By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
As the New Mexico State Legislature closes in on approving a bill to address the chronic vacancies and political meddling that have plagued the state game commission for the past few years, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has named another commissioner – bringing membership up to five on the seven-member body.
Lujan Grisham on Friday announced her appointment of Edward T. Garcia to serve as an at-large member of the New Mexico State Game Commission. According to the release, Garcia is executive chairman of the Garcia Automotive Family dealerships, with operations in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and El Paso.
According to the release, Garcia enjoys fly fishing and serves on several foundations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
The Senate Conservation Committee on Thursday voted unanimously in favor of HB 184, a bill to reform the commission and limit the governor’s ability to meddle in commission business. The bill still needs full Senate approval and House concurrence with amendments before it would head to Lujan Grisham’s desk.
Sponsors Rep. Matthew McQueen, (D-Galisteo) and Sen. Crystal R. Diamond, (R-Elephant Butte) both testified Thursday that their bill is necessary to address recent game commission problems.
McQueen and Diamond emphasized that high turnover on the commission in recent years has left both the commission itself and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, which the commission oversees, in turmoil.
“For a long time, our game department has been struggling, and I think a lot of that’s because our commission has been struggling,” McQueen told the committee Thursday.
Diamond also told the committee that it’s clear that the game commission needs reform.
“Both the landowners and the hunters are teaming up with wildlife activists in asking for stability on this board,” Diamond said.
Under current law, governors appoint all seven game commissioners and may remove them at will. Lujan Grisham has taken advantage of the current state of the law, removing some commissioners while being painfully slow to fill commission vacancies during her first term.
The pending bill would require the Legislative Council to appoint four of the seven game commissioners. The governor would appoint three.
The bill calls for the governor’s appointments to serve at-large, with no more than one commissioner coming from a single county and no more than two from any political party.
The Legislative Council appointments would be reserved for people in particular positions. One seat would be reserved for a rancher-farmer, one for a conservationist, one for a hunter and one for a scientist. No more than one could come from any county and no more than two from the same political party.
All the commission appointments would be subject to Senate confirmation. The commissioners would serve staggered, six-year terms, up from the current four-year terms.
The bill would also specify that commissioners could only be removed in the New Mexico Supreme Court for cause. Currently, game commissioners serve at the pleasure of the governor.
Jesse Deubel, executive director of the NMWF spoke in favor of the bill on Thursday, saying the game commission has been in complete disarray for the past few years “This bill is necessary to assure that we have stability at the state game commission,” he said.
Mike Sloane, director of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, told the committee on Thursday that he opposed McQueen and Diamond’s bill. Sloane said it could disenfranchise rural New Mexico by concentrating commissioners in a few counties. He also said it wouldn’t advance wildlife management in the state and could lead to frivolous efforts to remove commissioners by parties aggrieved by their decisions on controversial issues.
Lujan Grisham has used her powers in her first term to remove two commissioners who didn’t support a game commission regulation that stood to benefit some of her campaign contributors.
Joanna Prukop, former commission chair, and former Vice Chair Jeremy Vesbach have said Lujan Grisham forced them out during her first term. Both said they were removed after they refused to support the commission’s “Non-Navigable Rule.”
Under the rule, enacted late in former Gov. Susanna Martinez’s administration, the game commission had granted applications from five landowners to certify that rivers and streams that crossed their private property were “non-navigable” and accordingly private water, closed to the public.
Prukop had imposed a moratorium on the commission acting on pending applications from landowners seeking more such certifications. Lujan Grisham removed Prukop from the commission in late 2019.
After Prukop’s removal, Vesbach led the commission in voting down other pending landowner applications in 2021. The governor later forced him out.
Lujan Grisham has accepted campaign contributions from landowners who had pending “non-navigable” certificate applications before the commission.
The New Mexico Supreme Court last year ruled that the non-navigable rule and all certificates issued under it were unconstitutional and void. The court ruling came in response to a legal challenge filed by the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups.
The Supreme Court of the United States last month declined to hear landowners’ legal challenge to the state court ruling.