Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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SANTA FE -- The state Department of Health has issued a public health emergency order in response to an ongoing surge in children being hospitalized for respiratory syncytial virus — RSV — and other respiratory viruses. The order requires all New Mexico hospitals to work together to "reactivate and participate in a 'hub and spoke' model of resource management to ensure patients are transferred to appropriate levels of care," the department said in a news release Thursday. "We expand our social networks during the hol...
Lawmakers plan to take another swing at creating a paid family and medical leave fund during the next legislative session. Passing the bill won't be easy. Similar efforts have failed to make it through the Legislature going as far back as 20 years ago, according to a new task force report on the issue presented Monday to lawmakers on the interim Economic Development and Policy Committee. The fund will use both employer and employee contributions to pay employees up to 12 weeks of paid leave per year for a number of reasons,...
Many Americans take long-distance trips during the holidays, and some board their pets. Pet boarding has become a lucrative business — Forbes magazine reported in 2019 more than $6 billion had been spent annually on boarding and grooming services nationwide. With such practices, however, come risks. Dogs and cats unaccustomed to boarding sometimes become lethargic or depressed. There also is the possibility of a canine fight or a pet's exposure to an illness. Occasionally, a high-profile tragedy emerges. A dog fatally m...
In Steve McGee's view, every monument over a veteran's grave has a story to tell. But what if there is no gravestone or, perhaps, there's a marker with a story that remains unknown? McGee, an about-to-retire U.S. Army engineer who lives in El Paso, wants to uncover those stories — about 2,600 of them. That's how many New Mexicans died during World War II, either in combat or stateside, by his estimate. He's looking for volunteers to help him compile a database of Stories Behind the Stars, a national nonprofit initiative to r...
ESPANOLA -- Northern New Mexico College is expected to announce its new president shortly after Thanksgiving following a search committee’s interviews and community forums with four finalists for the job. Contenders are • outgoing New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas; • state Higher Education Deputy Secretary Patricia Trujillo, an Española Valley native who was a tenured professor at Northern and served as founding director of the college’s Office of Equity and Diversity; • Bruno Hicks, vice president of academic a...
One-third of companies that received taxpayer money in six recent fiscal years under one of New Mexico's signature economic development incentive programs failed to meet their job creation obligations, and the state allowed some of them to walk away despite their unfulfilled promises. Analysts with the Legislative Finance Committee reviewed 101 Local Economic Development Act agreements signed between fiscal years 2016 and 2021. At least 33 failed to meet their job creation requirements, which was part of the agreement to...
Regardless of how much money he raised or how many campaign ads he aired on TV, Republican Mark Ronchetti faced a steep climb to clinch the race for governor. Sure, the GOP thought the race was in play — one of the reasons millions of dollars were pumped into his campaign. Even Democrats seemed to be worried: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris flew into New Mexico to stump for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who was under constant attack on crime, education and the economy. But the odds were against R...
ALBUQUERQUE — Mark Ronchetti's dreams of reclaiming the Governor's Office for the Republican Party were dashed Tuesday, and he didn't make supporters wait deep into the night to know. A little past 9:30 p.m., Ronchetti took the stage at the Hotel Albuquerque to tell supporters his campaign would "likely to come to an end tonight without winning." The former television weatherman, who jumped into the race nearly a year ago, said just because you walk down God's path does not mean you will win. But, he added, you are "...
SANTA FE -- It's a heartbreaking image: a photo taken by Dorothea Lange showing Japanese American children joining other students in pledging allegiance to the U.S. flag sometime in the spring of 1942. One wonders what the children were thinking or if they understood the sad irony of the situation. After all, the photo was taken was just months after the U.S. government had rounded up Japanese American citizens, first in Hawaii and then nationwide, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — the event t...
Since she hit the campaign trail some 18 months ago, Karen Bedonie has had to replace the tires on her car five times. The Libertarian gubernatorial candidate has logged 183,000 miles — and counting — as she crisscrosses the state to meet with voters in her long shot bid for governor. "I've changed the axle already once because I've hit I don't know how many potholes," she said. "I think I can tell you where all the big potholes are in New Mexico." Bedonie, who is running against incumbent Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Gri...
At last I’ve seen a political debate where a candidate who swerved to be elusive instead revealed herself with double talk. The dishonor belongs to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Her least favorite topic is the opaque $150,000 settlement she made with a former aide who accused her of sexual harassment. “We provided absolute disclosure about this issue and provided that information directly to individuals,” Lujan Grisham said during her debate Wednesday night with Republican challenger Mark Ronchetti. That was a mou...
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and her Republican rival Mark Ronchetti duked it out during a heated one-hour televised debate Wednesday, clashing on crime, abortion and other key issues while hurling insults at each other. Ronchetti accused the governor of making "a blizzard of excuses" for her failed policies, while Lujan Grisham cast the former television weatherman as an inexperienced "TV personality" whose only real plan is to ban abortion in New Mexico. The governor's race debate, sponsored by KOAT-TV, the...
