Karie Dozer, spokeswoman for Attorney General Grant Woods, says that the matter has not yet come to the attorney general's attention, and that she couldn't offer any comments about the appraisals. "It's best for us to see what somebody has sent us before we offer to comment," she says.
Former attorney general Bob Corbin says there is precedent for the AG to act. He once filed a lawsuit to get the state more property after the Land Department had agreed to an inequitable land swap.
"I said, 'We're getting a bad deal on this exchange,'" Corbin recalls. "So we went after them and we got a bunch more land for it."
Corbin says a citizen or a school district could also sue in an attempt to get a true value.
"This land belongs to the people," Corbin says. "When you start selling it for half price, you've got to have a reason. If there's not a logical explanation, then I'd look into it."
Sumitomo Sitix President Robert Gill declined to comment on the Land Department's handling of the appraisals, saying that his company had nothing to do with how the department valued state land. "I can say that we were surprised by the initial appraisal. We thought it was too high from what it was originally estimated at," he says, saying that those "original" estimates had come from appraisers hired by Sumitomo. "We assumed a number far less than what the [Land Department's original] appraisal was."
Gill says he was not personally in contact with either Land Department officials or Governor Symington at the time the appraisals were being produced.
He also claims to be unaware that Symington was in contact with his superiors in Japan.
"I never saw such a letter," says Gill.
Chierighino also says he was never aware of the governor's concerns about the appraisals, and he is adamant about his independence from the Land Department. "I did not know about that [Symington's] letter. I was not influenced in any way to come up with that value . . . and I think I adequately documented how I got from one value to the other," he says. "I don't do whatever [Land Department officials] tell me to do. . . . If they ask me to multiply three by six and come up with 12, I won't do it."
But he acknowledges that some people had fully expected him to follow the department's directions no matter how nonsensical. And Chierighino says they were angry that he hadn't.
Chierighino claims he was berated by some land-use attorneys who believed the land was worth only $15,000 an acre, and produced comps to back up their argument.
But Chierighino dismisses those figures, adding without a hint of irony: "You can find comps to back up anything you want to say. You know that.
