{"id":22771,"date":"2010-10-25T08:46:25","date_gmt":"2010-10-25T14:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=22771"},"modified":"2010-10-26T07:58:51","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T13:58:51","slug":"powell-wants-to-get-past-the-%e2%80%98us-against-them%e2%80%99-mentality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/10\/powell-wants-to-get-past-the-%e2%80%98us-against-them%e2%80%99-mentality\/","title":{"rendered":"Powell wants to get past the \u2018us-against-them\u2019 mentality"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Courtesy photo<\/p>

Ray Powell<\/p><\/div>\n

Ray Powell<\/a> says his time working with Jane Goodall<\/a> has been a needed sabbatical from politics \u2013 one that has empowered him and given him the desire to return to the New Mexico Land Office and work for change.<\/p>\n

Powell said he had become cynical about politics because there are so many people involved in the political system who are self-serving. He has spent the last four years as the director for the Four Corners region of The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In that role, he\u2019s worked to educate and empower children to envision healthier communities, and he\u2019s traveled the world and gotten to meet with top experts.<\/p>\n

Working for Goodall has given him a renewed energy, Powell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re in politics for any amount of time, I recommend a sabbatical with someone who is so empowering,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

Through his job, Powell has worked with children on service-learning projects aimed at integrating community, animals and the natural world \u2013 to teach children that they must take care of the environment but also think about the needs of the people around them.<\/p>\n

Children understand that they are inheriting a mess, and Powell has been working to get them to think about what they must do to restore the planet, \u201cnot by assigning blame or by getting in a circular firing squad, but just to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that focus on moving forward that Powell said he wants to bring back to the land office. He served as land commissioner from 1993 to 2002, and he\u2019s running for the seat once again on Nov. 2. He faces Republican opponent Matt Rush<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Powell said he\u2019s \u201creally worried\u201d about the state of the land office after eight years of it being run by outgoing Land Commissioner Pat Lyons<\/a>, a Republican.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to get back and empower them,\u201d Powell said. \u201c\u2026 On day one, I an step into that office, clean it up and move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Economy and quality of life<\/h3>\n

Powell said the job of land commissioner is important to the state\u2019s economy and quality of life \u2013 two issues he said are not mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

Goodall learned from working to combat deforestation in Tanzania that you can\u2019t just \u201csave the chimps,\u201d Powell said \u2013 you have to help people too. That the area was so devastated that people were suffering, and Goodall found that saving the animals wasn\u2019t the most important thing.<\/p>\n

She began working on economic development that was done with an environmentally friendly mindset. She helped improve the lives of people in the area \u2013 and, in the process, protect the wildlife too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we need to do in New Mexico,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

Powell said the land office needs to focus on taking care of the land, working on economic development, keeping food production in the state, developing new sources of energy, and continuing to work with non-renewable energy producers.<\/p>\n

Powell said New Mexico has an opportunity to be the \u201cworldwide experts\u201d on renewable energy and what he calls a \u201crestoration economy\u201d because of its land, climate, universities and national laboratories.<\/p>\n

Powell pointed to the Mesa Del Sol development in Albuquerque, which he helped bring to the state, as an example. Some 1,100 acres of land in that development are zoned industrial and focused on renewable energy development.<\/p>\n

But Powell said the oil and gas industry can\u2019t be ignored or shut out. Those sources of energy are necessary and will be around for a long time, he said, and the next land commissioner must continue to work with them. After all, 95 percent of revenues derived from state trust land come from oil and gas.<\/p>\n

The difference<\/h3>\n

Powell said Rush\u2019s answer for why he\u2019s running is, \u201cwhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not taking shots at him, but this isn\u2019t something you do on a lark,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

Powell said he\u2019s interested in bringing all stakeholders to the table to find solutions to New Mexico\u2019s problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019ve got to find common ground, and that\u2019s another difference, because I\u2019ve gone to forums with my opponent, and it\u2019s always us against them,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

Powell said he created various advisory groups during his previous tenure as land commissioner and he plans to do that again. During his previous tenure, he was able to propose legislation backed by people often portrayed as being on opposite sides of a fight because he brought them all to the table.<\/p>\n

Powell said governance is \u201cbringing people together so that you get this chemistry where things happen.\u201d He said the land commissioner should be a \u201cfacilitator,\u201d of that, not \u201cthe driver.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I just can\u2019t go down that road of saying it\u2019s us against them,\u201d Powell said.<\/p>\n

Smart development<\/h3>\n

Powell said there are smarter ways to develop than the land office has done in recent years. He cited examples from his previous tenure.<\/p>\n

Powell worked to create the Sandia Science and Technology Park on state trust land because a company that produced photovoltaic cells at Sandia National Laboratories was planning to move to New Jersey, where land was cheaper.<\/p>\n

Creation of the park convinced the company to stay here and lease land from the state. The project created economic development and permanent revenue off the land from tenants at the park.<\/p>\n

Another example: The land office retained ownership of much of the land in the Mesa Del Sol development so the state will continue making revenue off it. Lyons has sold much of the land he\u2019s set aside for economic development.<\/p>\n

And in Mesa Del Sol, Powell said he required the creation of an employment district before any homes were built \u2013 to prevent sprawl, establish a tax base, and ensure that people could work near where they live.<\/p>\n

Transparency<\/h3>\n

Community involvement is critical to development, and Powell said he will work as land commissioner to give communities a say in the development process for trust land. Rather than taking an entire, massive project to a community for approval at once \u2013 as Lyons did in Las Cruces with a 90,000-acre development on the East Mesa \u2013 Powell said he will require developers to come forward with a piece at a time when they\u2019re ready to develop it.<\/p>\n

And he will require industrial parks or other economic development before homes are built to ensure there\u2019s no sprawl and that there\u2019s a tax base in place.<\/p>\n

Powell said his biggest mistake during his first tenure as land commissioner was \u201chubris\u201d \u2013 taking a master plan development for Edgewood to the community for the first time after it was nearly complete.<\/p>\n

He said it took 27 community meetings for him to earn back the community\u2019s trust, and he learned that community involvement must come first.<\/p>\n

\u2018All of these pieces fit together\u2019<\/h3>\n

Farming and ranching are difficult, and Powell said his other focus will be on keeping those who want to work the land connected to it. That will include education on how to protect the environment so the land remains viable for future generations.<\/p>\n

Powell said his overall goal is to \u201cget food produced, get the land cared for, get our tax base increased and protect our watershed, which is so critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these pieces fit together,\u201d Powell said, adding that his lifetime of experience \u2013 as a former land commissioner, as a veterinarian, and working for Goodall \u2013 has prepared him to step into the job again and approach the management of state trust land by \u201clooking at how everything fits together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ray Powell says his time working with Jane Goodall has been a needed sabbatical from politics \u2013 one that has empowered him and given him the desire to return to the New Mexico Land Office and work for change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[108,125,119,147,107],"class_list":["post-22771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-2010-election","tag-education","tag-energy-policy","tag-environment","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22771\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}