Yesterday, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson basically said that, unless a state agency could sprout wings and fly a better deal to his door, the Christmas Mountains were going to be sold to private bidders. Most observers had expected the School Land Board to simply accept Patterson’s plan (and the public opposition and possible litigation that came with it.) But in closed executive session, Patterson’s privatization fell off the rails somewhat.
Superficially, what was adopted was the same as the Patterson proposal: the National Park Service has 90 days to come up with a rival plan to the private bids received. But that was actually the only point of similarity. No bid has been accepted, with both remaining sealed for the 90 days. More importantly, there were no preconditions. This meant the “poison pill” clause, that NPS would have to allow public hunting, was gone.
That complete removal of the preconditions was very important. As Dr. Ken Kramer, chapter director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club, noted many of the terms Patterson was demanding were the same things a rancher would do to propagate game species (even though, as Patterson kept saying, hunting wasn’t the real issue because the area is not currently good terrain for game species.)
But who came up with the new plan? Todd Barth, Gov. Rick Perry’s board appointee, said he was too ill to answer any questions about what happened in executive session: Attorney General Greg Abbott’s man David Hermann disappeared so quickly no questions were possible: and Patterson said he only wanted to talk about the singular point of consensus. So nothing to do with the fact that every public speaker (bar Mike Craddick, who was one of the bidders) wanted the land transferred to the Big Bend National Park.
This article appears in November 2 • 2007.
