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Jerry Patterson, RLC Texas State Meeting, 2012/09/30
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Jun 5, 2025
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson address to a state meeting of the Texas Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC), Sep. 30, 2012, at the Holiday Inn in Austin, Texas.
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prompter but the Houston contingent is unfortunately one of the members of
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Congress that represents the Houston area is a lady named Sheila Jackson Le I
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I I call it I call her j a c KS o n l y Jackson Le just to kind of make her just
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to spit her up a little bit there's some folks trying to get in over there U
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she's the person never to get between a camera and Sheila Jackson Lee it is it is dangerous to your health U
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unbelievably dangerous to your health I know that because I was at a funeral one time uh for a lady who was really active
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in a in a crime anti- crime group in Houston um who died in the
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tww uh aircraft accident that went down off of Long Island I can't remember her name Pam lynner there's a funeral over
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there big church in Houston and I knew Miss lynner and I knew you know her husband and and at that time Senator
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Graham and I guess at that time it was governor bush you know people walk to the was a very high-profile funeral and
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so Senator Graham walks up and the Press is there and they stick the cameras in his face and the Mike would you like to
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talk to us about p lynner no no no no no you know Governor Bush came up well no I don't want to talk know we're here for a
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funeral and you see in the distance Sheila Jackson Le running from the
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parking lot leaping over hedge RS to get in front of the camera and so it just
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reminds me of all things that are wrong about politicians they're all kind of rolled into one when you think about Sheil Jackson Le but anyway I'm the land
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commissioner I'm the 27th land commissioner uh a lot of folks don't
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know what the land office does or the land commissioner does but I'll just give you a little background the land office is the oldest agency in Texas
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that's still in existence U the land commissioner is the oldest Statewide elected official not me
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personally but we've had a uh we've had a land commissioner longer than we've had a governor our first land
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commissioner was a guy named John bordon B rde en he was appointed primarily because he failed to attend the meeting
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and uh we have we have a letter in our archives of the land office and by the
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land office has a wonderful archive we have 35 million documents going back to the 1700s we have a letter from Sam
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Houston to John bordon said Dear John you know we CAU us seeking a commissioner for the land office you
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weren't there we picked you we hope you will accept and he did uh he had a brother named Gail g l
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bordon they were both Veterans of the battle of s centa and they both were from New York and Gail bordon later left
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Texas went back to New York and went in the milk business B okay uh he was an
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inventor really interesting guy we had some other colorful characters but what we do and got to have a little history
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here Texas became a republic um I guess you would say April 21st 1836 in her
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final battle of victory over Santana at that time we were about 212 million Acres assuming
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that the noasis strip that area south of the noasis north of the real bravo real grand as we call it now and we had a pan
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Hill that went all the way into Colorado we're about 22 million Acres we didn't have any cash we were in debt dramatic
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uh debt but we had to land U so Sam Houston negotiated treaty with Santa Ana
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uh and the boundaries were described when Santa was a prisoner at San jenta
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which makes the bargaining much much more favorable to your side if you've
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got your antagonist you know as a prisoner so he negotiated the boundaries as it was the Panhandle to Wyoming an
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offshore jurisdiction of nine nautical miles which is about 10.36 statute miles and that's what we were we didn't have
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any money uh we gave land to Veterans of a Independence gave grants to land to a
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league in a the league was 4428 Acres the labor was 177 Acres um and that's what we used for
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currency in effect U then we entered the Union in 1846 had a kind of a rough tenure as a
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nation because Mexico was always invading we entered union in 1846 uh we
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negotiated this arrangement in 1845 and what was interesting about our
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enterry into the union is that we were a Sovereign Nation the Republic of Texas
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and we negotiated a treaty with another Sovereign Nation the United States of America that treaty was ratified by both
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Congress of the United States and the Congress of the Republic of Texas so it's different than any other you know
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territory that became a state we were the only one that was really truthfully a nation and the treaty U ended our um
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Nation you know our nation status and made us a state that's a very important point but we ENT
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we entered the Union uh unlike most other states and that other states or other territories When you entered the
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Union you gave all of your land to the federal government and the federal government assumed all of your debt
