The Utah Supreme Court said in a ruling released today that the FLDS waited too long to challenge state control and reformation of the United Effort Plan Trust. Here is the story, which I am continuing to update. Also, I will update this blog post with reaction throughout the day.

Margaret Cooke, UEP Trust advisory board member:

“I would hope and pray we can all work together and that something beneficial would come out of it. I would like to be able to work with the FLDS and be their friend and partner in the community.”

Katie Cox, UEP Trust advisory board member:

“For me personally, it’s a relief because there are a lot of people who are in homes that would be jeopardized if that was thrown back to what the FLDS wanted. I feel like the law should be upheld.  I also have compassion for the FLDS and it is my goal as an advisory board member to be as fair, to be totally fair in any decision that comes up regarding housing. I just feel like the Supreme Court made a legal decision that upholds the law.

We have had very few requests from FLDS for homes. But we have at least two FLDS in homes that they had former ties to. It seemed the best decision to rule in their favor.

I think the law is going to have to step in and be more diligent about enforcing the law here. There has been a lot of tension in the community this past summer and I hope that we can establish a greater degree of peace here and I think that can only happen by people upholding the law — police officers and city officials and also residents having respect for the law.”

Richard Holm, former FLDS member who lives in the community:

“I am pleased. I think it is well thought out. It’s sad it took so long and cost so much in resources from both sides. But I’m sure happy to see a detailed, well thought out decision made.

“I think it resets the foundation for going into the future on it in a very clear way, where everybody pretty well knows what the opportunities and responsibilities are. I think it is a positive thing.”

Salt Lake Attorney Roger Hoole, who represented the plaintiffs who filed the civil lawsuits that prompted the takeover of the trust, issued this statement today. It appears to be an excerpt from a previous court filing.

Fiduciary Bruce R. Wisan and his attorney Jeff Shields released this press release this afternoon:

The Utah Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling today denying the FLDS Association’ Petition for Extraordinary Writ, asserting the FLDS were not diligent in petitioning the Supreme Court in a timely manner. The decision means the Special Fiduciary will continue to administer the trust and its assets, eventually distributing the assets to beneficiaries.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court agreed with the arguments of the Utah Attorney General, the Arizona Attorney General and the Special Fiduciary, and ruled in our favor,” said Jeffrey L. Shields, attorney for the UEP Trust. “The reformation of the Trust was a long process, beginning over five years ago, and I am glad to see that the Court has agreed that the petitioners should have taken part in the process, as invited by the Third District Court, rather than waiting for years, then taking the litigious route.”

FLDS members filed the petition in October 2009, claiming their constitutional rights were violated by the reformation of the Trust by the Third District Court in 2006. Because the FLDS waited three years to file any claim, with no excuse for their delay, the Supreme Court found that the Third District Court had “every reason to believe that the reformation had occurred without opposition.”

Additionally, because of such delay in filing, the Trust has made many significant decisions, in accordance with the orders of the Third District Court. Granting the petition this late would have greatly harmed all those who have worked with the Trust for the past several years. The Supreme Court also found the FLDS had no evidence that the Trust was discriminating against FLDS in property distributions, as no distributions have taken place and the Fiduciary and Third District Court have set up a distribution process under which religion is a neutral factor.

“The Third District Court and the Special Fiduciary have made it clear that religion is a non-factor for the Trust .We plan to move forward with the administration of the Trust, as directed by the Third District Court, with fairness and transparency and in keeping with the rule of law,” said Shields. “Our main goal is to distribute property to the beneficiaries, and we hope this ruling will bring an end to the continual litigation and allow us to focus on meeting the needs of the beneficiaries.”

In 2005, at the request of Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, the Third District Court reorganized the United Effort Plan Trust when Warren Jeffs and the FLDS leaders failed to adequately administer the Trust. Jeffs had abandoned the Trust and was alleged to be diverting assets for personal purposes. Bruce Wisan was appointed as Special Fiduciary by the Court, at the recommendation of Attorney General Shurtleff, to fill the vacancy left by Warren Jeffs and the other Trustees who defaulted on notices to appear before the Judge. Wisan was charged with the responsibility to: 1) defend the Trust, and 2) inventory the assets. As the situation unfolded in 2005, the Court issued a series of orders that escalated Wisan’s authority to include the management the day to day affairs of the Trust.

Did the Hildale  City Council vote to “triple” the town’s property tax, as reported by ABC 4 news?

Or raise it 237 percent, as reported by Fox 13, adding $550 to the annual property tax bill on an average home?

No and no.

But that didn’t keep those media outlets or, for that matter, Val Oveson — a former Utah tax commissioner who now works for UEP  Trust fiduciary Bruce R. Wisan — from hyping the “enormity” of a recently approved tax increase.

