Santa Fe's transparency regulations withstand final appeal - Associated Press
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge to Santa Fe campaign disclosure requirements stemming from a failed city ballot initiative in 2017 to tax sugary beverages.
The 10th District Court of Appeals in Denver last year rejected the lawsuit from the Albuquerque-based Rio Grande Foundation that sought to shield future financial contributions from public disclosure in defiance of requirements enacted by the city of Santa Fe. That ruling now stands.
The failed city ballot initiative would have shored up spending on early childhood education. It was marked by millions of dollars in campaign spending.
The Rio Grande Foundation issued an online video that was critical of the soda tax proposal, prompting an investigation into possible violations of the city's campaign finance code.
The foundation complied with a city order and disclosed two relatively minor donations of $7,700. Later it sought to invalidate the city regulations, citing a "chilling effect" on political contributions and, thus, free speech.
The appeals court said the Rio Grande Foundation failed to show that speech would be silenced by the city's campaign finance regulations.
Foundation President Paul Gessing said Monday that the group "will more carefully consider restrictive local campaign finance rules if (and) when we choose to engage in efforts to educate voters on local ballot measures like Santa Fe's soda and sugary drinks tax."
The city's defense was supported by several advocacy groups for transparency in political spending, including the Brennan Center for Justice, New Mexico Ethics Watch, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause.
"Special interests often run elections ads that are deliberately misleading, and today's ruling means Santa Fe voters will be able to weigh the credibility of those ads and cast an informed vote," Paul Smith, a vice president at the Campaign Legal Center that served as defense counsel, said in a statement.
Police deny permit requests from Albuquerque 4/20 festival - Associated Press
Organizers of an Albuquerque festival for 4/20, the date known for celebrating marijuana, have had two permits denied by local police.
The 420 Fest, scheduled for Wednesday in downtown Albuquerque, had submitted permit requests for streets to be blocked off.
Melissa Thompson, New Mexico 420 Fest organizer, told KOB-TV that she and her team have been communicating with the city about this since June.
Police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the request was rejected because the department doesn't have the manpower to block off streets in the middle of the work week. Officers already have to shut down roads in the same area at night because of traffic around the bars.
The 420 Fest has been an ongoing event for six years but was shelved during the pandemic. Thompson says thousands of people are expected to show up.
While recreational marijuana is now permitted, attendees won't be able to buy or consume any because they'll be out in public.
This month New Mexico joined 17 other states that have legalized recreation marijuana without significant legal challenges.
The change came 15 years after the state first began offering medical marijuana.
US wildlife officials aim to address illegal wolf killings - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
Prompted by a court order, federal wildlife managers have issued a new draft plan for managing Mexican gray wolves in the Southwestern U.S. in an effort to address illegal killings of the endangered predators.
The plan calls for millions of dollars to be spent over the coming decades on more education, outreach, increased law enforcement patrols and other projects to boost the wolf population across its historic range in Arizona, New Mexico and in Mexico.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported that Mexican wolves saw their numbers increase for another consecutive year but that overall growth of the population has been tempered in part by human-caused mortalities, which include illegal killings and being struck by vehicles.
The draft made public last week is meant to address the longstanding concerns of environmentalists who claim the agency is not doing enough to ensure the recovery of the species. While encouraged by the proposed changes to address what they call conflict hot spots, some environmentalists say pressure on the wolves will continue until the recovery area is expanded and the predators are allowed to roam.
Bryan Bird with Defenders of Wildlife said his group believes the revisions should have considered an expansion northward into the Grand Canyon and southern Rocky Mountains.
"Though the proposed revisions improve this imperiled animal's chances at survival, Defenders remains concerned the plan still fails to prescribe what is needed for full recovery of the world's most endangered subspecies of wolf," he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, federal and state managers still struggle to curb wolf-livestock conflicts. Ranchers in Arizona and New Mexico say wolves continue to kill cattle despite efforts to scare the animals away from herds using tools that range from flagging along fence lines, riders on horseback, pasture rotations and even diversionary food caches.
Under the plan, the wolf recovery team would do more outreach in local communities "to improve hunter, trapper, rancher and public awareness and tolerance." That would include handing out materials with biological information about the animals and conflict reduction techniques.
Wildlife managers also want to increase law enforcement patrols in areas identified as mortality hot spots to help with public education, the deterrence of illegal killing and the investigation of wolf mortalities.