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Texas uh we had a controversy at the time also about Slave versus free states that was something that slowed down the
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process so at the final analysis what happened was the Congress voted to um
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allow Texas to become a state ratified the the treaty and we unlike other
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similar situated you know territories or whatever you want to call them we kept our land all of our public land and we
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kept all our public debt which was about $10 million in our land as I mentioned was 212 million Acres went up to went up
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to Wyoming in 1850 in the Compromise of 1850 which was another issue about
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slavery and the westward expansion of slavery where it could you know that was part of it we sold the Panhandle the one
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that went to Wyoming and became the that iconic shape that we are today when we're about
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172 million Acres we're not really sure surveys in the 1840s were not all that
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good uh so we sold our Panhandle I think for about somewhere between 10 to5
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million we paid off our debt had a little bit left uh and we kept our remaining land which we used to our
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benefit we gave land to railroads to build track we gave land to companies to build ports and waterways we gave land
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to companies to uh to dredge channels uh and we gave
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land to a company to build the capital we were we were still land rich and cash for U so over the years Texas has
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evolved into a state that is approximately depending on how you measure it somewhere between 92 and
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[Music] 97% privately own the surface area of
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Texas is you know more than any other West state in fact probably is a percentage more than any other state is
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owned by private private parties by citizens the rest of it's owned by the national the federal estate the local
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governments most of that is military installation such as Fort Bliss or for
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Hood uh for state land it's either prisons or Parks uh and then we have the land that
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I manage which is University land and school land and University land is the
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pop permit University fund it goes to help fund the UT and ADM systems it goes
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one3 to Texas A&M and 2/3 to University of Texas I'm told that's because the
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agies got first choice I'm not sure that's accurate uh and that's about 2.1
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million acres and it's a lot of oil and gas royalty income matter of fact this last week this past Tuesday in one day
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we made $44 million in a bid sale and we put the tracks of land up for
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competitive bid for oil and gas companies to pay us to go look for oil and gas and then if they produce oil and
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gas we get a Ry of about 25% of the well head price U so there's about uh 2.1
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million puff acreage there's about 700,000 surface acres in the psf there's
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about 2 and A2 million Acres submerged in the Gulf of Mexico out to 9 nautical miles that's oil and gas royalty income
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and other types of income and the land office manages all of that and we make
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about a half a billion dollars a year U most of it's been on oil and gas royalties but lately we've Diversified
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our income stream uh we have U we have a couple of renewable energy contracts
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there's no production but uh we have 125,000 acres in the Gulf of Mexico lease for geothermal and 125,000 Acres
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lease for wind and all we've gotten is money bonus royalty because there's no production so we're not getting
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production royalty um we even have a kitty litter lease in Far West Texas there's a
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certain kind of clay that's really good for kitty litter and that proves that I'll do any shitty thing in the world to make money for the
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children I have no Pride you know uh and we have a variety of other we do have
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something really interesting and really really pretty exciting yall have heard of rare earth uh of course depending on
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your age uh that's not the 60s group that is actually a type of mineral
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that's rare found in the earth uh but there's two kinds of rare earth there's
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the really rare rare Earth or the heavy Rare Earth and I can I don't know the names it's a ridium
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andium all that kind of crap and it's used for High-Tech stuff missile guidance system all these pdas all that
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stuff that it's rare and communist China kind of has a monopoly on the rare earth the rare stuff well maybe not for long
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uh because in hudspith County near a town called Round Round Top maybe Sierra
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Blanca close to Sierra Blanca which if you drive West on it you'll go through Sierra Blanca or you'll see the exit we
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have a we believe a rare earth deposit that would change the dynamic uh on the
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availability of rare be a big big deal for Texas and for United States uh the other thing I do is I manage the uh
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veterans programs Texas has always taken care of her veterans uh we gave land to
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veterans V uh we ran out of land to give away in the 1890s um now we have a program that
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provides low interest loans for Texas veterans to buy land you know dirt or to
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buy homes and uh our interest rates are about on a home loan we're at least a
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half a percent lower than Market in other words right now you can get a home loan for 3.5
