By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
SANTA FE _ A bill to protect members of the New Mexico State Game Commission from political pressure from the Governor’s Office is moving forward in the Legislature.
The Senate Conservation Committee on Thursday unanimously advanced HB 184, sponsored by Rep. Matthew McQueen, (D-Santa Fe) and Sen. Crystal R. Diamond, (R-Elephant Butte).
The bill already has passed in the House and now heads to the Senate Floor. If it passes there, the House will have to concur with amendments before it heads to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for consideration.
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.
Both 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.
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.
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.
In addition to the forced departures of Prukop and Vesbach, the game commission under Lujan Grisham has been plagued by several other commissioner departures.
This year, former Commission Chair Deanna Archuleta resigned less than two weeks after being elected chair. She said he needed to spend more time on her job with a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm.
Archuleta’s resignation left the seven-seat commission with only three members, not enough to make the necessary quorum to hold meetings. The commission is now back to four members following the governor’s recent appointment of biologist Fernando Clemente, Jr.
Sen. Diamond told the committee Thursday that the commission-reform bill was an attempt to bring some stability to the game commission and also to depoliticize it.
Mike Sloane, game department director, was the lone witness against the bill, saying it would not advance wildlife management in the state but could reduce representation across the state.
“The bill would allow representation from only four counties, and six of the seven commissioners could be appointed from just three counties,” Sloane said. “The potential exists that this would shut out those most impacted by a commission rule or policy – rural communities.”
Sloane said he also opposes the bill’s removal process for commissioners.
The bill would allow petitions to be filed against any commissioner in the state supreme court to remove them for incompetence, neglect of duty or malfeasance.
“None of the reasons for removal are defined in the bill, nor is there any direction as to who can petition the court,” Sloane said. Given the controversial nature of many issues before the commission, Sloane said frivolous petitions could be filed by people who disagree with a decision and believe that a vote reflected incompetence or neglect of duty.
Jesse Deubel, executive director of the NMWF, spoke in favor of the bill, telling the committee that the federation was instrumental in creating the game commission in 1921.
“For the past three years, approximately, the commission has been in complete disarray, very dysfunctional,” Deubel said. “And this bill is necessary to assure that we have stability at the state game commission.”
Despite turmoil on the commission, Deubel credited game department staff with continuing to do excellent work over the past few years.
Deubel said he also strongly urged lawmakers to support Senate Bill 254, a bill to increase hunting and fishing license fees to fund the game department. Fees last went up in 2006 and inflation has been nearly 50 percent since then.
Dan Roper, speaking for Trout Unlimited, told the committee that fish and wildlife management is central to the work his group undertakes in restoring and protecting fish habitat. “And it’s made more difficult when we don’t have a functional game commission,” he said.
Roper noted that groups that commonly are on different sides of issues before the game commission all support the commission-reform bill. “We think it’s time to try a new model in the state and we ask for your support,” he said.
Kerrie Romero, with the New Mexico Council of Outfitters and Guides, said her organization supports the bill. She noted the bill enjoys support from organizations that are usually opposed to each other at the commission.
“The one thing that we all have in common is that we all attend every commission meeting,” Romero said. “So we have all had a front-row seat to the continued inefficiency on the commission throughout the years. This bill really, truly would make things a lot better.”