"We added this action because we expect the presence of increased law enforcement to have a chilling effect on the intentional illegal killing of Mexican wolves," officials stated in documents supporting the revisions.
Michael Robinson with the Center for Biological Diversity noted that fewer than 10 people have pleaded guilty to illegally killing wolves and that many of the cases go unsolved.
According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, about three-quarters of documented Mexican wolf deaths in the recovery area between 1998 and 2020 were attributed to human causes. Illegal killing counted for 119 of the 216 documented mortalities. Vehicle strikes were a distant second, and many causes of death were listed as unknown.
Wildlife officials say modeling used for the recovery plan suggests that the Mexican gray wolf population could grow or remain stable as long the mean mortality rate is less than 25% and if mortality among pups remains low at 13%. Officials describe the current rate of human-caused wolf deaths as excessive.
The Fish and Wildlife Service expects recovery of the species to take between 25 and 35 years, with the estimated cost nearing $203 million. The agency's estimates show that the price tag for reducing human-caused mortalities of Mexican gray wolves in the U.S. is expected to top $6 million over the next 25 years, with expenses likely increasing each year.
In the recovery plan, federal officials also say they will continue to seek additional funding for programs designed to offset the wolves' direct and indirect costs to ranchers.
Remaining evacuation orders lifted in Southern New Mexico wildfire - Associated Press
A wind-driven wildfire in southern New Mexico that destroyed more than 200 homes now is 80% contained and, authorities said Sunday, all remaining evacuation orders have been lifted.
"It's great to get folks back in their homes, especially it being Easter weekend," Southwest Incident Commander Dave Bales said at a community meeting for Village of Ruidoso residents Saturday night.
The wildfire that started Tuesday and killed two people remains under investigation.
New Mexico State Police said they still were awaiting confirmation on the identities of the couple who died.
The two bodies were found after worried family members contacted police, saying the elderly couple had planned to evacuate Tuesday when the fire exploded but were unaccounted for later that day.
Evacuation orders began to be lifted late Friday and covered about 60% of the estimated 4,500 people ordered to leave their homes.
Two areas that remained under mandatory evacuations — Gavilan Canyon and Lower Eagle Creek — had the orders lifted Sunday morning.
As of Saturday, the fire had burned 9.6 square miles of timber and brush.
Hobbs woman OK after being attacked by 5 pit bulls - Associated Press
A Hobbs woman is recovering after police say she was mauled by five dogs.
Hobbs police said in a news release Monday the 46-year-old woman was recuperating at home.
The incident happened Saturday after she was dropped off at a friend's house. Police determined she had been walking when five pit bulls attacked her.
Investigators say the woman fended the dogs off with a knife.
Officers responding to the scene initially only found ripped clothing and blood in the street but no victim. They eventually located her.
One pit bull was found dead. A second was euthanized by animal control officers at the scene due to its grave injuries.
The woman has since been treated and is recuperating at home.
Police say four of the dogs belonged to a 61-year-old Ricardo Garcia. The fifth was a stray.
Garcia told officers he had no idea his pit bulls were on the loose. He has since given up his rights to the remaining dogs. They will be quarantined and then euthanized.
Garcia has been cited in city court for four counts of animals running at large as well as for not having rabies vaccinations or licenses for the dogs. He was summoned earlier this month because one pit bull had been running freely.
Advocacy center offers haven for victims of rape, abuse - By Joline Gutierrez Krueger Albuquerque Journal
The first time was a slap across the face, hard enough to force her teeth to clamp down on her tongue until it bled.
He cried then, hugged her, apologized, told her he didn't know why he did that, how he had never done that before, how it would never happen again.
Jess wanted to believe him, his apology, his promise.
"I actually felt bad for him," she said. "I shouldn't have. I should have paid attention."
It got worse. Much worse until finally he was charged with sexually assaulting her one drunken night in a parking lot.
Jess tells her story now, midway through Sexual Assault Awareness Month, to help others who don't pay attention to what they should and to talk about what saved her and what she hopes will save others, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The 38-year-old Albuquerque woman said she and Cameron Hines, 37, began dating around 2014 or 2015. He was charismatic and athletic, the life of the party. She was a single mom from a small eastern New Mexico town working on her college degree.
The slap came six months into their relationship after he had seen a text on her phone from a male friend, she said. After that, she said he began isolating her from their friends. Verbal abuse turned to physical abuse and humiliation.
"I kept taking it and taking it," she said. "You keep thinking they can change, be better."
She never reported anything.