Here’s the real story — and thanks to my colleague Jeremiah Stettler for coming up with a graceful way to explain this year’s property tax calculations.

According to this story, a change in state law requires governments to “account differently for delinquent tax dollars.” Entities that are raising taxes must advertise the rate increase that would be necessary to replace revenue it has not yet collected because of delinquent property tax payments.

The Utah State Tax Commission acknowledged that that made rates look artificially high this year. In Salt Lake County, for example, a proposed increase of up to $2.55  was advertised as being five times larger.

Same thing happened with Hildale, where most property is held communally by the United Effort Plan Trust. The trust has been under court management since 2005 and is overseen by Salt Lake accountant Bruce R. Wisan.

After complying with the new law, Hildale appeared to be imposing a 237 percent tax increase on residents.

In fact, the increase, including new growth, is 51.5 percent, according to Charlie Roberts, Utah Tax Commission spokesman.

On a percentage basis, it is the largest increase in the state. On a dollar basis, it is not.

Jerry Barlow, city manager for Hildale, said that increase will add about $10 a month (or $120 a year) to the average home’s property tax bill. The tax increase will raise $33,000, which the city will split between its police and fire department budgets.

Due to budget shortfalls from lower sales, roads, franchise and property tax revenue, Hildale had to cut about $300,000 from last year’s $1 million budget. This year’s budget, approved by the council last week and including revenue from the tax increase, is $688,000, Barlow said.

Barlow said the advertised tax increase (the 237 percent figure) reflected the increase that would be needed to make up approximately $39,000 in delinquent taxes.

“We need people to pay their taxes on time,” Barlow said. “The people are paying them, they are just paying them late. But that reflects on the rate.”

Oveson, as reported by ABC 4, attended the Hildale City Council meeting last week and objected to the tax increase, which he said made no sense given the high delinquency rate.

Hildale Mayor David Zitting acknowledged that a lot of people in the community aren’t paying their taxes on time — and, as Oveson pointed out, that he was one of them.

“I’ve paid every year on time, but this year I had a little difficulty,” Zitting said. “It is now taken care of. I felt a little disappointed in myself that things kept coming up and I hadn’t taken care of it. I had the full intention of paying [on time] and I should have.”

Many people in town, he said, are struggling because of the economic downturn, which has hit the construction industry particularly hard. “A lot of people work in construction,” Zitting said.

But people also aren’t paying because they are “offended that this private religious property was taken over by the state,” he said. “People are not feeling good about the way things have been handled with this stuff.”

According to the ABC 4 report, Oveson suggested that rather than raising taxes the city should just do away with its police force, which the trust claims isn’t upholding the laws or court orders, and rely on the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement.

Oveson did not return a call or email from The Salt Lake Tribune asking for comment.

Barlow said the city currently budgets $105,000 for its share of police service from the Colorado City Town Marshal’s Office. He said a few years ago the city looked into contracting with Washington County for police service and received a cost quote that was triple what it currently spends.

“I think we’re doing the right thing in providing the police force through an intergovernmental agreement with Colorado City,” he said.

Jake Adams, undersheriff with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said the county is open to contracting with Hildale and any other town in the county for service but “it does come at a cost.”

“We have not been approached by anyone in Hildale to provide them service,” he said.

Adams said two towns currently have service contracts with the sheriff’s office: Enterprise and Toquerville.

The sheriff’s office provides a school resource officer to Enterprise, which pays one-quarter of the officer’s costs — $17,252. The sheriff covers another quarter and the school pays 50 percent of the cost.

The sheriff’s office provides “a few hours of service” a day to Toquerville, which pays $7,000 for the coverage.

Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy in the Utah Attorney General’s Office, spoke Tuesday at the National Organization For Victim Assistance conference, being held in Salt Lake City.

His topic? “Polygamy Victimization.”

Former plural wife Carolyn Jessop also spoke. More on her in the next post. But here is a recap of what Torgensen had to say.

He credited Carolyn for opening his eyes — even changing his life — to what was going in in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

Think about a world in which young girls are raised with very little freedom and, when they reach 13 or 14 or 15, are told by a prophet to marry a much older man because “it’s just the way it is,” Torgensen said.

In the twin towns, young people don’t have the freedom, the constitutional right, to live the way they want to, he said.

He read an excerpt from Elissa Wall’s book “Stolen Innocence”— a “marvelous book” — in which she describes crying in the bathroom after being married in 2001 to Allen G. Steed.

As he read out loud, heads shook in disbelief throughout the audience, which I would estimate included several thousand victim advocates from throughout the country.

“I don’t know if any of us can imagine what that’s like — to be in a country where we have freedom but these folks don’t,” he said, as photos taken on Wall’s wedding day were displayed on screens on either side of the stage.

