“Private Property protected from Bureau of Land Management employee retaliation”-Reprinted from Wyoming Agriculture (February 2006) with permission of the Wyoming Farm Bureau.
On January 11, 2006, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that employees in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) cannot retaliate against a ranch owner for refusing to grant the agency a right-of-way across his private land. Harvey Frank Robbins sued under RICO, saying that BLM employees used the power of federal regulations to try to extort a right-of-way across his private land in Wyoming. The case will go to jury trial in Cheyenne.

See Also

Essential Books
& Publications

(For further description of PRFA publications, see publication list.)
***The Property Owner’s Experience-New York’s Arbitrary and Excessive Environmental Regulation of Private Land and Resources* - By Carol W. LaGrasse (PRFA, 1998)
Background and Recommendations for reforms in 20 areas of state policy, including: eliminate bias; establish binding time cutoffs for agency review; eliminate discretionary powers; restrict agency powers to statute; eliminate cost-ineffective, functionless rules; use science, not emotionalism, for policy decisions; and other reforms needed to environmental regulation.

Additional Resources

NFIB - New York
National Federation of Independent Business
“The Voice of Small Business”
Mark P.Alesse
New York State Director
address & website

Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum Producers (PIPP)
P.O. Box 103
Bradford, Pennsylvania 16701-0103
Attn: Joyce Cline, Secretary
(Newsletter available to members)

Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York State (IOGA)**
5743 Walden Drive
Lakeview, NY 14085
(716) 627-4250
(Newsletter available to members)
Web site: www.iogany.org

In-Depth Information

“A Professional and Intellectual Journey” - Book Review by Nate Dickinson (PRFA, April 13, 2004)
A review of Give Me a Break — How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media by John Stossel, Harper Collins, 2004

“Legislators are Hurting Small Businesses with New Smoking Ban”
- By Carol W. LaGrasse, Letter to the Editor, Adirondack Journal,
July 26, 2003
The State of New York is punishing small businesses by banning smoking in bars and restaurants, but avoids tackling one of the most important dangers of smoking, the high radioactivity of cigarettes.

“Practical Experience with the U.S. EPA - Arbitrary Regulation of Small oil Producers” - By Steven Kennemuth, Olean, New York (Sixth Annual New York Conference on Private Property Rights, PRFA, November 16, 2002)

“DEC Hits Small Businesses for Cleanup of old Fuel Tank Leaks” - Carol W. LaGrasse, reprinted from New York Property Rights Clearinghouse (PRFA, Vol. 6, No. 2 - Summer 2002)
Where have all the general stores gone? Innocent owners driven out of business.

“Laws cost proprietors their livelihood - DEC liens for fuel-tank leakage cleanup costs putting some out of business” - By Thom Randall (Post Star, Glens Falls, N. Y., Aug. 1, 2002, page 1, reprinted by permission)
General stores in the lower Adirondacks face fuel leak cleanup costs between $191,000 and $500,000, whether or not the current owners caused the pollution. The State seized stores in Hadley, Johnsburg, Wevertown, and Olmstedville, and both the store and home of the storekeeper in Starbuckville. The Starbuckville owner died of a heart attack a few years later.

“DEC’s Over-regulation of Small Oil Producers” - By Carol W. LaGrasse (Reprinted from The Property Owner’s Experience, April 1998)
Over the past fifteen years, thousands of oil wells in the Bradford Field in southwestern New York have gone out of production. Although the wells have the capacity to produce oil for many years, the operators are squeezed by low prices and increased costs of environmental regulation.

In-Depth Information