NMWF at work
Supreme Court to Land Office: Not so fast
The state Supreme Court has temporarily halted the controversial Whites Peak land trades. The news came about 24 hours after the Attorney General’s Office late Monday petitioned the court to strike down four trades, including one already approved with rancher David Stanley.
The court also ordered Public Lands Commissioner Patrick Lyons to submit his response to the AG’s petition by Feb. 15, according to the Journal North. It isn’t clear when the court will make a final decision on the fate of the trades.
Sportsmen had been calling for the AG’s Office to act after it became clear that Lyons was ignoring their requests to stop the four-way trade. The first two trades, with David Stanley and Express UU Bar Ranches, would cause a loss of more than 10 sections of public land available for hunting and other forms of recreation in Unit 48 near Whites Peak.
Attorney General Gary King said in a news release that the land exchanges violate state law and the bidding process used is unconstitutional. “The public auction requirement for State Trust Land exchanges with private parties appears to be predetermined in the first two of the four proposed deals,” King said.
New Mexico law requires the Commissioner of Public Lands to conduct a public auction before undertaking exchanges of State Trust Lands with private parties, the petition notes. “By the design of Congress, a public auction ensures that the trust obtains the maximum market price for its assets and all but eliminates the possibility of improper dealing between the Commissioner and private parties,” the petition says. “In this case, however, despite purporting to comply with the public auction requirement, the Commissioner undertook the first two of these exchanges using public auctions that were, for all practical purposes, shams.”
The petition goes on: “The undisputed facts make clear that, notwithstanding the public auction requirement, the Land Commissioner made a predetermination to exchange specific and substantial portions of State Trust Lands with two specific private parties. The Commissioner then narrowly tailored the ‘public auction’ process to effectively guarantee this result. In so doing, he rendered the constitutional requirement for a public auction into a meaningless formality.”
King says the unusual step of bypassing the lower courts and petitioning the Supreme Court was taken because of the constitutional issues in question, the immediate effects on the public interest, and the fact that more White Peak land exchanges are proposed.
Read the full petition by clicking here.