Land preservation measure may not reach ballot

An initiative to put more than 570,000 acres of state trust land off-limits to development does not have enough valid signatures to make the ballot, Secretary of State Jan Brewer concluded Friday.

Brewer said backers turned in nearly 370,000 signatures.

But she said petitions with more than 33,000 of these were rejected by her office. And a random check by county recorders of the remaining signatures showed that 125,580 others should be removed because they did not belong to registered voters or for other reasons.

The result, said Brewer, is that the measure came up more than 19,000 signatures short of the 230,047 required to put the measure before voters in November.

Patrick Graham, executive director of the Nature Conservancy, which crafted the measure, said his organization will take the case to court. Graham said he believes there are sufficient valid signatures on the petitions to put the measure back on the ballot.

That argument was backed by Charles Blanchard, the lawyer hired by the group.

Blanchard said county recorders disqualified a large number of the names for technical reasons, such as having an incorrect or missing date next to the signature. But he said courts are permitted to declare those names valid if there is "substantial compliance" with legal requirements.

Arizona got about 10 million acres of land from the federal government when it became a state in 1912. The state constitution requires that it be either leased or sold for the highest value, with most of the funds earmarked for public education.

About 9.3 million acres remain. Proposition 103 would amend the state constitution to exempt specific parcels scattered across the state from that requirement.

Proposition 103 has split the education community.

The Arizona School Boards Association voted earlier this year to oppose the measure. That group's key concern is whether taking what could be highly desired parcels off the market would hurt classroom funding.

But the Arizona Education Association, which represents teachers, is backing the measure, saying there will be no loss.

That's also the position of Gov. Janet Napolitano.

"If you take some state trust land and protect it, you actually elevate the value of state lands that are next to or proximate to that protected state trust land," she said.

"So the economics work out," the governor continued. "This is a win-win."

And Napolitano said the initiative would also give more flexibility to the state Land Department in how it manages trust lands "other than simply by disposing of them by public auction, which is what they're limited to now."

For example, she said it would let the state agency be a participant with private landowners in creating a master development plan for a community.

"That will hugely elevate the value of the lands that we have," Napolitano said.

Backers have so far raised more than $800,000, most of it coming from the Nature Conservancy. No organized opposition has developed so far, though the Arizona Cattlemen's Association, many of whose members lease state trust land for grazing, has indicated it might fight the measure.

And unlike a similar plan that went down in defeat two years ago, this one will not get a fight from homebuilders.

That's because Napolitano got the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona to agree not to oppose the measure. In exchange, the governor recrafted another ballot initiative, this one to fund roads and mass-transit projects, to remove provisions that would have imposed new fees on development.

That measure, Proposition 203, is facing the same uncertain future, with Brewer concluding that it, too, lacks sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot.

What Proposition 103 would do

State trust land, by acreage, the initiative would preserve, by county:

Apache: 17,540

Cochise: 82,715

Coconino: 36,423

Graham: 635

Maricopa: 62,661

Navajo: 3,142

Pima: 181,391

Santa Cruz: 30,242

Yavapai: 71,563

Source: Nature Conservancy