just as corrupt as anywhere else in the state. The difference is that many of the old residents and families are still so steeped in the original gospel and in belief in the US Constitution that the city receives a great deal of resistance in its anti-freedom impulses. The City of Spanish Fork brags that it has the lowest total tax rates of any city in the state, and that is probably correct, but the City government is also doing everything in its power to raise those levels of taxes and make the City government more important and intrusive upon its residents.

In February 2017 my family moved to Orem, Utah, a medium-sized city of about 100,000 which is now almost completely urban and doesn't have the constant check on its behavior from a large body of active farmers and ranchers who instinctively resist corruption and anti-freedom tendencies of the typical city government. The City of Orem appears to have no respect whatsoever for the laws of the state of Utah or the U.S. Constitution or of any other aspect of the American legal tradition, including its own duly enacted ordinances. It seems to have no understanding at all about what it means to have a representative constitutional government. I call it a "constitution-free zone."

To be more specific, when we moved to Orem in 2017 we soon decided that it would be a good idea to add solar panels to our house which, with today's technology, promises to lower a person's electric bill by about $2000 a year and to provide a savings of about $100,000 in total housing costs over a 25 year period, even including the perhaps $20,000 cost of installing the panels. Many people are adding solar panels to their home, and state and federal governments greatly encourage such actions for the environmental benefits they bring of lowering fossil fuel use and lowering pollution. The state of Utah has a $2000 tax credit incentive to add solar panels and the federal government has an even larger tax credit incentive which would be about $10,000 on a $30,000 installation, subsidizing 30% of that installation.

We made all the arrangements for a company to do the installation and then we requested a building permit from the City of Orem to make that installation. That building permit is a necessary requirement for connecting the solar panels to the Rocky Mountain Power grid that serves our neighborhood. To our great surprise, the building permit was denied. It was claimed that the addition of a covered deck or pergola to our house made in 2002, about three years after the house was originally built, was not in compliance with the City zoning code.

The structure was completely in compliance with the City zoning code at the time it was built, but the City records do not show that a building permit was obtained in 2002. (It is highly questionable whether such minor and insignificant records would even be accurately available 15 years later, after paper records were converted to computer files and other clerical upheavals have occurred, but the City was adamant that its reasoning could not be contested.)

I should mention that another structure had been built earlier on the property, a detached garage or workshop, and it had received a proper permit. It seems likely that a permit was obtained for the covered deck addition as well, since it would have been easy and inexpensive to do it at the time, but there is apparently no way to prove that such a permit was applied for and granted.

In researching the situation very thoroughly, it was discovered that there are at least nine different important laws concerning permits and the general process for cities regulating land-use which apply to the City but which the City completely ignores. If any one of those legal requirements had been complied with by the City, I would have received my solar panel building permit.

One of those nine ignored laws requires that the city have a robust appeals system as a prerequisite for the city to do any land-use regulation. But, of course, the City of Orem has no such appeal system, even though they claim to have one. Apparently, there has been not a single appeal allowed or processed in the last eight years. In that time there have been about 9000 permits applied for to authorize about $1.3 billion in work to be done within the City, but not a single appeal has been allowed or processed. One might suspect that in a democratically operated local government a City employee could make at least one error in 9,000 permits that might require an appeal of some kind to clarify or revise some rules or proposals or decisions.

Another law has to do with the exact kind of covered deck or pergola which was added to the property. There was a City ordinance in effect at the time of construction which made it perfectly legal to add this pergola in its current location, but in later years that very specific City ordinance was dropped from the City's online code without being repealed by the City Council. It simply disappeared. It is not clear if this was done accidentally or with malice.

Other laws have to do with the state of Utah encouraging cities to allow the installation of solar panels, but they are all being ignored by the City of Orem. Apparently, the City loses about $500 in taxes each year when a homeowner converts to solar power, and the City's resistance to solar panels is probably based on that potential loss of revenue rather than on any actual concern about safety or aesthetics that might be a legitimate aspect of the City zoning code.

Several other normal aspects of the American legal tradition are ignored. Criminal laws, such as those relating to abiding by rules related to zoning permits, should not be adopted and enforced retroactively, as was done here, the ordinance apparently having been passed for the very purpose of denying solar panel permits based on previous events and circumstances. There should be statutes of limitation for their application, especially concerning these real estate matters. Normally, any encumbrances on land-use must be recorded in public records so that any buyer will be aware of those competing claims or limitations. Otherwise, for most people, those claims become unenforceable, but the City of Orem ignores any such normal legal etiquette and makes no effort whatsoever to notify people in advance of its claims concerning zoning violations.

By state law, the state's cities are not allowed to enforce zoning code violations using anything more aggressive than an "infraction." An infraction has a limit of a $750 fine, with no allowance for jail time, and there must be ways that any such infraction can be paid off using community service. The City of Orem insists that it can enforce a "misdemeanor" in this situation, where the "misdemeanor" it defines can potentially impose larger fines and more jail time than most felonies, leaving out only the death penalty. Penalties of $1000 plus 6 months in jail for each day of violation are obviously outrageously out of proportion for these kinds of legal issues, making theoretically possible millions of dollars in fines and decades in jail for a small paperwork infraction.