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3.75 if you go to the veterans land board a veteran can get a home loan for right at three a matter of fact we had
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loans below three up to $477,000 and we have the land loans as
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well and then we have long-term care facilities and the other thing which is the most controversial most difficult
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thing that I deal with is the Texas coast uh that's a pretty difficult
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balancing act because you know beaches do not remain in the same place they
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always move and they frequently have been moving in the wrong direction if you're a property owner and when they
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move Inland I.E when they erode it changes your ownership uh that's the way
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it's always been that's the way it's going to be uh when you buy property on
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the coast there's certain risk you assume and the survey that defined that
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tract of land called to the Waters of the Gulf of Mexico and those Waters move
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they you know erosion or accretion and and that changes everything and so that's probably the most controversial
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thing matter of fact everything controversial essentially lately revolves around Galviston I don't know what it is about
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galon uh you know I tell people galon is like the biosphere except when you uh when you
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cross the causeway it's like going into the biosphere except there's no visible Dome uh it's a pretty interesting place
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uh but the land office is is a great is a great gig I love it I have people that work for me that make even me look good
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and U in 2014 I'll be leaving uh I'll be running to lieutenant governor and my
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philosophy of government is that we have too few people or we have too many people that are focused on their next
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office and whether they're going to be a US senator or president or
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Governor uh I got a great job right now it's not really a job it's a it's an Endeavor of Love uh it involves
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everything about Texas It All Rolls it into one agency but I really believe that we need somebody uh to preside over
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the Senate and to be a leader in Texas that really doesn't care about what the newspapers say about him uh about who
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likes him and who doesn't like him U and but who just believes in doing what he thinks is best without regard to the
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consequences and always tries to give people straight answers so having said that probably talk longer than I
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expected or or probably than you wanted I like to tell people that you know I'm your speaker my job is to speak and your
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job is to listen but if you get finished before I do feel free to leave it's
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happened before so uh but I'm finished for a little bit happy to answer any questions or talk about the land office
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or anything else yes sir how big is the permanent University fund right now the puff uh the total value right now I
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think is about 12 13 billion the psf is about 25
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billion uh they both went down uh you know about four years ago during the and then they've come they've recovered
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nicely okay and then uh what effect does that have to do on University tuition rates well
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we got this money that's set aside but we keep hearing that tuition rates are going through the roof how do they it's
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all part of the equation but it doesn't make a big enough difference U the the university fund uh funds only
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two University Systems a& and Texas and it's primarily used for Capital expenditures or for borrowing money or
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for issuing bonds because if you have cash Corpus you can issue bonds and you
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have it collateralized and you get the best Bond rating and therefore you pay
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the lowest interest rate U I don't think it has any significant impact on on
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tuition I really don't in the case of the permit School fund the same thing uh
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virtually all school districts that issue bonds have the Corpus as the ultimate um guarantee and therefore
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almost all of them have the highest Bond rating you can get if they don't have the highest Bond
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rating it's because something stupid the district is in like in you know issue a
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lot of debt when they had no uh growth to help fund it so U but it's a it's a
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very important deal it doesn't provide much money but it sure does help in the bond
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issuing which by the way we probably need to do something besides issue Bonds in the future
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Mr uh tell us a little bit about the uh policy for uh in the investment strategy
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for the for the fund uh we hear a lot about it having a strong position in
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Precious Metals For example uh
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well the permanent University fund investment is done by Timco University
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of Texas investment management company so that's a board Bo appointed by the
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governor and they are solely responsible for the investment of that
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Corpus what I do with the university fund is I generate income and I'm not
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responsible for any of the Investments now when you get to the perent school fund though uh I do have investment
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responsibility uh this is kind of a if you were to design if you were to design a way to manage our psf you wouldn't
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design it like it is today it's evolved and lots of stuff in government