By March 2018, she finally had enough.
But it wasn't over. She told an Albuquerque police detective that he sometimes drove by her house, made obscene gestures and shouted vulgar names at her.
And she wasn't entirely over him. In a moment of weakness and intoxication that September, she called him and asked him to drive her home from a Panera Bread parking lot, she said.
"He got into my passenger seat and immediately started verbal abuse, accusing me of having sex with other men, grabbing my face to make me look at him, calling me a whore," she wrote in her narrative to police.
He dumped items in her purse out of the car, poured something on her head, blocked her passenger door with his car, got back into the car and raped her, despite her pleas for him to stop, she wrote.
She awoke the next morning at home, still in the same clothes, twisted and stained, her legs scratched and bruised, she said.
"I was hysterical. I needed something, someone, but I didn't know what."
But her counselor did.
That day with her counselor's help, she arrived at the offices of the Albuquerque Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners in the Family Advocacy Center, a one-stop location for agencies dedicated to aiding victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
SANE nurses see survivors in the raw moments of acute trauma, or whenever the survivors make the decision to get help. They examine and collect forensic evidence, provide medical care and hold the hand of the survivor through the process, offering services, suggestions and support.
"Some of that day is blank to me, but what I remember was the kind, compassionate way I was treated," Jess said.
No one made her feel shame or to blame for what happened, she said. At SANE, an agency she had never heard of until then, she felt safe.
Going to SANE does not obligate a patient to report the assault to law enforcement, said Connie Monahan, executive director of the local program. Although it's best to see a patient within five days of a rape, she hopes victims will come in when they are ready.
Jess agreed to report the assault to Albuquerque police, but the case languished until Nov. 9, 2020, when the Bernalillo County District Attorney's Office charged Hines with two counts of felony criminal sexual penetration and one count of criminal sexual contact.
Less than three months later, Hines pleaded guilty to the two felony charges, with the third charge dropped, in exchange for a conditional discharge contingent upon his successfully completing five years of probation.
If Hines stays out of trouble and away from Jess; receives counseling or treatment for domestic violence, sexual assault, alcohol or substance abuse and anger management; and abides by the usual probation restrictions, the case will simply disappear.
The plea agreement, signed in April 2021, was approved by both parties and granted by state District Judge Clara Moran. Jess said she was told Hines' lack of a violent criminal history weighed heavily in his favor.
"It's barely a slap on the wrist," Jess said. "He was never in jail, never arrested, never in handcuffs, never made to register as a sex offender. There should be more accountability. Being a first-time offender may just be the first time the offender was caught."
In an ironic twist, Hines' new attorney Rachel Walker Al-Yasi has asked the court to set aside the judgment and allow Hines to withdraw his plea, arguing that Hines agreed to the plea because he was afraid of his former attorney, Adam Oakey, a former martial arts fighter.
In the motion filed December 2021, Walker Al-Yasi states that Oakey punched Hines, yelled at him and told him the plea would allow him to continue working as an Albuquerque Public Schools teacher, coach sports and take his national boards in radiology, none of which proved true.
No date has been set to hear the motion.
Regardless of what happened in her court case, Jess said her experience with SANE helped her to heal.
"I wanted to share my experience with SANE and to encourage others to seek their help," Jess said. "You have to take care of yourself, find your way to heal, because you can't do it yourself and the universe isn't going to do that for us."
Roswell police: 2 teens found dead at park in homicide case - Associated Press
Two teenage boys have been fatally shot at a Roswell park and police said the case is being investigated as a homicide.
Police believe the teens — ages 15 and 16 — were found dead at Cahoon Park and were there to buy a gun.
The names of the victims weren't immediately available.
Police said officers were called to the scene around 5 p.m. Saturday
According to investigators, the two teens were in a parked car when another car arrived.
Police said multiple people got out of the second car and at least two people shot at the teenagers.
One of the victims was found inside the vehicle and another was on the ground nearby.
Police said they still are searching for suspects in the case.
Some state lawmakers calling it quits, can't afford to serve - By Susan Haigh Associated Press
When trying to decide whether to seek a fourth term in the Connecticut House of Representatives, Rep. Joe de la Cruz ran the question by his wife, whom he jokingly refers to as his lawyer and financial adviser.
While Tammy de la Cruz didn't want to discourage her 51-year-old husband from stepping away from the part-time job he has grown to love, she acknowledged it didn't make financial sense for him run again in November.