I wrote up my findings on the nine ignored statutes and requested that I be able to appeal this to the City Council, as provided for in the City code. The City Manager refused to allow that. I then started a legal action against the City in the local state Fourth District Court located in Provo, Utah.

What happened next was quite amazing, and demonstrates the depth of the corruption of the state government, its cities, and its state courts. Although I didn't know this until five months after the initial filing, the City was somehow able to use its influence to tamper with the court complaint itself. I had prepared a 91-page document explaining the nine different serious legal requirements the state and other legal bodies had placed on the City, which the City was completely ignoring.

Normally when one files a case in a state court, the defendant, the City of Orem in this case, is required to answer that complaint. The City never did answer that complaint, presumably because there is no plausible excuse or reason for the City to be less than fully compliant with those nine different legal issues. In other words, the City could not answer the complaint honestly without admitting to its own guilt. Therefore, it didn't answer at all.

What had actually happened is that the City managed to have that 91-page complaint reduced to two pages of introductory material, and all the rest of the 91-page legal study was thrown away. That meant that the judge who might review that case would have no idea what the case was about. The case was actually denied because it supposedly did not "state a claim for which relief could be granted by a court." This seemed like an absurd result to me and so I appealed it to the Utah Court of Appeals, explaining exactly what had happened and how the original complete complaint and related legal study had been completely discarded.

The Court of Appeals simply confirmed the District Court's ruling that the complaint did not state a claim for which relief could be granted. At that point, theoretically I had the option to appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, which required a significant effort to prepare the appropriate brief, etc. A further appeal within such an obviously corrupt system seemed perfectly pointless.

The clear lesson here is that the court systems are corrupt to the core and are flagrant in their lack of concern about justice. They allow the cities to do whatever they want without any supervision from the state, at least in the areas that relate to regulating land-use, certainly, these days, a city's most extensive power.

I take this one specific case I experienced as more than adequate proof that the state and city governments of the state of Utah are completely corrupt. The courts and the City felt completely safe in taking outrageous steps to protect the City, part of the state government, from any outsider seeking justice. I conclude that this level of corruption can only exist if the church organization, a parallel administrative bureaucracy, it is just as corrupt. If the church organization were aggressively following and enforcing the law, my case could never have happened.

I conclude that it is probably almost impossible to fix the state government without first fixing the church government which underlies it. If we want to have a Zion government, we first must have a Zion Church, which we clearly do not have.

The legal concept of sovereign immunity has some value in protecting democratically elected governments from abuse by its own citizens and the citizens of other entities, including other governments. However, the state of Utah has run amok and has taken this concept of sovereign immunity to extreme and unreasonable lengths to the point where it refuses to accept responsibility for its own errors and misdeeds for which it ought to offer recompense.

We might also note that under current arrangements, the LDS church is a part of the state government in the sense that it is operating as an official state Corporation. The LDS church has obviously been seeking for a certain kind of "sovereign immunity" for itself, and has been quite successful, since its status as a "corporation sole" means that a single person can make decisions on every aspect of church property and business and doctrine without the need to consult with anyone, certainly not the ordinary members of the church. This was not true in the beginning when the church operated as an unincorporated association which periodically elected a legal trustee to do some of its business for it.

One might wonder whether part of this extreme application of the concept of sovereign immunity by the state government is simply derived from the church's desire to be completely immune from any opinions or actions of its members. Certainly, the two organizations seem to be pressing their "immunity" status to extreme lengths for their own unjust purposes.

Notes

The nine grounds from the proposed complaint are presented below in summary form:

Grounds for complaint -- summary

Over a period of about five years, about 1250 applications have been made to Orem city for building permits for solar panels. About 1000 were granted and about 250 were denied. Orem residents have been adversely affected by all the following consequences of City action:

1. Disregarding multiple explicit state and federal statutes encouraging solar panels (but not yet requiring solar panels as in California)

2. Informally and improperly adding extra restrictions to City ordinances

3. Improperly deleting critical City ordinances that actually authorized the homeowner's behavior complained of by the City.

4. Intentional retroactive application of statutes, especially criminal statutes

5. Failing to supply a statute of limitation on civil and criminal laws.

6. Failure of the City to give proper notice on public real estate records of claimed encumbrances on real estate

7. The City routinely threatens its citizens with outrageous penalties for minor and questionable zoning violations.

8. Orem City is actively resisting efforts by the state of Utah to use solar power to lower energy costs and pollution effects for state offices and for state residents, putting Orem City seriously out of step with other Utah cities. Orem seems to be the only Utah city that has such regressive solar panel policies.

9. Contrary to clear state statutory requirements needed to establish and justify city land-use and zoning powers, the City of Orem has no internal "appeals" system operating whatsoever, by its own choice.