SENATE MEMORIAL 47

51st legislature - STATE OF NEW MEXICO - second session, 2014

INTRODUCED BY

Ron Griggs

 

 

 

 

 

A MEMORIAL

RECOGNIZING THE BUDGETARY BURDENS CREATED BY THE VAST FEDERAL LAND HOLDINGS IN NEW MEXICO; PROPOSING A FRAMEWORK FOR TRANSFER OF FEDERAL LANDS TO NEW MEXICO; REQUESTING A STUDY OF THE MANAGEMENT CAPACITY OF STATE AGENCIES TO ACCOMMODATE A TRANSFER.

 

     WHEREAS, land ownership is a primary source of wealth, and a founding principle of wealth distribution in America was that the economy would be better served by securing wealth in the individual rather than in the government; and

     WHEREAS, starting with the Land Ordinance of 1785, the original land management policy of the United States was to promote private family farms while retaining small land holdings in each community to support schools and other public institutions; and

     WHEREAS, the promotion of private land ownership resulted in minimal governmental lands within the states east of the Mississippi river; and

     WHEREAS, as settlement in the western states grew in the late nineteenth century, national land policy changed with respect to arid states. While some lands continued to be set aside for schools and state institutions, under the Mining Act of 1866, the General Mining Law of 1872 and the Desert Land Act of 1877, the focus for most lands changed from private residency on land to economic production from land; and

     WHEREAS, the change in federal land policy in the western states resulted in the retention of vast federal land holdings in New Mexico, with some counties listing eighty-five percent or more of their land as federally owned; and

     WHEREAS, the federal land policy for western states resulted in the wasteful duplication of land management bureaucracies within New Mexico, with state and federal agencies doing equivalent work on adjacent lands; and

     WHEREAS, in recent years the president and congress of the United States have struggled and failed to find the funding to pay for all of the current functions of the federal government; and

     WHEREAS, the current federal debt exceeds seventeen trillion three hundred billion dollars ($17,300,000,000,000) and is growing; and

     WHEREAS, New Mexico's state agencies have the experience and expertise to carry out the land management and regulatory functions for resource production, including livestock grazing, currently provided by federal agencies; and

     WHEREAS, it may be mutually beneficial to both the state of New Mexico and the federal government for New Mexico to unburden the federal government from its management responsibilities for resource production lands within the state;

     NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF NEW MEXICO that the state land office and the energy, minerals and natural resources department be requested to do a study to determine the costs and benefits to the state of assuming responsibility for all federal resource production lands within New Mexico, regardless of agency jurisdiction, excluding federally reserved tribal lands; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the cost and benefits study requested in this memorial:

          A. be based on the assumption that New Mexico would assume management of the lands on January 1, 2016 and full title to them on January 1, 2036;

          B. be based on the assumption that New Mexico would share royalties from production on the lands with the federal government, starting at a rate of three percent with incremental and equal reductions in the royalty share every five years, until the title is transferred to the state, at which point New Mexico would retain all royalty proceeds from transferred lands;

          C. provide an analysis of the capacity of state agencies to assume the resulting additional management and regulation responsibilities, including any increases in staffing, equipment, office space and funding that would be required;

          D. provide projections of the resulting revenues that could reasonably be expected from the transferred lands and any other benefits that would accrue to the state of New Mexico; and

          E. provide an analysis of the liabilities that would be incurred, including police and security needs and the costs of remediation for any hazardous waste sites on the transferred lands that would fall under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, commonly known as the Superfund Act, or Clean Water Act regulations; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the state land office and the energy, minerals and natural resources department be requested to provide a written report and a presentation of their findings to the appropriate interim legislative committee by October 1, 2014; and

     BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this memorial be transmitted to the commissioner of public lands, the secretary of energy, minerals and natural resources, the governor and the co-chairs of the New Mexico legislative council.

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