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Friday, March 19, 2010
White Peak Swap Decision Delayed
By Phil Parker
Journal Staff Writer
The New Mexico Supreme Court delayed ruling on the controversial White Peak land trades this week. Instead, justices made like schoolteachers and assigned homework to attorneys on either side of the issue.
Assistant New Mexico Attorney General Seth Cohen argued the swaps of state trust land for private ranch acreage north of Ocate "undermined the fundamental constitutional requirement for a public auction."
But State Land Office counsel Chuck Peifer said the exchanges "perfectly conform with the (New Mexico) Enabling Act," which dates to the state's founding in 1912 and is part of the New Mexico Constitution.
Lawyers on both sides were given 30 days to draft briefs in response to these questions: Whether the Enabling Act authorizes the land commissioner to dispose of state trust lands through exchanges, and, if so, what are the limits on that authority?
Also part of the discussion is an amendment to the state Constitution proposed in 1990 — but rejected by voters — that would have given the land commissioner authority to make land swaps without putting them up for auction. The attorneys in the White Peak case were asked to draft a brief on what effect that amendment's failure to pass has on the land commissioner's authority now.
The controversy concerns State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons' plans for huge trades with four ranchers in what he says is an effort to eliminate a confusing patchwork of state and private lands around White Peak, to help eliminate problems with trespassing, poaching, littering and vandalism.
Many hunters and others claim Lyons is giving away some of the state's best elk hunting land and closing off trust land that local families have enjoyed for generations.
The Attorney General's Office recently asked the Supreme Court to stop the trades, arguing that the swaps don't meet public auction requirements for disposal of state trust land because the Land Office had predetermined who it would do the deals with — the ranch owners around White Peak — before ever putting the trust land out for bid.
Land Office officials questioned whether a ruling by the court sacking the White Peak exchanges could undermine prior trades made by commissioners. SLO general counsel Bob Stranahan said that, if the justices rule that trades violate the Enabling Act, all previous exchanges would be void.
"The big worry is that you have 30-some exchanges that have already taken place, to suggest they're all void," said Stranahan. "UNM has built a campus on a Rio Rancho exchange. There's some real danger to how far you want to take this. I wouldn't want to take back a half-built campus and return the raw land we got in exchange."
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