Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 126 - 150 of 173
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s reelection campaign is refusing to divulge details of a $72,556 payment to an Albuquerque-based law firm believed to have represented the governor in a sexual harassment case. The Oct. 6 payment to Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Urias & Ward PA for unspecified “legal expenses” appeared in the governor’s most recent campaign finance report. “The campaign retained the firm to represent and advise it on legal issues,” campaign spokeswoman Kendall Witmer wrote in an email Wednesday after ignor...
Four public regulation commissioners Wednesday scolded fellow Commissioner Jefferson Byrd for sending an energy-related survey that inaccurately connected them to it. Byrd, of Tucumcari, said he would send a message to the recipients making it clear the online survey was his and not the Public Regulation Commission's. Byrd is running for commissioner of the State Land Office. He said he thought the cover letter indicated he was behind the survey. "I will find out what we can do as far as making that correction," Byrd said....
ALBUQUERQUE — The job is super demanding, and there isn't one boss but hundreds of thousands. At $110,000 a year, the pay isn't bad, but the work is nonstop. Holidays and weekends off? Don't count on it. Expect public criticism and media scrutiny on a daily basis, and after four years of living in a fishbowl, plan for the possibility of being unemployed. Being governor of the state of New Mexico is no easy task. But all five Republican gubernatorial contenders in the June primary made their best pitch for the post during mock...
SANTA FE — Citizen-initiated petitions to convene grand juries to investigate the governor’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic are legally invalid, the state Supreme Court ruled March 7. The Court issued an order directing district court judges to deny grand jury petitions filed in Chaves, Eddy and Lea counties and any similar petitions elsewhere in the state “because they only describe lawful, noncriminal activity,” which is outside the boundaries of what a grand jury can investigate. The Court noted its previous rulings...
At least Steve Pearce flexed his ineptitude during a pointless exercise. Pearce, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, oversaw ponderous and bungled vote-counting at his organization’s pre-primary nominating convention. In truth, Pearce’s failures didn’t amount to much of significance. They instead raised the question of why New Mexico even bothers staging pre-primary conventions. Only political junkies who are nostalgic for smoke-filled rooms and the shenanigans of ward bosses see value in events like the one Pearc...
Robert Duran disarmed trouble with a grin — and the ability to use words as a shield. "He had the gift of gab," said Kyle Elliot, Duran's longtime law enforcement partner and onetime police academy classmate. "The verbal judo, being able to talk people down who were agitated or angry or violent. He always used his brain first. We would always say, 'Your biggest weapon is your brain.' " Duran's intellect, humor and heart made him a natural for public service, friends of the late Santa Fe police officer said Thursday, little m...
Here’s what happened with notable legislation during the 30-day session that ended Thursday. Budget: Lawmakers got the job done with about a day to spare. They approved a nearly $8.5 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2023 — a 14 percent increase over the current fiscal year, with raises for all state workers, including teachers, state police officers and judges. The budget also includes funding to increase the minimum wage for state workers to $15 an hour. Tax cuts: House Bill 163 made a late dash across the finish line....
Carissa McGee was 16 when she stabbed her mother and sister in a high-profile attack in 2006. She served about nine years of a 21-year adult prison sentence. The former high school basketball star said she worked to better herself while she was behind bars for one reason — “I had a light at end of the tunnel to improve my choice,” she told state lawmakers Thursday. “I had a parole date.” McGee, who is now an advocate for prisoners and members of the LGBTQ community, provided some of the most compelling testimony in favor a c...
About 500 teachers and education activists marched Sunday outside the Roundhouse to demand better pay, smaller class sizes and better classroom results. Participants carried placards that read "Teachers Need Good Pay to Stay" and "No Teachers No Future" at the noon rally, organized by the American Federation of Teachers New Mexico and the National Education Association-New Mexico. Julie Wojtko, a teacher and an advanced education services facilitator at Arrowhead Park Early College High School in Las Cruces, came to the...
Advocates for New Mexicans who know little to no English say a bill passed by a committee Friday is needed to help such residents access medical aid, child welfare services and other resources. Lawmakers on the House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs committee approved House Bill 22 on a 6-3 vote. It now heads to the House Appropriations and Finance Committee. Rep. Martin Zamora, R-Clovis, was among committee members voting against the bill. He did not respond to requests for comment. The bill would “provide m...
A state income tax on New Mexicans’ Social Security benefits would be eliminated for most seniors under one of the first bills to be filed ahead of the upcoming 30-day legislative session. While the proposal is designed to put more money in seniors’ pockets, it would cost tobacco users more. The proposed legislation by Sen. Bill Tallman, D-Albuquerque, calls for increasing the tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to make up the loss in state revenue. Tallman listed multiple reasons for championing the bill, inc...
SANTA FE — Curry and Roosevelt counties will serve as the launch point for a new courts program designed to steer tenants and landlords away from evictions brought on by the pandemic. The Eviction Prevention and Diversion Program, aimed at settling cases through a facilitator, will provide information to help tenants vulnerable to eviction, including sources for legal services, financial assistance and alternate housing options, the Administrative Office of the Courts announced in a Tuesday news release. The 9th Judicial D...