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evolves and you know it's just bandid changed more but what's evolved to today
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is the permanent School fund is is managed by two entities one of them is the State Board of Education tea that's
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our 15 member board you know they're elected in districts they manage a portfolio of about $25
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billion starting about 10 years ago uh the land office sought and has the
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authority to invest in Real Property interest so my uh my agency myself and
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two other board members called the school land board we invest in Real Property interest now we could minerals
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are a real property interest whether it's hard minerals whether it's hydrocarbon it's a real property interest and we do have some investments
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in hydrocarbon uh oil and gas um um and in infrastructure associated with that
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but as far as precious metals I am I'm pretty sure that the psf svoe
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has some investment and as as does the puff but I don't know what extent that is what I'm limited to investing into is
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is Real Property interest and that's primarily uh real estate funds as well
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as direct investments in real estate and we do that and that's kind of controversial because when we do that we
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are in effect to some extent competing with the private sector uh so you've got to keep this balance here
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uh but then the other choice is if I have a fiduciary responsibility to grow the Corpus of the fund and to protect
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the public trust uh value then the choice is to bury it in the backyard I
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mean so we invest and U we invest primarily in institutional
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funds that have other institutional investors but we doing we're doing really well we our last 12-month period
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uh internal rate of return was was 13.8% and that included funds that were
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not invested they were just sitting there in cash because they have yet to be U called if you take the what we've
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actually invested we're doing about 22.9% and that is a very good rate of
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return so we're hoping it continues that way and we're very conservative I mean we sat on the we sitting on a lot of
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cash right now but we buy dirt we invest in real estate funds
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how long is the term of of the commissioner it's four years all Statewide terms are four years except
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for Supreme Court Court of Criminal Appeals and Railroad Commission those are six-year terms um but all the others
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Governor lieutenant governor attorney general controller a commissioner they're all foure
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terms the six-year terms are usually they they onethird of those are up at
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anyone time what which is really a pretty good uh idea I don't I'm I'm one that believes that you know I don't
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think any term for public office ought to be less than four years because it's just too many damn elections you know
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you got 150 house members and they're up every two years that means they need more money that means they're going to
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be you know sending you mail or they're going to be on the radio or on TV and
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members of Congress you throw in the members of Congress and then you go down to say a place like Harris County where
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they have 59 District judges 59 District judges and they stagger
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they're fouryear turns but half of them are up every two years you know you don't know your judges it's really but
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you know not withstanding we still do it it turns out fairly well we have a very very bad system of government but it's
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better than anything else yes sir um so this uh late
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commissioner is up again two years and you're our if yeah in 2014 and you're not planning running what what do we
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know who's interested I've heard a couple of names uh George P bush you
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know Governor Bush's nephew Jeb Bush's son uh there's a couple of house members
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I've heard um house May from Corpus Christie chairs
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of the calar committee Todd hunter Todd Hunter I've heard U
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um pardon I haven't heard heard him for land I've heard him for for white gub
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he's one of the cast of thousands that are looking at the lieutenant governor's race c will be to M epic I think um
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hager's looking at you know I've heard that but hager's kind of looked in com controller um and then there's another
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house member from Montgomery County but uh the only one that's uh I
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have to tell you George P bush came by the office and visited and I was really
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impressed the fact that he had a great interest in the office I mean you know
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what what do you do I mean the history of it I mean and then you know course when I leave it's all up somebody else
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but I've um have a great affinity for somebody being in there that follows me that understands and respects the
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history of that office and what it's meant to Texas um you know and how much it's done for Texas but that's what I've
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heard nobody knows until yes sir do you see a distinction
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between public private Partnerships and corporate welfare
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uh well yeah uh you know the P3 is what
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we're talking about now P3 the legislature passed a a bill enabling P3
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well the land office has already done P3 and that we invest along with you know
