The Organ Mountains (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
The Hispano Chamber of Commerce de Las Cruces is currently spending a great deal of money on TV ads and printed material promoting a bill that would designate hundreds of thousands of acres as wilderness in Dona Ana County – but it isn’t saying who provided the cash for the media blitz.
“Like other nonprofits, our grantors oftentimes wish to remain anonymous. Working in a competitive funding environment and with a growing membership, we respect donors’ wishes…” a news release from the group states.
That’s according to an article published today in the Las Cruces Sun-News, which, citing the chamber’s news release, reported that the group “applied for money in the form of a competitive grant to ‘help educate and inform the general public about local conservation efforts.’”
Nothing requires the group to disclose the identity of the donor. Even the attorney general’s fight with two nonprofits in Albuquerque is an attempt to force nonprofits to disclose funding information if the AG thinks they are involved in campaigning for the election or defeat of candidates. The chamber’s work is issue advocacy, plain and simple.
Still, the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce – which, unlike the Hispano chamber, does not support the pending legislation in Washington in its current form – wants to know who paid for the media blitz. In a news release, the Greater Las Cruces chamber stated that it was “deeply troubled by one local organization’s apparent acceptance of significant funds from special interests groups to promote their position, without full disclosure of doing so to its members.”
The Greater Las Cruces chamber’s chairman, Kiel Hoffman, confirmed for the Sun-News that the statement is about the Hispano chamber.
The legislation, called the Organ Mountains – Desert Peaks Wilderness Act, was introduced in October. The bill would designate almost 250,000 acres as wilderness and 100,000 acres as national conservation areas. In addition to the Organ Mountains, land on and around the Potrillo, Robledo and Doña Ana mountains would be protected.
There’s expected to be a push to get the legislation passed by Congress before the end of the year, because there’s a chance the area’s congressman, U.S. Rep. Harry Teague, D-N.M., could be replaced in November by former U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican who opposes the wilderness designation altogether.