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Director of the Office of State Lands & Investments v. Merbanco6/6/2003
ther and in light of the contemporaneous comments of the delegates, we believe the only method of "disposal" contemplated was a sale. That conclusion is consistent with the language chosen by Wyoming's first legislature immediately following statehood that state lands could be "disposed of" at public auction after being "appraised" and "sold" for a minimum price of $10 per acre.
The convention records, the constitutional language itself, and the first statutes are devoid of any mention of land exchanges. This situation is not unlike the experience in other states admitted into the Union in the same general time frame. In fact, the first mention we found of the general concept of exchanges of public lands appears in 1914 when the federal government amended the statute which created Yosemite National Park to pecifically authorize land exchanges. 16 U.S.C. § 51 (1914). Despite this lack of specific authority for the exchange of state lands, within eighteen years of statehood, Wyoming's land commissioner proposed to relinquish certain school sections which were located within Indian reservations in exchange for acquiring equal area of indemnity land in lieu thereof. Second Biennial Report of Robert P. Fuller, Commissioner of Public Lands, Wyoming at 11 (1906-1908). That practice continued through the early 1900s resulting in numerous exchanges with the federal government and the overall enhancement of the value of the school lands. See also Third Biennial Report of the Commissioner of Public Lands of Wyoming (1910); Sixth Biennial Report of the Commissioner of Public Lands of Wyoming (1916). Without question, these exchanges with the federal government could not have occurred had a public auction been required before the particular parcel of school land could be conveyed. The active support of both the federal and state governments was necessary to accomplish these exchanges, and no indication exists in the historical record that either believed public auctions were a condition precedent to the exchanges.
The constitution was amended in 1921 in this environment where exchanges were not specifically addressed in the constitution, yet the state and federal overnment were freely exchanging school lands. The amendment combined Article 18, Section 3 and Article 7, Section 13, which both provided for the creation of boards to manage lands granted to the state. Slight differences in the makeup and scope of authority of the two boards had led to confusion and duplication. The amendment created a new Article 18, Section 3, which combined the boards into a single "board of land commissioners," and applied the public auction requirement to the "sale" of all lands instead of only school lands. Senate Joint Resolution No. 2, Feb. 21, 1921, 1921 Wyo. Sess. Laws at 293. The authors of the 1921 amendment used the term "sale" and not the arguably broader term "disposal" to describe the transaction requiring a public auction. While it is difficult to make much of this subtle difference in language, it is indisputable that the land commissioner had exchanged thousands of acres with the federal government by the time of this amendment, and yet no attempt was made in the amendment process to require a public auction before an exchange could occur. Further evidence of the legislative branch's concurrence in exchanges without public auction was its adoption of statutes specifically allowing exchanges of school lands for both federal lands and private lands. See 1929 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 108, § 6 codified at Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 36-1-104 (LexisNexis 2001); 1935 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 76, § 1 codified at Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 36-1-106 (LexisNexis 2001); 1935 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 76, § 2 codified at Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 36-1-107 (LexisNexis
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