"The retirement planner in her didn't even have to use a calculator to do the math," Joe de la Cruz, a Democrat, told fellow House members when he announced in February that he's not seeking reelection. "The $30,000 a year we make to do this illustrious job, the one that we all really care for, is truly not enough to live on. It's truly not enough to retire on."
Lawmakers in other states, often those with part-time "citizen" legislatures, have raised similar complaints. In Oregon, where the base pay is about $33,000 a year, three female state representatives announced in March they are not seeking reelection because they can't afford to support their families on a part-time salary for what's really full-time work. They called the situation "unsustainable" in a joint resignation letter.
Connecticut legislators haven't seen an increase in their $28,000 base pay in 21 years.
While it varies by state as to how legislative salaries are adjusted, bills increasing legislator pay were proposed in several states this year, including Connecticut, Georgia, Oregon, and New Mexico, which is the nation's only unsalaried legislature. So far the bills have faltered as some lawmakers fear rankling voters by approving their own pay raises.
It's also not clear whether higher salaries ultimately lead to more diversified legislatures, something proponents of pay raises say is at risk. A 2016 study published in the American Political Science Review determined there was "surprisingly little empirical evidence" that raising politicians' salaries would encourage more working-class people to run for political office. The study found that higher salaries "don't seem to make political office more attractive to workers; they seem to make it more attractive to professionals who already earn high salaries."
Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said he believes that low pay, coupled with the threats and picketing some lawmakers and their families have received over issues like COVID-19 rules, will discourage people of modest means from running. And that often means people of color.
"It makes it more challenging for people who don't have a lot of free time and need to rely on income to be able to perform their public service," he said. "And it does make it an occupation that becomes more limited to the wealthy. And the wealthy in this country tend to be more white than people of color."
In Washington, Democratic Sen. Mona Das, a child of immigrants from India who was first elected in 2018, recently announced on Facebook that she's not seeking reelection. Part of the reason, she said, is the difficulty she's had in meeting her financial obligations on a state Senate salary. Senators in Washington earn $56,881 a year plus a per diem to offset living expenses when the legislature is in session. That per diem jumped from up to $120 a day to up to $185 a day this year while the salary is scheduled to increase to $57,876 on July 1.
This year, roughly 71% of state legislators are white, 9% Black, 6% Hispanic and 2% Asian or Hawaiian, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legislative chambers continue to remain male-dominated on average. Nationally, around 29% of state lawmakers are women, up from about 25% five years ago.
There are roughly 1,600 millennial and Gen Z individuals serving in state legislatures and in Congress nationwide, and the Millennial Action Project said that number has grown in recent years. Reggie Paros, chief program officer for the nonpartisan organization that supports legislators and members of Congress born after 1980, said younger lawmakers haven't been in the workforce long enough to establish the financial stability needed to make up for a low-paying legislative job.
"That financial barrier is one of the biggest struggles for getting into public office," Paros said.
Political polarization is another potential deterrent for new participants.
"I think it becomes harder to make an argument for a lot of people that they should put themselves into the political maelstrom at what could come as a considerable cost to their families," said Peverill Squire, professor of political science at the University of Missouri.
His research on how and why legislatures change over time has found a "greater diversity on a range of different dimensions" in recent years. In Oregon, for example, women held the majority of seats in the state's House of Representatives for the first time in 2021.
"But that change," he said, "is perhaps going to be more difficult to achieve in the future if, in fact, the compensation that often gets offered for legislative services is lagging behind what most people during their working years would need to support themselves and their families."
When De la Cruz, a union sheet metal worker, leaves office, he said there will be no employed construction workers serving in the Connecticut General Assembly, never mind anyone who works as a cashier at Walmart or an attendant at a gas station. He contends it's important to have those voices of "laymen" represented at the state Capitol.
"It's a huge concern of mine," de la Cruz said. "Regular folks, like regular working folks, they don't see the value in other working folks up there for them ... They don't understand that my voice ... is about as close to a voice that they're going to have."
Connecticut Rep. Bob Godfrey, a 17-term Democrat from Danbury who has proposed legislation increasing salaries for at least five years, recalled a plumber, manufacturing assembly line worker and a meter reader serving with him in the House during his early days. Godfrey, who relies on his legislative pay and Social Security to pay his bills, said he fears the lack of blue-collar workers "skews policymaking toward the affluent" in Connecticut.
"We don't look like the state," he said.
