High Court Hears Grazing Auction Sides
The attorney for a conservation group challenging rancher stewardship of state range has told the Supreme Court that Challis rancher Will Ingram abrogated his right to renew a grazing lease when he failed to bid for it at auction.
“The law required an auction, and an auction without bidding is a sham,” Debra Kronenberg told the high court in arguments on the first attempt by Jon Marvel and the Idaho Watersheds Project to wrest control of critical range from cattlemen.
Deputy Attorney General Stephanie Balzarini countered that under the state Land Board’s procedures actual bids are not required when state leases are auctioned. An applicant for the lease participates in the process - and preserves the right to challenge the outcome - by just showing up for the auction, Balzarini said.
But members of the court on Friday peppered her with questions that suggested their skepticism of such a loose definition of auction participation.
“What’s an auction if nobody bids?” Chief Justice Charles McDevitt asked.
In 1994, the Land Board, then chaired by former Gov. Cecil Andrus, awarded Ingram a new 10-year grazing lease on a 640-acre state parcel. Marvel, who has since challenged numerous other leases without winning one, has been accused of going after only the key tracts with water and barring cattle access, thereby leaving thousands of acres of surrounding dry range worthless.
The Land Board, charged with maximizing the financial return from state lands for public school support, has wide discretion in deciding which auction participate should get the lease and the bid amount is only one factor.
At the auction, Ingram declined to bid, Marvel followed with a bid of $30. Ingram appealed, and the Land Board sided with him because of the longstanding stable relationship between his ranch and the state and because his operation was under an approved grazing management.
McDevitt did not dispute the board’s broad discretion in awarding a lease even to other than the highest bidder. But he and other justices persisted in questioning whether Ingram was eligible to begin with since he had not participated in the auction.
“The term auction has a meaning of people bidding,” Justice Gerald Schroeder said. “If you don’t bid, you’re not in the game, are you?”
Balzarini reiterated that under the Land Board’s procedures bidding was not required - something Justice Byron Johnson questioned when the law itself did not seem to give non-bidding applicants such standing.
Because of the uncertainty created by the Ingram case, the state Legislature approved legislation in 1994 aimed at giving grazing preference for renewal of their leases.