Opinion ID: 891708
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: New Mexico Enabling Act and History of State Trust Land Exchanges

Text: {3} The 1910 Enabling Act provided for New Mexico's admission as a state into the federal union and set forth certain basic conditions for statehood. Act of June 20, 1910, ch. 310, §§ 1-18, 36 Stat. 557 (Enabling Act); N.M. Const. art. XXI, § 9 (adopting the provisions of the Enabling Act). The Act was adopted during New Mexico's constitutional convention, making it fundamental law to the same extent as if it had been directly incorporated into the Constitution. Lake Arthur Drainage Dist. v. Field, 27 N.M. 183, 190, 199 P. 112, 115 (1921). {4} The Enabling Act required that the people of New Mexico incorporate its mandates into the state constitution, and it specified that those mandates could not be modified without the consent of Congress and a ratifying vote of our citizens. See Enabling Act § 2; see also N.M. Const. art. XXI, §§ 1-11 (incorporating all Enabling Act measures into the New Mexico Constitution and making the Act irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of this State); N.M. Const. art. XIX, § 4 (providing for citizen voting on constitutional amendments); Bryant v. Bd. of Loan Comm'rs, 28 N.M. 319, 329, 211 P. 597, 601 (1922) (Congress contemplated that any change . . . to the use of the proceeds of the lands granted to the state should be effectuated by amendment to the Constitution, and the Constitution . . . provides that the ordinance accepting these grants of land is to be irrevocable without the consent of the United States and the people of the state, and . . . any change in the use and application of the proceeds of these land grants may . . . be done by way of a constitutional amendment.). {5} Section 10 of the Enabling Act governs state trust land management. The Act granted over thirteen million acres of federal land to the State of New Mexico, to be held in trust for the benefit of various public schools and other institutions. See Enabling Act §§ 6-7, 10; 1990 WL 110523 (Cong. Rec.), 136 Cong. Rec. 21,234 (1990) (statement of Sen. Pete Domenici); United States v. Ervien, 246 F. 277, 277 (8th Cir.1917). Our state constitution created the office of Commissioner of Public Lands, vesting it with the direction, control, care and disposition of all public lands, under the provisions of the acts of congress relating thereto and such regulations as may be provided by law. N.M. Const. art. XIII, § 2. This Court has long acknowledged that the Land Commissioner's broad authority to manage state trust lands is subject to the terms of the Enabling Act. See, e.g., Burguete v. Del Curto, 49 N.M. 292, 295-96, 163 P.2d 257, 259 (1945) (per curiam) (It's well settled in New Mexico that under the Enabling Act, our Constitution and the statutes based thereupon, the Commissioner of Public Lands has complete dominion, which is to say complete control, over state lands. This `dominion' is, of course, subject to the restrictions imposed by the Enabling Act, the Constitution, and the statutes, and the manner of its exercise is subject to review by the courts. (citations omitted)). {6} Section 10 of the Enabling Act defines the Land Commissioner's power to sell or lease state trust land, but also limits those powers. Sale proceeds are deposited in the Land Grant Permanent Fund and invested by the State Investment Officer for the benefit of enumerated public institutions. See N.M. Const. art. XII, §§ 2, 7; NMSA 1978, §§ 6-8-1 to -22 (1957) (amended 2010); NMSA 1978, § 19-1-17 (1957) (amended 2010); State v. Llewellyn, 23 N.M. 43, 70, 167 P. 414, 423 (1917). Proceeds from leases are distributed directly to the beneficiary institutions. NMSA 1978, §§ 19-1-11, -13 (1989). {7} Section 10's conditions include the proviso that state trust lands shall be by the said state held in trust, to be disposed of in whole or in part only in manner as herein provided.  (Emphasis added.) When adopted, the only means of disposal provided in the Enabling Act were sale and lease, under certain conditions. The Act provided that land shall not be sold or leased, in whole or in part, except to the highest and best bidder at a public auction with detailed advance notice to the public. Section 10 further provides that [a]ll lands . . . before being offered shall be appraised at their true value, and no sale or other disposal thereof shall be made for a consideration less than the value so ascertained, nor in any case less than the minimum price hereinafter fixed. . . . These conditions, crucial to our later discussion in this Opinion, can be summarized as follows: first, disposals of land are limited to the disposals described in the Enabling Act; second, land can only be sold or leased at a public auction to the highest and best bidder; and third, all sales and leases must yield at least the appraised value of the land. As will be discussed more fully in this Opinion, the Enabling Act imposed its conditions and restrictions upon the Land Commissioner's authority to dispose of public lands so as to prevent the kind of corruption and exploitation of the public trust for private advantage that had been widely exposed over the latter part of the 19th Century. {8} Over time, several attempts have been made to loosen the Enabling Act's constraints on land disposals by amending the Act to provide the Land Commissioner with authority to exchange state land, for land held by others without the constraints of the conditions described above. Only once have both Congress and the people of New Mexico voted to provide the Land Commissioner with exchange authority. In 1926, Congress approved an amendment to allow the Land Commissioner and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to exchange state trust land for national forest land. Act of June 15, 1926, ch. 590, § 1, 44 Stat. 746. New Mexico voters twice rejected the amendment before they approved it in 1932. See N.M. Const. art. XXI, § 11. Voters rejected another proposed amendment in 1935, which would have given the Land Commissioner broader authority to exchange land with the federal government. {9} Significant to our inquiry today, in 1990 New Mexico voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed amendment of the Enabling Act which would have provided the Land Commissioner with the very authority he seeks to exercise today. The proposed and defeatedconstitutional amendment would have authorized the Land Commissioner to exchange state trust land for land held by private persons or entities, among others. It was defeated by a vote of 57.7 percent against and only 42.3 percent in favor. As will be discussed later in this Opinion, we regard this popular vote as significant. The amendment would not have been necessary had the Enabling Act authorized exchanges all along. To the contrary, its rejection signifies that a significant majority of our electorate understood at least two things: 1) the Enabling Act did not authorize Land Commissioner exchanges, and 2) the Land Commissioner should not be empowered to conduct such exchanges. {10} Despite a history of uncertainty surrounding the authority to exchange state trust land, the Land Commissioner has for decades engaged in land exchanges with a variety of state and local public entities involving hundreds of thousands of acres of state trust land. Land Commissioner documents submitted to this Court indicate only two exchanges have been conducted with private entities: a 1984 exchange of 314 acres of state trust land for 200 acres from United Nuclear Corporation and a 2009 exchange of 28 acres of state trust land for 53 acres of land from Easter Seals Santa Maria El Mirador. [1] The Attorney General has not challenged any exchanges prior to the four challenged exchanges in the present litigation, and as will be explained, this Opinion does not affect any prior exchanges.