Despite attempts by the state Highway Department to accommodate El Paragua owner Luis Atencio and Speaker of the House Ben Lujan (D-Nambé), both men still refuse to give up land needed for a multimillion-dollar expansion of Highway 84/285.
The Department filed court petitions June 17 to condemn both men’s properties after they rejected offers for sections of their Arroyo Seco properties, according to documents filed in state District Court.
Atencio declined an $88,800 offer for about a third of an acre at the highway’s intersection with La Puebla Road. Lujan declined a $59,900 offer for a combined 0.41 acres from three properties he owns just north of Pojoaque Pueblo, court documents state.
Atencio declined to comment for this story and Lujan could not be reached.
State eminent domain law allows the Department to condemn privately-owned land needed for public works projects if the owner refuses to sell. Court proceedings determine the amount of compensation owners receive for their property.
The Department’s Inspector General re-opened investigations into whether Atencio and Lujan got preferential treatment in land negotiations last month after the SUN published e-mails between Department staff that discussed accommodating Atencio.
Specifically, engineers re-designed the intersection just south of his property, cutting in half the amount of land needed from Atencio. Plans now call for La Puebla Road to curve sharply before intersecting with the highway. That required dropping the speed limit from 45 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour, and Department staff have sought assurances from engineers that the curve is safe, according to letters.
The Department also appraised Atencio’s property at least twice at its own expense, although Department regulations state Atencio should have paid for the second appraisal and split the cost of any others.
All that came after Lujan arranged a meeting last year between Atencio and high-level Department staff such as Rhonda Faught, the cabinet secretary at the time, according to Department logs. In e-mails earlier this year, Adjutant Secretary Rebecca Montoya and District 4 Highway Commissioner Jim Franken discussed pressure from Santa Fe County Clerk Valerie Espinoza to help Atencio with the additional appraisals and the intersection re-design.
In Lujan’s case, Department staff discussed, and later abandoned, plans to change the type of easement required from him — a move that could have allowed him to keep an illegal billboard on his property. The state sent Lujan a letter in March telling him to remove the billboard, which advertises for Valley National Bank and Camel Rock Casino, at his own expense. He has not yet removed it.
Other Arroyo Seco property owners in the area without political clout have not fared as well. Charles Romero lost his mobile home storage business, which until recently was located across the street from Atencio’s property, to the highway project. David Segura is worried that the amount of land the Department wants will leave him without enough space to lease his commercially-zoned property in the future. Both men are also targets of condemnation suits from the Department.
Franken, Lujan and Espinoza have repeatedly denied allegations of favoritism, saying they would do the same for any other constituent.
The experience of Michael Loya appears to validate that argument.
Loya owns several construction-related companies surrounded by coyote fence along the highway, just north of La Puebla Road. He thought Department staff were not giving him a fair shake when negotiating for his property last July.
“They were initiating condemnation proceedings, and I didn’t feel they were negotiating in earnest,” Loya said.
Loya was not satisfied with a $600 offer to use 1,958 square feet of his frontage property during construction. He also argued that the Department planned to needlessly tear up his coyote fence and obstruct the entrance to his property, he said.
Loya called higher-up Department staff, and when Gov. Bill Richardson held open office hours to hear constituents’ concerns, he attended those too. He acknowledged he knows “a few senators” and one Richardson staffer, but said it was persistence, not influence that made his complaints known.
“I’m not the kind of guy who just goes along with things like that when I know it’s just plain wrong,” Loya said. “So I just went around them. I called whoever would listen until I got my point across.”
E-mails show that Bill Hume, a top Richardson aide, told Faught to “get Loya the best possible deal within the four corners of reasonable and best DOT practice.”
Hume said neither he nor Richardson knew Loya before Loya attended the constituent meeting. Hume said all he did was relay information between Loya and the Department.
“I’m not sure what the final outcome was,” Hume said. “I think nothing resulted, except he got some more information.”
Loya said the Department did not respond to Hume’s letters, and it took a letter from his lawyer to arrange a meeting with Department staff.
However, intervention from Richardson’s office did chafe Department staff, including Roxanne Trujillo, the negotiator handling Loya’s transaction. She complained in logs that Loya threatened her and name-dropped Richardson.
Logs show that Trujillo told Department director Lawrence Barreras she would not give Loya “special treatment” just because he was “throwing out names.” Barreras reportedly responded, “no one asked you to, but had this been any other property owner we would not be having this conversation.”
The Department has not yet fulfilled a public records request for its settlement on Loya’s property. Loya said the only thing that changed after his meeting with Richardson was that Department staff were willing to meet with him and hear his concerns. The Department also agreed to either leave his fence intact or replace it after construction, he said.
“They should’ve done that in the first place,” Loya said. “All I was going for was to sit down and talk reasonably and in a nice way and work out something that’s fair.”