“This should not happen to any 14-year-old,” Torgensen said.

He said the state’s interest in stopping the child bride marriages had nothing to do with religion. No matter what religion they are, someone who engages in such behavior “is a child rapist,” he said.

He cited the biblical phrase “by their fruits you will know them” and then said: “The religion I belong to doesn’t believe in doing this to young kids.”

Torgensen said polygamist Tom Green did the state a favor when he publicized his beliefs and lifestyle on national television, which led to his prosecution and conviction in 2001 on charges of bigamy and failure to pay child support.

Green “peeled off the layers nobody had seen,” Torgensen said.

Torgensen said every time he visits the twin towns he is followed. “It’s like some bizarre place that’s been picked up and moved to the border here,” he said of the polygamous community.

With a photograph of Rodney Holm, two wives and his children as a backdrop, Torgensen said: “See, the state of Utah allowed him to be a police officer.”

He said that after learning about Holm, he said to himself: “What in the world, how could this guy be a police officer?”

But prosecuting Holm proved difficult because the witness, the younger sister of one of his wives, kept reneging on her willingness to testify about her own marriage to Holm.

“Has this problem gone away for us? No,” Torgensen said.

Despite decertifying numerous officers in the community, “we still have this issue going on today” and there is a lack of the kind of law enforcement that is needed in the towns, he said.

Torgensen then projected a photo series that showed FLDS church leader Warren Jeffs standing with and kissing a 12-year-old girl he allegedly married in Texas.

Said Torgensen: “I am so thankful this photo was shown to the world.”

He said Texas is actively prosecuting the case and “my prediction is Mr. Jeffs is going to find justice in Texas.”

Torgensen projected excerpts from Jeffs’ written journal as he described how the state had warned the FLDS around 2002 to stop endorsing underage marriage.

“We told them, ‘You’ve got to leave these kids alone.’ They said, ‘yeah, we understand.’”

He then displayed excerpts from Jeffs’ written journal — dated Jan. 10, 2003, Jan. 16, 2003 and Aug. 19, 2004.

In one, Jeffs described being asked by other polygamous groups to knock off underage marriages. In other he spoke of the state pressure and said: “It is so easy to get around it.”

Torgensen said the amount of money the FLDS were paying lawyers to “get around it” was “astounding.”

As for the people themselves, he said he wasn’t sure they were “capable of making decisions on their own” after so many years of “indoctrination.”

“There is absolutely nothing we’ve ever told them that has soaked in,” he said. “I don’t know what it takes for these people. . . their own lawyers can say, ‘Are you stupid?’”

That comment was made with this text, taken from a 2002 speech given by FLDS member Sam Barlow, displayed on the screen:

One of the attorneys said to me, “If you don’t make some concession on whether or not you will continue to marry young ladies to old men, then you’ll be caught in the same net and trap and under the same pressure that John Taylor was in in his time.”

I said, “I’m aware of that but we are born to this conflict and we will have to endure equal pressure to what the saints were under then if we are going to annul the convenant with death and hell that was entered into.”

Torgensen said that people want to know why the state doesn’t “prosecute a whole slew of these people.”

He blamed an “incredible secrecy” and the lack of young women coming forward with complaints. Without that, “I haven’t got a case,” he said.

“You can go after organized crime easier than you can these people,” he added.

But in Texas, law officers were able to get a “treasure trove” of information that “I am so grateful for.”

The FLDS have never listened to state officials, he said. “They’ve played us.”

Torgensen then described meeting with “another guy” from the FLDS community, adding that “I don’t know what to call him — Willie Jessop.”

Torgensen said Jessop told him that underage marriages had stopped which Torgensen called “yet another attempt to blow smoke at me.”

“This was before all the stuff in Texas went down,” he added.

(Asked later about that comment, Jessop said he had never met Torgensen until some months after the April 2008 raid on the sect’s Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. Jessop said he flew to Utah from Texas in June or July of that year, which is about when the sect issued a public statement saying underage marriages would no longer be allowed. “I never talked to anybody on any such thing before Texas,” Jessop said.)

Torgensen said the FLDS are “still trying to tell us what they think we want to hear and I don’t believe it for a second.”

In an aside, he told the audience  that he had no tolerance for religious beliefs that harmed children. “Why should a young person die because their parent has some goofed up religious view?” he asked.

Clarification: This comment from Kirk Torgensen (Why should a child die?) was not necessarily directed at the FLDS but at parents whose beliefs potentially put their children’s lives in jeopardy, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science.

Torgensen said that law enforcement efforts were “starting to come to fruition” and he was “very grateful” for that.

He described how “simple mathematics” was driving young boys out of the community, with help of harassment from the local FLDS cops.

