Ray Powell (Photo by Peter St. Cyr)
Any transaction by the State Land Office should provide the greatest benefit possible for New Mexico’s educational system, public hospitals, other important beneficiaries and our communities. This financial support is critical to keeping our taxpayers’ bills down.
A second, equally important consideration is that public business must be done in an honest and transparent manner, period. It is the suspected violation of these two important principles that has raised the concerns of a number of New Mexicans in connection with the proposed massive land swaps between the land office and private ranch owners in the Whites Peak area near the Mora/Colfax county line.
State lands in the Whites Peak area offer unparalleled places for hunting and recreational activities that are available to the average person. In fairness, area ranchers have complained for years that a few visitors trespass on their land, and also engage in poaching, littering, destroying fences and gates, and even threatening employees.
The current administration at the land office says the swaps would help regularize the checkerboard of public and private lands in the area, reducing the chance of trespassing.
But the New Mexico Wildlife Federation points out that, in one of the swaps, the Land Office will trade 7,205 acres of state trust land for 3,336 acres of Stanley Ranch land, losing more than 3,800 acres “of some of the most beautiful lands in New Mexico.” In a second proposed swap, 80 percent of what the state would get in exchange would be pasture land near a highway.
Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons says the acreage being swapped is equivalent in value, but he also admitted in a legislative hearing Nov. 20 that the Stanley and UU Bar Express ranches paid for the appraisals.
Similar to controversial Las Cruces deal
Now comes the revelation in the Albuquerque Journal that Commissioner Lyons suddenly remembered earlier this month that in 2002 he hunted for free on the UU Bar, which currently charges more than $8,000 for the privilege, with ranch owner Brad Kelley (Editor’s note: Kelley no longer owns the ranch). Also, the Albuquerque Journal reports in another recent revelation that the land swap with the CS Cattle Ranch will include 40 acres of state trust land in the Mesa Del Sol Planned Community in Albuquerque that had been under a business lease.
I’m also told that land office commercial property in the Sandia Science and Technology Park north of Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque is being considered as part of that exchange.
The Whites Peak land swaps have not been done in a way that has been open and transparent to the public. Joel Gay, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s communications director, told the Santa Fe Reporter that getting information about the proposed deals was like “wading through public information requests.” The transactions seem very similar to what we saw in Las Cruces in 2006, when Commissioner Lyons transferred thousands of acres to a developer after shutting down the open bidding process. In that case, it turned out the developer had contributed thousands of dollars to Commissioner Lyons’ re-election campaign.
Public should ask hard questions
The public should be asking some hard questions about the proposed Whites Peak swaps, among them, “Why would you exchange high-value commercial properties that return 6 percent to 10 percent annually for grazing land that returns only .05 percent under the best of conditions?”
The integrity of the appraisal process needs to be looked at very closely, and I would strongly recommend that the appraisals be verified by a second, disinterested party.
The State Land Office manages nine million acres of surface area and 13 million mineral acres for the benefit of public schools, universities and hospitals. These acres belong to the people of New Mexico. New Mexicans should be asking themselves, “Is the trustee of our land doing the best job it could for our benefit?”
Powell, a Democrat, was state land commissioner from 1993-2002 and is running again for the office in 2010.