In New Mexico, a Senate panel this year endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to provide a salary to legislators who currently collect a daily stipend of approximately $165 during legislative sessions and for travel. Democratic Sen. Katie Duhigg of Albuquerque argued that a salary would "really expand the universe of people who are able to serve," noting the legislature is "largely the rich and retired." But action on the proposal was postponed indefinitely.
Earlier this year in Alaska, lawmakers rejected a plan that would have raised their annual base salary from $50,400 to $64,000. It hasn't been changed since 2010. But the same proposal would have capped their daily $307 per diem for expenses like food and lodging at $100 and required receipts for claims. Some legislators complained $100 wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of living in Juneau, the state's capital, during session.
Sen. Mike Shower, a Republican from Wasilla, Alaska, raised concerns about the ramifications of low pay in a letter to the State Officers Compensation Commission, which proposed the revised salary and per diem plan.
"If there isn't a good compensation package," he wrote, "how do we get decent public servants who aren't wealthy, retired or have the luxury of a spouse with a good enough job to support someone being a legislator?"
New Mexico Bataan veterans remembered, but few remain - By Robert Nott Santa Fe New Mexican
On the surface, all the familiar ceremonial trappings were in place for the event.
The reading of proclamations announcing April 9 as Bataan Remembrance Day. The playing of taps. Speeches honoring the legacy of the New Mexicans who gave their lives fighting, struggling to survive, dying far from home in a campaign ringed with deprivation, starvation and torture.
Still, Saturday's morning commemoration of the April 4, 1942, fall of Bataan — the 80th anniversary — was missing something.
Bataan survivors.
For the first time since the New Mexico National Guard began hosting the Santa Fe event in the mid-1980s, none of them attended, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
Age, infirmity and death have taken their toll on almost all of the survivors. The New Mexico Department of Veteran Services believes there may only be about five of those men still living around the country. And the event was not held live over the past two years because of the health restrictions surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet, watching the hourlong ceremony attended by about 100 people play out outside the Bataan Memorial Building, Fred Armijo, son of the late Bataan U.S. Army veteran Manuel Armijo, said he has no concern the legacy of those Bataan soldiers will be forgotten.
"I plan on keeping it alive," he said, adding, in a joking fashion, "I plan to live to 100."
The commemoration is held near a stone monument honoring the Bataan campaign, and Armjio said as long as that monument remains, people won't forget.
He is well aware of his father's role in keeping the history of Bataan alive.
Manuel Armijo, a first sergeant with the 200th Coast Artillery, is credited with initiating the annual commemoration in the postwar years. Some sources say he started it in 1946, silently standing outside a downtown government building while holding a white flag in his hands. Other sources put that date at 1953.
Regardless, the annual April 9 event has become something of a cornerstone military memorial event, a day to remember a generation of young New Mexicans — some still teenagers — who left the comfort of hometown America to wage war in some faraway place few had heard of.
Little could they have known, having entered the military before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II, they would become part of one of the most violent and tragic stories of New Mexico's military history.
The Battle of Bataan in the Philippines — the first major military campaign of the Asian theater in World War II following the Pearl Harbor attack — took a huge toll on New Mexico.
Of the 1,800-plus New Mexican soldiers who fought in the battle, only half came home alive. And many of them, survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, came back physically, mentally and emotionally scarred.
From Dec. 8, 1941, to April 9, 1942, those 1,800 New Mexico soldiers fought alongside Filipinos and other Americans to fight off Japanese invaders on the Bataan peninsula. On April 9, Bataan's military commanders surrendered, though the soldiers wanted to fight on, despite a lack of weapons, food and medicine.
Most of the American and Filipino defenders were killed, captured or forced to march 65 miles through the jungle. Japanese soldiers used their bayonets and bullets along the way to kill the weak, wounded and defiant ones on what became known as the Bataan Death March.
Manuel Armijo, like so many of the men who survived that ordeal, did not like to talk about what he endured, his son said. But Vincent Lithgow, Manuel Armijo's grandson, recalled as a child sleeping over at this grandparents' home and hearing his grandfather erupt in pain — at night.
"He screamed in English, he screamed in Spanish, he screamed in Japanese," said Lithgow, who also attended Saturday's memorial event.
His daughter, Rachel Lithgow, only recalls her great grandfather as a little, wizened old man.
"It was hard to imagine him being young," she said after Saturday's ceremony. "It's hard to imagine his incredible heartbreak."