Guess who the justice of the peace enforcing those citations used to be? he asked his audience. A polygamist whose ultimate oath was to the prophet, Torgensen said.

He described how Elissa Wall’s older brother was kicked out of his family’s home, driven to the city limits and dropped off. “Unbelievable,” he said.

(The incident happened in the Salt Lake Valley, not the twin towns, and the brother was 21-years-old. He asked to be driven to a highway, where he could hitch a ride to Denver, according to Wall’s book.)

“They find reasons to get rid of these young men,” he said, and many then turn to substance abuse.

“It makes me incredibly sad to believe this is going on,” Torgensen said.

As for the men standing trial in Texas, Torgensen said he hopes they are convicted and that “they stay in a prison cell for a long time.” The comment drew thunderous applause from the audience.

“Something is wrong with a group of men who can’t wait until someone is 18″ to marry, he said, adding that the proper term for such abusers is “pedophiles.”

“We don’t owe them an apology for anything,” he said. “For that, I hope they get everything they’ve got coming to them.”

Here is the response from fiduciary Bruce R. Wisan to the FLDS’ request for emergency relief. Wisan’s petition was filed late yesterday afternoon with the Utah Supreme Court.

Here is the request filed by the state of Utah for reconsideration in the Utah Supreme Court’s reversal of polygamous church leader Warren S. Jeffs’ convictions.

I thought this comment, which I recently came across, was interesting given the debates about marriage taking place in California, Canada and elsewhere:

“It may happen that some young Mormon, three generations removed from any polygamous ancestor, will do a thesis for his doctorate in defense of plural marriage. With what gloating will he point out that monogamy is dying of an inner corruption while polygamy came to its untimely end only because of external pressure. He will damn the one with statistics on divorce and praise the other for its unique exhibition of conjugal devotion. “Isn’t it strange,” he will write, “that this country of ours would chuck one fellow in jail for dodging alimony and put another chap in a cell alongside him for wanting to support a couple of wives?”

A Utah judge on Friday signed a warrant for the arrest of polygamous church leader Warren S. Jeffs on the Texas charges and set his initial appearance for Aug. 26. There is no bail for Jeffs.

08-20-10 Judge ROBERT ADKINS assigned.

08-20-10 Filed: Information

08-20-10 Case filed

08-20-10 Filed: From an Information.

08-20-10 Judge TERRY CHRISTIANSEN assigned.

08-20-10 Warrant ordered on: August 20, 2010 Warrant Num: 985210311 No Bail

08-20-10 Notice – WARRANT for Case 101401820 ID 13196342

08-20-10 Warrant issued on: August 20, 2010 Warrant Num: 985210311 No Bail           Judge: MARK KOURIS

Issue reason: Based on the probable cause statement.

08-20-10 INITIAL APPEARANCE scheduled on August 26, 2010 at 01:00 PM in WJ Courtroom 37 with Judge CHRISTIANSEN.

This document was tucked in a court filing in the UEP Trust case. I found it interesting as far as the breadth and depth of the request by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to learn what has been going on in the Twin Towns.

The list offers of pretty good summary of who, what, when and where of some events over the past five years.

An attorney representing Colorado City says in another court document that thousands of pages have since been turned over to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office in response to the records request.

Here is a section of a story I wrote about Amos Guiora and his book “Freedom From Religion: Rights and National Security,” in which he advocates limiting religious speech that government views as inciting listeners to violent behavior.

“If Amos Guiora had his way, undercover moles would be planted in Islamic mosques and in polygamous sect meetinghouses led by controversial figures to listen for speech that incites followers to violent behavior.

Any extremist religious leader who sanctions criminal acts — like the terrorist attacks of 9/11 or underage marriages performed at a remote Texas ranch — should, he argues, be arrested.

Religious extremism is the single greatest danger to civil democratic society today, a threat so great it justifies controversial impositions on constitutional rights, said Guiora, a professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law.”

You can read the rest of the story here.

. . . the 10th Annual “Polygamy Day,” according to national polygamy advocate Mark Henkel.

According to a press release, “supporters of polygamy rights for consenting adults have been celebrating this special date each year, ever since the very first ‘Polygamy Day 1′ on August 19, 2001.”

“In what began as a get-together in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, among polygamy rights activists who had no connection to Mormon or Muslim polygamy whatsoever, the annual celebration has grown into a widespread and religiously neutral individual celebration among all forms of consenting adult pro-polygamists.”

“Activists individually use each August 19th to mark the preceding year’s political and legal events in the advance of freedom for consenting adult polygamists. Individual strategies for the next year of polygamy rights activism are also considered and even planned.”

The press release says more info is available here.

If you are INDIVIDUALLY celebrating “Polygamy Day,” let me know. I don’t  think it is celebrated here, based on past checks with Fundamentalist Mormons.