{"id":4399,"date":"2009-03-23T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T21:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/03\/legislature-oks-one-land-office-reform-bill\/"},"modified":"2009-03-23T15:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T21:38:00","slug":"legislature-oks-one-land-office-reform-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/03\/legislature-oks-one-land-office-reform-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Legislature OKs one land office reform bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A bill that would require competitive bidding on all State Land Office<\/a> development leases was the only legislation in a package of proposals<\/a> made by three Las Cruces Democrats to gain approval in the session that ended Saturday.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 540<\/a>, sponsored by Steve Fischmann<\/a>, is now awaiting action by the governor. The bill was a mirror of House Bill 606<\/a>, sponsored by Jeff Steinborn<\/a>, who along with Fischmann and Rep. Nate Cote<\/a> pushed the package of bills in response to a development controversy in Las Cruces.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cGiven the problems we\u2019ve had with the State Land Office, and the unchecked opportunity that office has to arbitrarily develop state lands, it was important that we close this loophole,\u201d Steinborn said in a news release about the passage of the Fischmann bill. \u201cThis reform will ensure that any developer who acquires state land for development does so through a competitive bidding process, and not through insider connections or big campaign contributions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fischmann said in the release that he was \u201cproud to be a partner in this legislative effort to protect New Mexico\u2019s treasured public resources while also protecting our schools\u2019 financial bottom line. This is great public policy that will make the state millions of additional dollars in future years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The transparency and accountability proposals followed Attorney General Gary King\u2019s<\/a> finding fault last year with Land Commissioner Pat Lyons\u2019<\/a> leasing of land on Las Cruces\u2019 East Mesa to Philip Philippou so it could be developed. The AG\u2019s formal opinion<\/a> on The Vistas at Presidio land deal states that the lease agreement\u2019s<\/a> method of compensating Philippou\u2019s company for developing the land is \u201cnot comprehended by and in conflict with\u201d a statute that allows developers who improve land for the state to be compensated only for the appraised value of the improvements.<\/p>\n

In the lease, the land office also agreed to compensate Philippou for other project costs and 40 percent of the change in value of the land as a result of the improvements.<\/p>\n

The competitive bidding bill was significant because, in the Las Cruces situation, Lyons bypassed his own bidding process — which he\u2019s not currently required by law to use — and leased the thousands of acres of land in question to Philippou in December 2006. Months earlier, while the Republican Lyons was running for re-election, Philippou gave $20,500 to a political action committee run by lobbyists he employs. The PAC gave most of it to Lyons\u2019 campaign, and the lobbyists gave another $3,600. After Lyons leased the land to Philippou, the developer gave another $6,000 to Lyons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill that would require competitive bidding on all State Land Office development leases was the only legislation in a package of proposals made by three Las Cruces Democrats to gain approval in the session that ended Saturday. Senate Bill 540, sponsored by Steve Fischmann, is now awaiting action by the governor. The bill was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399","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=4399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}