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we public sector invest with private sector and we get a return off of it so
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we do have corporate welfare though I mean it's I have to tell you one things that I've been pretty active involved in
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is our Formula 1 debacle um I mean it's it's a example of
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mission creep what happens is they passed a statute that allows the state here's the premise the premise is Texas
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is competing with other states for something whatever it might be all right let's say it's Formula One and the
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premise is is that if we put some seed money into that and attract for Formula 1 to choose Texas as the venue then
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we're going to make more in hotel motel s alcoholic beverage tax uh car rental
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tax and we invest that's the premise makes sense the problem is is the mission Creed Give an
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example uh we have subsidized the cotton ball out of this same fund this event
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trust fund now I'm wondering who we're competing with to have the cotton ball
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we have subsidized the Texas Allstar U Something Something game who
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are we competing with who is the Cotton bow going to go to New Jersey uh we we
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have we have spent that fund has gone from about $10 million in annual expenditures to about $75 million and we
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are going to subsidize Formula One to $25 million it's already
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here so is it an incentive or is it a reward and furthermore and the thing
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that's particularly Troublesome is that the statute requires several things one of them is it
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requires an application from the sponsoring City I.E Austin when the Formula 1 chose Austin
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Austin didn't know they were in the hunt I mean that's we have a statute we have a process and the process is
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supposed to protect abuse when you ignore the statute you set it up for
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abuse and we have example I mean for example the the AL the elow is
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subsidized I mean where's it going to go I mean is it going to go to the New Orleans super doome I don't know but
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what happens is with those things some there's Mission creep good ideas end up to have bad
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execution what's the current status on your efforts to uh preserve antiquarian
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documents well that's a wonderful thing um we have as I mentioned 35 million documents in
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archives uh we have uh documents going back to 1700s Spanish land grants
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Mexican land grants Republic of Texas land grants state of Texas land grants we have U uh a bonus or it's actually a
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bounty certificate which was like your discharge certificate when you were in the Republic of Texas army and it was
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for a guy named David Crockett and it says uh having served honorably the Armed Force Republic of Texas until
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discharged by reason of death on 6 March 1836 you your heirs are sander entitled 1280 Acres we had some pretty
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illustrative uh we have we have an issue today about uh about immigration and we
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have an issue today about uh whether you know bilingual balance or bilingual
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education well we have historical examples that are pretty directly on point um about that and I'll give you a
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little example you know this is nothing new in Texas about uh there are no new issues we talked today about well how do
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we educate children who are primary Spanish speakers and we use determ do we use the bilingual method or do we use
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the immersion method they had the same issue when we had a governor named Paul Ferguson James Z Ferguson he was
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impeached and removed from office for selling pardons among other things his
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wife uh shortly thereafter followed him into office her name was Miriam a
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initials ma called her ma Ferguson uh while she was the first lady
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the you know Governor selling pardons was so well known that it was said that if anybody bumped into ma Ferguson and
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said pardon me she would say oh no no you have to talk to my husband about that and then when she became Governor
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we had the same issue we have today we had children who were primary Spanish speakers how do we teach them they
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didn't use the bilingual in the immersion terms but Ma Ferguson was
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asked how do we teach children that are primary Spanish speakers and she responded about what I believe to be the most infamous quote in Texas political
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history when she said if English was good enough for Jesus Christ it's good
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enough for the school children of
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Texas I'm on the I'm on the ballot in this state I'm not going to argue with that I know what it takes to win but but
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that's that's so we have the same issues but in our archives we have a a wonderful document that I think is kind
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of telling we have a document called The Board of Commissioners of the bear district and it was 1838 and it was the
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land commissioner Board of San Antonio of of a bear county what is now Bear County much bigger at that time uh and
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in 1938 people would go to San Antonio to beard to prove up their service in their army of the Republic or to prove
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up they arrived here at a certain time and they would get entitlement to a land they would get a certificate that
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allowed them to go out locate land survey it bring it back to the land office file that document and get a
