State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons told the Las Cruces Sun-News on Friday that his office made a mistake in agreeing in December to lease thousands of acres to developer Philip Philippou.
He says he should have waited another month to sign the contract. That’s because he chose to seek bids for the state land and then, a little more than a month before the proposals were due, signed two contracts giving Philippou the lease on thousands of acres on Las Cruces’ north and east sides.
Several factors add to the appearance of something suspicious. Lyons signed the contracts the week of Christmas when no one was watching. He did it a few moths after Philippou gave $20,500 to a political action committee that turned around and gave almost $18,000 of it to Lyons’ successful re-election committee.
Lyons has said he circumvented his own bidding process, which he has authority to do, because the Philippou project was excellent.
“We did err, but I thought that if we were going to err, it should be on the side of public school kids in New Mexico,” Lyons told the Sun-News. “We did jump the gun. We should have waited a month. We probably shouldn’t have done it.”
Lyons’ comments reveal that he still doesn’t fully understand what was wrong about this whole incident.
Let me make one thing clear: Lyons doesn’t have to go out for bids before he leases land. He has sole authority to lease it to anyone.
But in this instance, he chose to seek bids. It was a smart move that would have increased public assurance that the process was fair and land was being leased in the best interest of the state, not the developers.
In ignoring his own process, he told other developers that they wouldn’t get a shot at the land even though he had offered it to them. They may be less likely to bid on contracts in the future.
More importantly, Lyons’ decision to bypass his own, voluntary bidding process, coupled with the donations, looks fishy and decreases public confidence in the land commissioner. Lyons says he didn’t know the PAC’s money came from Philippou, and Philippou says he didn’t know his money would be given to Lyons. I have no evidence that isn’t true, but it stinks.
Lyons failed to avoid appearance of impropriety
Lyons failed, in this instance, to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Any campaign should know where its money is coming from, and PACs are commonly used to give money without it being traced directly back to the source. Not knowing where it came from is careless or an intentional attempt to avoid culpability.
The right thing to do wasn’t waiting a month to sign a deal with Philippou to avoid any negative appearances, as Lyons told the newspaper. The right thing would have been to not bypass the bidding process once he began it.
Instead, Lyons has created the appearance that the bidding process is used when it’s convenient and bypassed when it’s not.
In addition, Lyons’ campaign should have done a better job of knowing where his money was coming from. He should have rejected massive contributions that could be traced to companies to which he was leasing land, especially those that he decided to give land in circumvention of the process others had to follow.
Because he didn’t, there’s an appearance that the developer did a favor for Lyons by helping his re-election bid, and that Lyons returned the favor by leasing him land.
Lyons should return the PAC money.
State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons told the Las Cruces Sun-News on Friday that his office made a mistake in agreeing in December to lease thousands of acres to developer Philip Philippou.