She, too, feels the Bataan story will be carried on long after the last descendants of any of the soldiers who fought it have died. Though she lives in Las Cruces, Lithgow said she visits the Bataan monument every time she comes to Santa Fe. It represents "a deep rooted sense of connection to New Mexico history."
"There's a lot of him here," she said as she looked at the monument.
Manuel Armijo died in June 2004 at the age of 92, his son said. His mother, Frances Armijo, lived almost six more years, dying in April 2010.
She died April 9, in fact.
"Here's my take on it," Fred Armijo said of that date. "My dad came for her."
Biden increases oil royalty rate, scales back lease sales - By Matthew Brown Associated Press
The Interior Department on Friday said it's moving forward with the first onshore sales of public oil and natural gas drilling leases under President Joe Biden, but will sharply increase royalty rates for companies as federal officials weigh efforts to fight climate change against pressure to bring down high gasoline prices.
The royalty rate for new leases will increase to 18.75% from 12.5%. That's a 50% jump and marks the first increase to royalties for the federal government since they were imposed in the 1920s.
Biden suspended new leasing just a week after taking office in January 2021. A federal judge in Louisiana ordered the sales to resume, saying Interior officials had offered no "rational explanation" for canceling them.
The government held an offshore lease auction in the Gulf of Mexico in November, although a court later blocked that sale before the leases were issued.
Friday's announcement comes amid pressure for Biden to expand U.S. crude production as the pandemic and war in Ukraine roil the global economy and fuel prices have spiked. The Democrat faces calls from within his own party to do more to curb emissions from fossil fuels that are driving climate change.
Leases for 225 square miles of federal lands primarily in the West will be offered for sale in a notice to be posted on Monday, officials said. The parcels represent about 30 % less land than officials had proposed for sale in November and 80% less than what was originally nominated by the industry.
The sales notices will cover leasing decisions in nine states — Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, Alabama, Nevada, North Dakota and Oklahoma.
Interior Department officials declined to specify which states would have parcels for sale or to give a breakdown of the amount of land by state, saying that information would be included in Monday's sales notices. They said the reduced area being offered reflects a focus on leasing in locations near existing oil and gas development including pipelines.
Hundreds of parcels of public land that companies nominated for leasing had been previously dropped from the upcoming lease sale because of concerns about wildlife being harmed by drilling rigs.
At the time, officials said burning fuel from the remaining leases could cost billions of dollars in climate change impacts. Fossil fuels extracted from public lands account for about 20% of energy-related U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, making them a prime target for climate activists who want to shut down leasing.
Republicans want more drilling, saying it would increase U.S. energy independence and help bring down the cost of crude. But oil companies have been hesitant to expand drilling because of uncertainty over how long high prices will continue.
Friday's announcement comes after Interior officials had raised the prospect of higher royalty rates and less land available for drilling in a leasing reform report issued last year.
"For too long, the federal oil and gas leasing programs have prioritized the wants of extractive industries," said Secretary Deb Haaland. "Today, we begin to reset how and what we consider to be the highest and best use of Americans' resources."
But the move brought condemnation from both ends of the political spectrum: Environmentalists derided the decision to hold the long-delayed sales, while oil industry representatives said the higher royalty rates would deter drilling.
Nicole Ghio with the environmental group Friends of the Earth said Biden was putting oil industry profits ahead of future generations that will have to deal with the worsening consequences of climate change.
"If Biden wants to be a climate leader, he must stop auctioning off our public lands to Big Oil," Ghio said in an emailed statement.
American Petroleum Institute Vice President Frank Macchiarola said officials had removed some of the most significant parcels that companies wanted to drill while adding "new barriers" that would discourage companies from investing in drilling on public lands.
Lease sales and royalties that companies pay on extracted oil and gas brought in more than $83 billion in revenue over the past decade. Half the money from onshore drilling goes to the state where it occurred.
Most states and many private landowners require companies to pay royalty rates higher than 12.5%, with some states charging 20% or more, according to federal officials.
The royalty rate for oil produced from federal reserves in deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico is 18.75%. In the November auction that was later canceled, energy companies including Shell, BP, Chevron and ExxonMobil offered a combined $192 million for offshore drilling rights in the Gulf.
New leases that are developed could keep producing crude long past 2030, when Biden has set a goal to lower greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50%, compared with 2005 levels. Scientists say the world needs to be well on the way to that goal over the next decade to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Economists say a higher royalty rate would have a relatively small effect on global emissions, because any reductions in oil and gas from federal lands would be largely offset by fuel from other sources.