Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Election Day is behind us, which means we no longer have to suffer through the endless television commercials and countless mailers dripping with nasty political attacks. But it also means we’ve got a new governor about to take the reins of our state, and several other elected officials who will take office or begin new terms Jan. 1. We congratulate Gov.-elect Michelle Lujan Grisham and all the other victors and offer our thanks to all who put themselves out there so voters could have a choice in who represents them at the c...
SANTA FE — A national GOP group has waded into New Mexico governor’s race, launching a television ad Wednesday that features familiar attacks against Democratic nominee Michelle Lujan Grisham. Meanwhile, Lujan Grisham launched a TV spot of her own that links Republican Steve Pearce to President Donald Trump — in part by displaying a selfie that Pearce took at Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The new TV spots are part of a barrage of political advertisements hitting the airwaves with less than three weeks left until Electio...
It’s been a long, drawn-out battle, but a ruling handed down by a district judge in Taos clears the way for public use of several roads across private property to access vast tracts of state trust land in northeast New Mexico. The White Peak area in Colfax and Mora counties is considered prime hunting territory for elk and other game. The battle over access to the area has been playing out in courtrooms and elsewhere for at least two decades. District Judge Sarah Backus’ ruling is a huge victory for all New Mexicans, alt...
For those in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church who thought the fallout from clergy sex abuse scandals was over and dealt with, it is clear they were sadly mistaken. Public outrage has been renewed by stunning new developments, including accusations by a former high-ranking Vatican official who said Pope Francis himself looked the other way in violation of his “zero tolerance” policy on sex abuse. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania grand jury under the state attorney general issued an exhaustive report on sexual mis...
State District Judge Sarah Singleton is absolutely right when she points out that the “vast majority of New Mexico’s at-risk children finish each school year without the basic literacy and math skills needed to pursue post-secondary education or a career.” And she’s right when she notes that the majority of this state’s children can’t read or do math at grade level. Our state’s proficiency rates are downright appalling, and it’s unacceptable. Yes, we agree with her that education is vital to our democracy, and every child...
ALBUQUERQUE — The nation’s trade fight has come to New Mexico’s dairy industry, which is watching prices for its products decline and purchase orders getting delayed or canceled. And while cheese and whey are a big worry, there’s also concern about New Mexico’s steel and aluminum products, mattresses, cotton and salsa. On the horizon is the threat to the state’s biggest nut export — the pecan — once farmers harvest this year’s crop and start selling it, said Jeff Witte, who heads the New Mexico Agriculture Department. The l...
It’s official: The New Mexico Activities Association and executive director Sally Marquez will have the latitude to punish member schools directly should the association feel developments warrant such action. By a 59-12 vote, schools voted to confirm a referenda item that went out following last month’s board of directors meeting. With this now confirmed, schools — not only their athletes and coaches, but most especially their fan bases — have been put on notice by the NMAA. Boorish behavior will have consequences. “I thin...
Think of the literary character Fagin in “Oliver Twist” — an adult who forces children to live in squalor, commit crimes for him and take beatings. Now consider the case of a 7-year-old Albuquerque girl who the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office says was being prostituted by relatives, forced to fondle people’s genitals, in exchange for drugs. But this little girl’s nightmare is no Dickensian tale — it is all too graphically real, and right next door. At one point, the AG’s Office says, the child was dropped off at...
The Navajo Nation is commemorating an important milestone this year, the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of 1868 and the return of the Diné people to their ancestral homeland. From 1863 through 1866, more than 11,500 Navajos were marched to Bosque Redondo near Fort Sumner, a distance of 350 to 400 miles. It became known as The Long Walk. The Navajo people weren’t allowed to leave internment at Fort Sumner and return to their ancestral homeland until Navajo leaders signed a treaty with the United States on June 1, 1868. Of th...
The decision by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to assign the Department of Justice inspector general and a federal prosecutor from Utah to look into allegations of FBI abuses in its probe of Trump associates — rather than name another special counsel — has angered some in his own party who had been demanding another version of Robert Mueller. But the decision by Sessions is the better option for a variety of reasons. As Mueller and Ken Starr before him have shown, the special counsel adventure is virtually without bou...
There’s no question the nation’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps, is past its expiration date for reform. But cutting benefits for families truly in need and slapping a yuppie name on a prior era’s same old box of non-perishable goods isn’t it. Yet that is what the proposal buried in President Donald Trump’s 2019 budget request is being painted as doing — it would cut cash benefits in half for families receiving more than $90 a month and send them an attractively named Harvest Box instead...
While this year’s legislative session is focused primarily on budget matters, there are a handful of transparency measures that lawmakers are grappling with that could expand — or restrict — the information available to the public. And that public is who pays for that government, which is why transparency should be the rule, not the exception. Taxpayers should take note of the proposed changes and whether their elected officials are embracing transparency and its partner, accountability; and, in cases where confi...
