One month after the first of White Peak’s scheduled exchanges was set to close, Nov. 24, the State Land Office received a letter from state Attorney General Gary King stating that his office had completed an independent review of the White Peak land appraisals and found “several significant defects.”
The Land Office fired back within a week, vaunting its appraiser’s credentials (John Widdoss, the South Dakota appraiser contracted by the Land Office, was voted Appraisal Professional of the Year in 2009 by the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers) and requesting, under New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act, to see the review.
King tells SFR “there is no document to deliver because what [Lyons] asked for just doesn’t physically exist right now.” As to whether such a review is still pending or was delivered verbally, King says, “It was just a verbal thing.”
On Feb. 1, King filed a petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court to stop the White Peak land exchanges.
In it, he accuses Lyons of conducting public auctions that were “for all practical purposes, shams.”
“The Land Commissioner made a predetermination to exchange specific and substantial portions of State Trust Land with two specific private parties,” the petition reads—a charge that amounts to conspiring with ranchers to the detriment of the state trust.
“A public auction that is circumscribed in such a way that there is only one possible bidder isn’t really a public auction,” King tells SFR.
In March, Lyons and King’s lawyers went before the high court to plead their cases, which rest in some large part upon interpretation of whether the Enabling Act—the 1910 federal act that expanded state trust lands and beneficiaries—allows a state land commissioner to conduct land exchanges.
After the hearing, the court deliberated for a half hour before instructing each party to submit supplemental briefs that further defined the land commissioner’s statutory authority. As of press time, the court had not issued a ruling.
Democrats clearly see White Peak as an opportunity to regain the State Land Office. Lyons is the only Republican who holds a statewide office, and all three Democrats running in the primary—Powell, Montoya and Jones—oppose the deal. The Republican candidates also criticize certain aspects of how it was handled.
Though unabashedly bitter about the backlash, Lyons also seems resigned when it comes to White Peak’s future“I just have eight months left in office,” he says. “We’ll do whatever the courts say to do,” he says. “We’re stopping there. We gave it our best shot to increase the value of the trust.
In the meantime, after all, he has his own political future to deal with as a candidate for the Public Regulation Commission.
“That’s this,” he explains—a parcel he’ll get from the state if the exchange goes through.
Stanley takes issue with the assertion that the land he’s offering the state is “just pastureland near a highway,” as New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s Jeremy Vesbach put it last fall.
His land, Stanley says, “was cherry-picked by the homesteaders, so it’s got meadow; it’s got access; it’s got some kind of water source—it’s beautiful land. It’s perfect.”
He hops nimbly back into the ATV and splashes through cavernous mud puddles (even ATVs get stuck here) to another spot.
“This,” he says, sweeping an arm across the unspoiled area before him, “is what I’m giving them.”
Time will tell. SFR
A review of the basic facts regarding efforts of Public Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons to swap state lands with the Stanley and UU Bar ranches shows why more than 97 percent of people who’ve written the New Mexico State Land Office oppose the trades: The public would lose 4,700 acres in what the Department of Game and Fish classifies as “Core Occupied Elk Range.”
That means we’d lose prime wildlife habitat and also approximately 50 elk licenses per year. The bulk of those licenses would go to David Stanley—who could resell them for thousands of dollars each.
It is understandable why the two landowners would stand behind such deals. However, the Land Commissioner has a duty to the public that has been broken. The Attorney General is acting to enforce the safeguards in our state Constitution meant to protect the public from such a misuse of power.
That Lyons received a free hunt worth thousands from the UU Bar’s previous owner before proposing a similar trade only makes the deals smell worse.
The story also revealed how easy it is for those pushing these swaps to hide basic facts. The story ends with Stanley in the high country “sweeping his arm across the unspoiled area before him,” and saying, “This is what I’m giving them.”
Not surprisingly, Stanley failed to mention he would more than double his acreage in the deal, getting approximately 7,200 acres in exchange for just 3,300 acres. He also failed to mention that nearly half of the land the public would receive in the two swaps is in a virtually treeless parcel of land next to the highway.
Mr. Stanley is a charming man, a good salesman, even “rangy,” “nimble” and “blue-eyed,” as pointed out in the story. But be careful before you buy the sales pitch.
Sometimes it pays to look beyond the blue eyes and focus on the facts—then it’s easy to see why so many people who’ve used the public lands around White’s Peak for generations oppose these lopsided sweetheart deals.
People who are persuaded by information from the New Mexico Wildlife Federation should take a look at the website: www.whitepeakland.com . The website counters the PR coming from NMWF and the AG's office. In particular, the lands involved in the exchange -- please examine the many photos of lands the State will be receiving (http://whitepeakland.com/Gallery.php) and it's clear that the NMWF is not telling the whole truth. The State will receive many quality pieces of land and while the State will receive some poor parcels in the exchange, so will landowners receive some poor parcels from the state.
The biggest misinformation I've heard the NMWF spread is that trespassing is not a problem. The department of G&F supposedly has data to back that up. However, what they don't tell you is that trespassing is next to impossible to enforce because first you have to post signs, and then the trespassers have to be caught. Last year the Stanley ranch put up nearly 200 'no trespassing' signs and within the first week of Bow hunting season 85% of the signs had been stolen or destroyed. They also put up notification signs and the majority of those signs were destroyed. They then installed hidden surveillance cameras and they were stolen within two days. This level of vandalism and disregard for private property makes enforcement of trespassing completely impossible. Further, most trespassers are hunters and are thus armed, and it's extremely dangerous to confront them.
Jeremy Vesbach, Executive Directory of NMWF, accuses Stanley of "hiding basic facts" by not saying that his acreage will increase. However, in that accusation, Vesbach is himself hiding a basic fact -- that the appraisal showed that the State will increase the value of its holdings, yes -- the state will receive lands of TOTAL GREATER VALUE than it is trading away. Since the acreage the State will receive is less, but the value higher, it follows that the average value of the parcels the state will receive from the Stanley ranch is SIGNIFICANLTY higher then the value the State is trading to Stanley ranch.
As long as the area is a checkerboard-quilt of private and public lands, there will be ongoing problems. Please see "The Range Wars", http://whitepeakland.com/The-Range-Wars.php for a brief history of the intimidation and even violence in the area.
The primary benefit of the exchange is that it will consolidate State Trust Lands, private lands, and thus relieve a patchwork mosaic of public/private lands and produce larger contiguous areas (please see the maps page: http://whitepeakland.com/Maps.php). This should be good for everyone.
But to trespassers, this is a loss since they have become accustomed to hunting on and trespassing on private lands with impunity.
Perhaps the exact lands involved in the exchange is not optimal -- I have no way to judge that, but it seems to go a long way toward resolving a decades-old and very serious problem.
I don't know if the NMWF is mostly lying, mostly telling the truth, or somewhere in between. But when you catch them in a clear lie (the trespassing issue, for example), any implicit trust you give them is forever broken.