Ray Powell
Land Commissioner-elect Ray Powell is calling the special audit of the land office released Monday “extremely disturbing.” He says it shows that he will have “a lot of work to do to restore public trust” when he takes office in January.
The audit was a damning report on the tenure of outgoing Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, who took over when Powell left office eight years ago. Powell was elected in November to once again become land commissioner.
“I regret to say that, owing to the last eight years of bad policy and worse management, we have a lot of work to do to restore public trust in the State Land Office (SLO),” Powell wrote in an e-mail. “The auditor’s report is extremely disturbing and suggests serious allegations of mismanagement and possible corruption.”
“For example,” he wrote, “millions of dollars that should have gone to support our public schools, universities and hospitals have apparently been paid to developers, many of whom appear to have been political contributors to Mr. Lyons.”
Powell also had this to say:
“Mr. Lyons’ deals have rewarded the developers by paying them for 100 percent of all of their expenditures regardless of whether or not those expenditures actually added value to State Trust Land. This was done before the SLO received any share of the increase in value created by the development and planning.
“This approach of paying the developer’s expenses first, and only then sharing the upside created by the development, is the exact opposite of my administration’s policy.
“Under my previous administration, the SLO first received 100 percent of the original land value and then a percentage of the increase in value created by the development and planning. I did not reward developers first by allowing them to recoup all of their expenses, regardless of whether those expenses actually benefited the trust.”
Powell campaigned on restoring ethical, accessible and transparent leadership to the land office, and he reiterated those pledges in the e-mail to NMPolitics.net.
Lyons, a Republican, was highly critical of Powell, a Democrat, during the campaign. He authored a commentary published by NMPolitics.net in which he wrote that Powell “is wrong for New Mexico.” He also urged voters to elect any candidate of either party other than Powell to replace him.