{"id":24533,"date":"2010-12-21T13:02:31","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T20:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=24533"},"modified":"2010-12-21T13:04:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T20:04:00","slug":"powell-audit-shows-%e2%80%98we-have-a-lot-of-work-to-do%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2010\/12\/powell-audit-shows-%e2%80%98we-have-a-lot-of-work-to-do%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"Powell: Audit shows \u2018we have a lot of work to do\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

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

Land Commissioner-elect Ray Powell<\/a> is calling the special audit<\/a> of the land office released Monday \u201cextremely disturbing.\u201d He says it shows that he will have \u201ca lot of work to do to restore public trust\u201d when he takes office in January.<\/p>\n

The audit was a damning report on the tenure of outgoing Land Commissioner Pat Lyons<\/a>, who took over when Powell left office eight years ago. Powell was elected in November to once again become land commissioner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u00a0trust in the State\u00a0Land Office (SLO),\u201d Powell wrote in an e-mail. \u201cThe auditor’s report is extremely disturbing and suggests serious allegations of mismanagement and possible corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example,\u201d he wrote, \u201cmillions of dollars that should have gone to support our public schools, universities and hospitals have apparently been paid to developers,\u00a0many of whom appear to have been political contributors to Mr. Lyons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Powell also had this to say:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Lyons\u2019 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.\u00a0This was done\u00a0before the SLO received any share of the increase in value created by the development and planning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis approach of paying the developer\u2019s expenses first, and only then sharing the upside created by the development, is the exact opposite of my administration\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder 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.\u00a0I did not reward developers first by allowing them to recoup all of their expenses, regardless of whether those expenses actually benefited the trust.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Powell campaigned on restoring ethical, accessible and transparent leadership<\/a> to the land office, and he reiterated those pledges in the e-mail to NMPolitics.net.<\/p>\n

Lyons, a Republican, was highly critical of Powell, a Democrat, during the campaign. He authored a commentary<\/a> published by NMPolitics.net in which he wrote that Powell \u201cis wrong for New Mexico.\u201d He also urged voters to elect any candidate of either party other than Powell<\/a> to replace him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Land Commissioner-elect Ray Powell is calling the special audit of the land office \u201cextremely disturbing.\u201d He says it shows that he will have \u201ca lot of work to do to restore public trust\u201d when he takes office in January.<\/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":[138,107],"class_list":["post-24533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-growth-and-development","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24533","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=24533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}