Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
This article is quite old - like 6 years, but it's relevant... and I think perhaps more important because it places what I'm talking about in a light of it being a historical pattern, not just what I'm saying now.
First, the whole article is here:
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=214908
Below are some excerpts.
Make no mistake: This is big business. The Nature Conservancy alone reaped $76. 3 million from government sales during fiscal year 1992-93. The conservancy and other land trusts, of course, maintain that they don't make money off these transactions. In some cases that's true. But an internal TNC memorandum reveals how the nation's biggest land trust arrives upon paper losses: It charges itself "imputed interest costs" for money spent on land later sold to the government. This isn't money TNC actually had to borrow; it already had been raised as tax-deductible donations or had come from proceeds of government sales.
Yet critics who focus on the profit angle of land-trust transactions are missing a more fundamental issue regarding trusts: accountability. Trusts and government-land managers are remarkably frank about the major reason an agency would use a trust as a middleman instead of buying land itself: Trusts can operate in ways a government agency cannot. Trusts are "flexible" - essentially free of oversight and procedural regulations.
"Land trusts can operate with less public scrutiny than a government agency," according to the Alachua Conservation Trust of Gainesville, Fla. Trusts don't have to give public notice or hold hearings on their actions. They also can withhold required appraisals from a seller until after a deal is signed.
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My point here is not to defame anyone, but to just make sure that people understand precisely what it is they are getting into and what it is that's going on when they support places like TNC and it's ravenous appetite for land and money.
First, the whole article is here:
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=214908
Below are some excerpts.
Make no mistake: This is big business. The Nature Conservancy alone reaped $76. 3 million from government sales during fiscal year 1992-93. The conservancy and other land trusts, of course, maintain that they don't make money off these transactions. In some cases that's true. But an internal TNC memorandum reveals how the nation's biggest land trust arrives upon paper losses: It charges itself "imputed interest costs" for money spent on land later sold to the government. This isn't money TNC actually had to borrow; it already had been raised as tax-deductible donations or had come from proceeds of government sales.
Yet critics who focus on the profit angle of land-trust transactions are missing a more fundamental issue regarding trusts: accountability. Trusts and government-land managers are remarkably frank about the major reason an agency would use a trust as a middleman instead of buying land itself: Trusts can operate in ways a government agency cannot. Trusts are "flexible" - essentially free of oversight and procedural regulations.
"Land trusts can operate with less public scrutiny than a government agency," according to the Alachua Conservation Trust of Gainesville, Fla. Trusts don't have to give public notice or hold hearings on their actions. They also can withhold required appraisals from a seller until after a deal is signed.
----------------------------------------------------
My point here is not to defame anyone, but to just make sure that people understand precisely what it is they are getting into and what it is that's going on when they support places like TNC and it's ravenous appetite for land and money.
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