Optimistic about the state’s new political boundaries following redistricting, Republican Alexis Martinez Johnson announced Monday she is making another run for New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. Long a Democratic stronghold, the newly configured district is now rated “highly competitive” by the political tracker FiveThirtyEight. While the district still encompasses all of Northern New Mexico, Republican-leaning areas in the southeastern part of the state, where Martinez Johnson was born and raised, were pulled into th...
Democrats in the New Mexico House of Representatives announced months ago they planned to get tough on crime. With start of the 2022 legislative session just weeks away, they now say they are ready to back up the boast with bills. Republicans, who long have been calling for more stringent measures to boost crime-fighting efforts in a state with rising gun violence and increasing rates of other types of crime, are likely to join Democrats in what is expected to be a House-driven effort to toughen laws. “I think the governor w...
Former Rio Arriba County Sheriff James Lujan, already a convicted felon, pleaded no contest Wednesday to a charge accusing him of interfering with a March 2020 operation by Española police officers who were serving a warrant on his friend, former Española City Councilor Phillip Chacon. Under the terms of Lujan's agreement with 9th Judicial District Attorney Andrea Reeb, a special prosecutor in the case, state District Judge Bryan Biedscheid sentenced Lujan to 364 days on the misdemeanor count of resisting, evading or o...
SANTA FE — State District Judge Kathleen McGarry Ellenwood sentenced former Rio Arriba County Sheriff James Lujan to three years in prison followed by a year and a half of probation Thursday, a day after a Santa Fe jury convicted him of two felony charges after he helped a man avoid arrest and then directed a deputy not to tell anyone. “While all elected officials have a duty to fulfill the responsibility of their elected office, there are some elected officials such as a judge, a district attorney and a sheriff that are hel...
The New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in a long-running dispute with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over which branch of government has the authority to appropriate federal funds. The high court sided unanimously with senators who opposed Lujan Grisham making decisions on how to spend about $1.6 billion in federal pandemic aid without input from the Legislature. “The Constitution won today,” state Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, wrote in a text message after the rul...
Two New Mexico attorneys representing Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer working on the Rust film set, appeared on NBC's Today show Wednesday morning to share their theory that the fatal shooting Oct. 21 at Bonanza Creek Ranch was the result of sabotage. Jason Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed loaded the gun with rounds she had grabbed from an ammunition box labeled "dummy." He proposed a live round — or several live rounds — may have been placed in the box. "We're assuming somebody put the live round in that box," Bowles said. He...
SANTA FE — Cast and crew members of the Rust movie production were inside a building at the Bonanza Creek Ranch when an assistant director grabbed one of three prop guns on a rolling cart outside, handed the weapon to actor Alec Baldwin and yelled, “Cold gun,” indicating it didn’t have any live rounds, a search warrant affidavit says. The court document offers more details about a fatal incident Thursday at the popular movie ranch south of Santa Fe, where the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office says Baldwin — one of Hollywood’s...
Lara Rabkin was in her apartment on the fifth floor of a six-story Brooklyn loft on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. “All my windows faced the city,” recalled Rabkin, referring to Manhattan. “I could see from the World Trade Center all the way up past the Empire State Building.” As she looked out the window, Rabkin — raised in Santa Fe and at the time in the midst of a decade in New York City — caught sight of one of the World Trade Center towers on fire, smoke belching into the sky. “From the way it looked, it seemed at tha...
SANTA FE -- Every September, when Zozobra goes up in smoke, tens of thousands of glooms go up with him. Those glooms, collected on slips of paper or official documents, are often related to personal problems — bad jobs, bad relationships, bad financial situations. This year, someone even dropped off a wedding dress to be torched with Zozobra on Friday — perhaps a reflection on vows taken but not delivered. But a look at a few dozen glooms provided by Zozobra organizers this year — replete with ZIP codes emanating both far a...
By Milan Simonich The Santa Fe New Mexican Jeff Essary and the other four school board members in the small village of Floyd are suspended by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration. The board rebelled against state public health orders intended to blunt the spread of COVID-19. The last two weeks Essary has spent as a patient in Roosevelt General Hospital in Portales. He is being treated for COVID-19 and a related case of pneumonia. Essary said in a Thursday interview, he feared for his life, even as he continues to c...
The public will have a month longer to weigh in on the proposed listing of the lesser prairie chicken under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is extending the deadline for public comment to Sept. 1 for the grouse, which has seen its populations dwindle from 2 million in the 1800s to about 38,000 across five states because of climate change, industrial development and agriculture. In late May, federal wildlife managers proposed relisting the bird - known for its colorful spring mating display - to...
TIERRA AMARILLA — A state district judge declared a mistrial Friday afternoon after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous decision on two charges against Rio Arriba County Sheriff James Lujan. Lujan, 60, was charged with aiding a felon and intimidating a witness — both felonies — in relation to a 2017 incident in which he was accused of helping Phillip Chacon, a former Española city councilor, evade police after Chacon led officers on a high-speed chase. Jurors heard nearly two days of testimony and deliberated for about...
As embattled Rio Arriba County Sheriff James Lujan heads to trial on felony charges, his attorneys battled prosecutors over discovery issues Friday. Lujan, whose trial is scheduled to start Tuesday in Rio Arriba County, is charged with aiding a felon and bribing a witness in a 2017 case in which he is accused of helping former Española City Councilor Phillip Chacon evade police and telling a deputy who witnessed some of those actions not to tell anyone. At issue Friday was whether former Rio Arriba County Sheriff's Deputy...