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patent well people signed in and there's a couple of pretty interesting names David Crockett signs in in 1838 we know
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he didn't but then it says by Robert Crockett his son and executive two spaces down a guy named Juan sigin Signs
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in who was a hero of the battle of Sano and who had been at the alamoo ordered to leave but what's really interesting
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about this document is you look in the column that says Nativity and every Anglo name is immigrant and every tahano
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name is native the first immigrants to this place were people who look like me
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you know U and furthermore the first illegal immigrants to Texas were anglos
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not tahos and they weren't coming across the real grand they were coming across the
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red and the Sabine and they were squatters uh you were supposed to be
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sponsored by an impressio such as Stephen F Austin or you know several others but no people just said no I
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don't have to do that I'm just coming anyway and I'm going to stick out a little place here and I'm going to squat
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and then when and then when Mexico outlawed all immigration in the in the
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immigration law of 1830 they did that for a period of time I think probably about two years then
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anybody that came whether they were sponsored by an osad or not was an illegal immigrant and they were coming
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so when I go to a event and somebody you know is so mad about illegal immigration they spit when they talk and I'm a I'm a
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fifth generation Texan I always like to say well did you did your family come here legally you know did you just make them
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think about it we have a long tradition of illegal immigration we have a long tradition of Border violence go back to
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1916 when we had you know Blackjack persing had to go on a punitive Expedition after Poncho via when he
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invaded New Mexico and it's Columbus New Mexico or the cross B this there's nothing new and a lot of it's all in our
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archives anyway lots of good examples yes sir I want to ask you about
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uh the effect of the land sales on local governments uh with regards to ad arm
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taxes I know um from San Marcus go down I35 there's some property there that has
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been uh involved that if it's sold the city is not going to get any of the
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adalum taxes off of that if people are there so that caused a lot of Rift with where other things were sold if it's
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sold they will get ad taxes but while we own it they don't and that and as well
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as the University Impact of those on local governments just you know kind of some general it's a really good it's a
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really good it's a uh when the state owns something we don't pay taxes on it
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so therefore if we buy land in in AES County and it was on the tax rolls and
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then we own it it's off the tax rolls uh however what we do is we do not buy any
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land that is not egg Exempted therefore it's on the tax rols but it ain't paying much uh and then
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when the good news is is that when we sell it it has an established value and we never sell it into another subsequent
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a use it's always been sold for development or subdivision so what happens is while it's in our U ownership
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either it's actually owned by the psf uh it's not generating any aor taxes but in every case so far it goes back on
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the tax rols at a substantially greater valuation than it was before example of that is in Chambers County uh we bought
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400 acre actually we did buy it but the net result was anyway 400 Acres owned by
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the permanent School fund uh was a Exempted um Walmart put a Port of Entry
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distribution warehouses two 2 million foot warehouses on that prior to our
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involvement the total adval arm taxation annually was about 6,000 after and this is interesting part
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of tax law uh we owned it we owned the dirt we owned the building and we leased
31:51
it back to Walmart so they didn't have to pay taxes on the dirt and building because it was owned by the state lease
31:57
back but they paid taxes on the business personal property inventory and the leasehold interest so their actual tax
32:04
revenues went from $6,000 a year to about 1.8 million and that was with the
32:10
dirt in the building off the tax rolls and now it's back completely on the tax rolls because Walmart bought us out as
32:15
was as was their option so the point is though be very well taken you have to be very careful over in burlson
32:22
County uh we bought a 10,000 acre ranch from a family from an Italian guy which
32:28
everybody said oh you're buying it from so and so and I said who's that I didn't know but from the Ben Ben Ben Ben benon
32:36
they make clothes I think I didn't know anything about them but it was like oh you're buying benon R well I don't know I don't know sound like anyway so we
32:43
made the seller uh make a cash payment to the local taxing entities
32:49
until the the ranch that they had was basically not operational until that the
32:55
local sales tax revenue increased to what it was before when it became
33:00
operational so we we we're very cognant you got you have a really good point though government owns it and a paying
33:06
taxes yeah okay uh be happy to answer any more questions and I'd be particularly
33:13
honored you know I got a website um you know please come the website if you want to sign up we'll keep you updated on
33:20
what's going on U and I have some bumper stickers here too if you're not sure you want to support me take a bumper sticker
33:26
anyway uh I tell people leave it in your you know leave it in your glove box and if
33:32
you ever have a leak in your radiator hose you can wrap around a regular hose it's it really does work that way but I
33:39
prefer they go in the bumper that's my first PR but anyway thank you all very much appreciate it thank you
33:47
[Applause]
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