New Mexico voters will get a second — and likely last — chance to watch the two most prominent gubernatorial candidates square off in a face-to-face debate. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Mark Ronchetti are scheduled to take part in a one-hour debate sponsored by KOAT-TV, the Albuquerque Journal and KKOB-AM Wednesday night. Libertarian Karen Bedonie will not participate. As was the case when they met in KOB-TV's live debate on Sept. 30, voters should expect Ronchetti and Lujan Grisham to again tangle on high-profile issues l...
A new study examining four military installations in New Mexico for the first time puts a number to the economic impact of the U.S. military's presence throughout the state. "The 52,268 direct, indirect, and induced jobs generated by these installations is equal to roughly double that of mining, quarrying, and oil [and] gas jobs in the State during 2020," economist Omar Solis writes. The study — released by University of New Mexico's Bureau of Business and Economic Research and commissioned by the state Office of Military B...
Sue Cleveland watches the number of experienced state school superintendents decline every autumn during the get-togethers that introduce New Mexico's 89 district leaders to one another. Cleveland, the de facto dean of state school superintendents — she has headed Rio Rancho Public Schools since its inception in the early 1990s — knows better than most how vital consistent leadership can be. Without it, experts say it's more difficult for districts to improve student achievement and graduation rates, plus retain good tea...
The yearslong legal battle between New Mexico and Texas over who has taken an unfair share of Rio Grande water is headed to trial after the two states missed their settlement deadline. A federal judge appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court set a trial for Jan. 17 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after negotiations continually failed to resolve litigation dating to 2013. During the summer, Judge Michael Melloy canceled a trial scheduled for Oct. 3 to give the parties more time to settle their water-sharing dispute, which remains tense as a...
A state district judge has ruled against the city of Rio Rancho and in favor of The Santa Fe New Mexican and the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government in a legal dispute over public records, saying reasons the city gave for withholding records pertaining to the December shooting death of a Santa Fe police officer's child were invalid. The records at the center of the case involved the December death of the 2-year-old son of Santa Fe Police Department officer Jonathan Harmon. An investigation revealed 2-year-old Lincoln...
Taxpayers didn't waste any time telling Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham how they felt about her plan to spend $10 million to build a clinic near the Texas border in Las Cruces that would provide abortion services and other reproductive health care. Within hours of announcing she was designating the funding from her capital outlay money in the upcoming legislative session, the governor started to receive emails from New Mexicans who were incensed by the decision, according to documents obtained under a public records request....
SANTA FE -- The state Board of Finance has awarded the First Judicial District Attorney's Office more than $317,000 to prosecute people connected to the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on set of the Alec Baldwin film "Rust" in October, according to the board's website. The money — awarded in response to an emergency request from District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies — is only about half of what the District Attorney's Office estimates it will need to bring charges against up to four people, according to a c...
The surge in COVID-19 cases spurred by the more infectious BA.5 variant has hit a plateau in New Mexico, while hospitalizations hover at less than a quarter of where they were in January, when the deadlier delta strain raged across the country. Those trends are good news overall in a 2 1/2 -year pandemic that has felt at times as though it might never abate for more than a brief spell. The most encouraging development is the 164 people hospitalized with COVID-19 compared to 709 patients seven months ago, acting state Health...
Even as Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin prepared to be sentenced for trespassing during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the outspoken Cowboys for Trump leader said he won't vote to certify his county's primary election results despite the threat of legal action by New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas. "I'm not intimidated by it," Griffin said in a Thursday telephone interview from Washington, D.C., a day before he was sentenced to 14 days in jail by a federal judge for his role in the Jan. 6...
SANTA FE -- President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit New Mexico this week for a briefing on the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon wildfire that has scorched nearly 500 square miles of wilderness and private property, and displaced thousands of residents from rural villages over the past two months. Biden is scheduled to meet with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, firefighters, Federal Emergency Management Agency workers and others during his Saturday visit to the state Emergency Operation Center in Santa Fe. It was unclear if he planned...
FORT SUMNER - They named the area near this place Bosque Redondo, after a grove of cottonwoods near the river. The Navajo imprisoned there called it "Hwéeldi." Some say that translates to "place of suffering." It might as well have been called hell. It was near here, in Billy the Kid country, that the U.S. government attempted to strip members of the Navajo Nation and Mescalero Apache tribe of their language, culture and spiritual beliefs in the 1860s. The government had...
A monstrous, wind-driven wildfire has forced the evacuation of a psychiatric hospital and a jail in Las Vegas, N.M., and put more communities on edge as crews work to halt its spread toward the city. Surging winds that changed direction pushed the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fire southeast toward Las Vegas on Sunday and early Monday, while making it grow bigger and less contained — an erratic pattern that fire managers worry could repeat itself in the coming days. Although crews have fended off the fire at the northwest b...
Despite the best efforts of the New Mexico Citizens Redistricting Committee to draw nonpartisan, fair districts for key state elections, the Legislature couldn’t dodge a lawsuit over redistricting. That lawsuit, which zeroed in on how New Mexico’s three congressional districts were redrawn, is going forward. A wise judge, however, ruled it’s too late to start over for the upcoming election — races for Congress will proceed using the disputed maps. But at a later date, Republicans will have the opportunity to prove their c...
