Garcia Richard best for Land Commission
She can develop effective strategies and solutions
The State Land Office is responsible for the “management, care, custody, control and disposition” of 13.4 million acres of state trust lands in order to fund education in New Mexico. It is important that those lands be managed economically and responsibly in order to support education over the long term and to protect an important asset for New Mexico.
Stephanie Garcia Richard is the best candidate to become the next state Land Commissioner.
She is a teacher and understands the many ways that education is critical; she will be an effective advocate for education funding and is committed to doing what needs to be done to protect this important funding source for our schools.
She was re-elected to represent a complex district with urban areas and rural lands made up of tribal lands, land grants, public lands and ranching and farming. She understands the complexity associated with New Mexico’s land and it peoples.
She is a legislator and has a comprehensive understanding of this state and all its diversity. She has working relationships with other legislators and will be effective at the Legislature. She was on the House Appropriations and Finance Committee, giving her a background in the financial strengths and weaknesses of the state.
All of these are reasons to vote for her. But my strong support also comes from her understanding that information is necessary to develop effective strategies and solutions to complicated challenges. Good decisions require understanding what the problem is.
After a failed attempt to get funding for a collaborative drought vulnerability study by scientists — economist, demographer, engineer, climatologist and hydrologist — from UNM, NMT and NMSU, I had a few minutes the next year to describe the study to Stephanie; within another few minutes she had it in the budget. That one-year study was focused on the lower Rio Grande, and the information is now helping the parties negotiate an agreement to help bring water use into balance with water supply and avoid a very possibly costly and punitive court order based on New Mexico’s over appropriation of water. She is smart, decisive and strategic.
And finally, she has proposed ways to strategically manage our state lands and fight the negative impacts of poor land management uses and combat climate change on state trust lands by implementing aggressive water conservation and sustainability incentives, lessening the state’s dependency on oil and gas, and transitioning to a robust renewable energy portfolio.