“The Great Taos Bank Robbery” is a gem of an essay by the late Tony Hillerman, who captured the essence of New Mexico in that and many other essays and novels. Sadly, he could have had a field day writing about the bait-and-switch repeal in 2005 of the gross receipts tax on food that to this day is costing the people it was supposed to help millions of dollars. It was the equivalent of a government heist pulled off in broad daylight — and one that anybody paying attention knew was coming. Hillerman’s bank robbery piece b...
In large bureaucracies, things can slip through the cracks. But that absolutely cannot include 11-month-old babies. And yet it does. It is once again glaringly apparent that in New Mexico some children do not fare well within a system that is supposed to protect them. The most recent tiny victim is Ariza Barreras. She and two siblings, ages 3 and 2, were in foster care with the state’s Children Youth and Families Department. On Dec. 28, the children were placed in the Belen home of a respite licensed foster caregiver b...
New Mexico lawmakers reconvened in Santa Fe on Tuesday for a 30-day session in which their primary task is to adopt a balanced budget for the coming fiscal year. But this year they will have some “new” money to work with thanks to a rebound in oil and gas and a general strengthening of the state’s economy. These aren’t exactly boom times, but there is no question we have had some steady growth and major successes — such as the burgeoning international trade sector along the southern border and successfully landing the Faceb...
It’s doubtful that people with extreme views on either side of the Mexican gray wolf recovery plan will be satisfied, but a recent decision by the state Game Commission to approve the new federal wolf recovery plan strikes a blow for reason and compromise. The state in recent years, with the support of ranchers and over the objections of some environmental and wildlife groups, has been locked in a legal struggle seeking to block expanded recovery efforts put forward by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There were some g...
Just in time for the holiday season, here’s the perfect example of government taking more than it gives: n In March 2017, there were 53 appointees for various state boards and commissions waiting to be confirmed by the New Mexico Senate. n In December 2017, there are 69. Guess we don’t have to ask Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, what she didn’t get around to this year. But maybe in the spirit of the holidays we should consider the inability of Lopez and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth...
Contact information is out of date. Financial data is missing. Entire categories of contracts are empty. Six years in, the online database that was supposed to be the state’s searchable “sunshine portal,” shedding light on how the state of New Mexico does the public’s business, is obscured by the clouds of underfunding and overwhelming data. But state law dictates that state government get its transparency act together. Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque, a co-sponsor of the portal, says a lot of its information is outdated, miss...
In light of the heightened interest both locally and nationally in sexual harassment, it’s simply unacceptable that the director of the New Mexico Legislature’s administrative arm is refusing to release records related to two sexual harassment complaints at the state Capitol. Legislative Council Service Director Raúl Burciaga claims that one of the few exemptions to the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act — which excludes “matters of opinion” in personnel files from disclosure — allows him to withhold the complaints. An...
The fact that New Mexico’s high school graduation rate grew by 8 percentage points from 2011 to 2016 — or double the national improvement rate — is encouraging. But our state still has the second-worst graduation rate in the nation. That’s in part because the bar keeps getting higher as schools nationwide work diligently to improve their graduation rates, too. According to new data from the U.S. Department of Education, New Mexico’s high school graduation rate hit a record high of 71 percent in 2016 — well below the national...
Legislative Democrats are champing at the bit to raise revenue, and one way to do it is to remove exemptions to the state’s dysfunctional and burdensome gross receipts tax system. Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez campaigned on a pledge of no tax increases and isn’t about to go back on her word to New Mexicans. But she would agree to remove some of those same exemptions if it is done in the context of a tax reform legislation. Rep. Jason Harper, R-Rio Rancho, is willing to once again pour his heart, soul and exp...
Some conspiracy-minded educators who sit on the state Legislature’s Education Study Committee seem to think it’s their job to rewrite the U.S. history exam administered to New Mexico students at the end of the school year. Matt Montaño, the state Public Education Department’s deputy secretary for teaching and learning, was grilled by committee members earlier this month about what’s not on this year’s standardized U.S. history exam, which assesses students’ proficiency in the subject. He explained a number of test questio...
We have a two-word response to the dangerously misguided legislation being proposed by state Rep. Gail Chasey that would greatly restrict public access to police videos of people with mental illness. “James Boyd.” Despite Chasey’s well-intentioned goal of protecting the privacy of mentally ill individuals who wind up facing police during a crisis, the Albuquerque Democrat’s bill would severely undermine public oversight of police, their actions and tactics, and even departmental policies. That public oversight was key to...
When New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas announced his lawsuit against Presbyterian Healthcare Services in a July 11 news conference, he said the company had “engaged in a 15-year fraudulent enterprise,” had claimed more than $754 million in unlawful deductions and realized “a multimillion-dollar windfall” by evading taxes and surcharges owed on Medicaid premiums the state paid it from 2001 to 2015. The 43-page suit included counts alleging violation of the Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, violation of the New Mexico...
Despite the repeated denials and righteous indignation, what many suspected turned out to be true: The IRS under the Obama administration targeted groups for their conservative political views. It’s something that should concern all Americans, because they should be just as worried about an IRS under President Trump being tempted to do the same thing to different political victims. And for that reason, Americans deserve more than the IRS apology that comes as part of a settlement in which the powerful agency that strikes f...
