Opinion ID: 891708
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Challenged Exchanges

Text: {73} For the following reasons, the four challenged land exchanges do not comply with the Enabling Act's requirement for a public auction. The undisputed facts on record show that each land exchange process involved extensive private negotiations with specific parties. Those private parties had significant advantages over any possible competitors. The Land Commissioner target[ed] the exchange lands as part of an overall plan, whereby the purpose of the exchanges was not to secure the highest financial gain to the trust through selection of the highest and best bid, but rather to accomplish other land management goals. Finally, the means for selecting the winning bid were not objective. Thus, the exchanges embody the elements indicative of favoritism that the drafters of the Enabling Act sought to avoid by requiring public notice and public auction. {74} In describing the Stanley Ranch exchange, the Land Commissioner concedes that the exchange would not have been possible or desirable to the state: In the absence of this kind of discussion and a bidding process that allowed for a single transaction in which certain trust lands would be conveyed for other lands which would justify the disposition, it is unlikely that any kind of transaction could be completed that would provide sufficient benefit to the trust. In other words, the negotiations that took place for the Stanley Exchange were the only way to accomplish the goals the State Land Office had set for that land exchange. Because no other parties had the opportunity to participate in such discussions that made any kind of transaction . . . sufficient[ly] benefi[cial] to the trust, there was no competition, no safeguards of objectivity, no openness, and thus no public auction. {75} The Land Commissioner insists there was no taint of favoritism. But the requirement of a public auction means that the people should not have to take anyone's word attesting to his or her objectivity. To the contrary, the Enabling Act chose a mechanism to protect against favoritism and stipulated a public auction to the highest and best bidder through open competition. The people did not select, and in fact rejected, private negotiation as an approved mechanism for the sale of public land.