By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
A bill to protect members of the New Mexico State Game Commission from political pressure from the Governor’s Office has passed the Legislature and is now awaiting the governor’s signature.
The legislation, HB 184, is sponsored by Rep. Matthew McQueen, (D-Galisteo) and Sen. Crystal R. Diamond, (R-Elephant Butte). Both sponsors have said that years of turmoil at the game commission under Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham prompted them to seek reform.
The House concurred with Senate amendments on the bill on Thursday evening, sending it to the governor’s desk.
Under existing 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 also being painfully slow to fill several commission vacancies.
“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 said at a recent committee hearing on the bill.
Diamond also has said 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,” she said recently.
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 with particular qualifications. 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 New Mexico Wildlife Federation, said Friday that he encourages all New Mexico hunters and anglers to contact Lujan Grisham to express their support for her signing the legislation. The NMWF was instrumental in creating New Mexico’s game commission form of management in 1921 with the aim of insulating wildlife management decisions from political pressure.
“New Mexico’s wildlife is owned by everyone in the state and the commission is charged with managing it for the benefit of the public,” Deubel said. “We need commissioners who are informed and who aren’t afraid to do the right thing free from political interference.
“The federation doesn’t see this legislation as an effort to take power away from the Governor’s Office, but rather as a necessary step to ensure the best decisions and outcomes for our wildlife,” Deubel said.
Deubel noted that the bill has enjoyed overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle at the Legislature.
“This bill was sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat,” Deubel said. “It has support from hunters, conservationists and the outfitters and guides. Literally everyone who deals with the game commission in any capacity is calling for reform. Our current system is broken, and everybody knows it.”
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 five members following the governor’s recent appointments of biologist Fernando Clemente, Jr., and Edward Garcia, who works in his family’s multi-state car dealership business.
Mike Sloane, game department director, has said he opposes the bill. 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. Sloane said anyone displeased by the outcome of a commission decision could bring a petition to remove a commissioner.
The reform bill has garnered support from a range of organizations that are often on opposite sides of issues before the game commission. In addition to support from the NMWF and other conservation organizations, Kerrie Romero, with the New Mexico Council of Outfitters and Guides, has spoken in favor of the bill. She said her organization has had a front-row seat to watch the dysfunction at the commission over the past few years. She said it’s clear that the reform bill will make things better.