Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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Public safety will be on the agenda in the upcoming 60-day legislative session, but Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s attempts to arm twist lawmakers on the issue last year won’t serve her well as she enters the lame-duck portion of her eight years in office. Lujan Grisham is the second consecutive Democratic governor who likely envisioned resigning early for a much loftier position in the federal government. Bill Richardson had been tabbed for commerce secretary in the Obama administration, which would have made him the fir...
Gamblers who sit down at a casino blackjack table know the odds are slightly tilted against them, but expect the game to be fair. Gamblers who bet on horse races can’t have that same expectation. While other sports have been touched by gambling scandals (the Black Sox of 1919 and an NBA referee caught betting on games in 2007), in horse racing gambling scandals are endemic. It was announced this month that a horse trained by Phil D’Amato had tested positive for methamphetamine. Under the old rules, D’Amato would have been sus...
I’m glad the election is over. I was getting a little tired of the political ad rubbing our community’s worst day in our face every time I turned on a TV. “One day in one city, two double homicides, four dead. Another day, an officer killed leaving two kids with no dad. New York or LA? No, Las Cruces.” I don’t understand why any candidate would trash the community they are hoping to represent. And, why would the people living in that community vote for that candidate? Does Yvette Herrell feel like she is in New York or L...
In last week’s column I wrote that I was going to vote early and then spend the rest of the election season as an interested spectator. It turns out, that wasn’t true. I did vote Oct. 17, just before the lunch rush. And, as always, it was quick and easy, and the people managing the election were friendly and professional. But, for the sake of my mental health, I’ve decided that I won’t be an interested spectator when it comes to the race for president. There are a lot of interesting local races this year I will be focused...
Of all the reforms passed during the administration of former Gov. Bill Richardson, and it was a busy eight years, perhaps none has had the same lasting positive impact as the election reform bill of 2005. Before then, the state had no uniform system from county to county, and relied heavily on electronic voting machines with no paper trail. We were consistently ranked at the bottom of national reports on election security and convenience. The 2005 law required all counties to use paper ballots that are scanned by a counting...
I grew up in Denver and still go back every summer to visit my sister, nephews and grandnieces in Aurora, Colo. And so, my ears perked up recently when I heard Aurora being paired with Springfield, Ohio, as the two most egregious examples of immigration run amok. I’ve never been to Springfield, but clearly the two are very different. Springfield is a town of 58,000 people in the Rust Belt of northern Ohio, about 80 miles west of Cincinnati. Aurora is essentially a part of Denver. If not for the city limit signs, it would b...
When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision. But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak. “It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can....
When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision. But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak. “It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can....
Every two years New Mexico voters get the chance to make changes to our state constitution. Some years they’re big, fundamental changes, like scrapping the old state Board of Education in favor of a secretary appointed by the governor or ending the cash bail system. Some years they are just tinkering around the edges. This is one of those years. Voters will have four constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. Two of them will increase state support for disabled veterans and all veterans who have been honorably dischar...
My best friend Kelly and I frequently had loud, boisterous arguments over politics that led folks to believe that we disagreed about everything. They were mistaken. His views were influenced by watching Fox News, and mine are influenced by watching CNN, so that’s where the arguments would start. But they didn’t end there. It usually didn’t take long for both of us to call BS on the TV talking points and get to the heart of the matter. That didn’t always lead to an agreement, but it almost always led to a common underst...
The number of New Mexico residents aged 85 and older will double in the next 20 years, according to updated projections by demographers at the University of New Mexico. I turned 66 last month, and plan to be one of them. The number of residents aged 65 and older is expected to increase by 200,000 during that same time period. It’s estimated that the state’s senior population will grow from 13% in 2010 to nearly 23% by 2040. All of which makes the recent surprise inspections of senior care facilities throughout the state eve...
If the recent Las Cruces town hall meeting on public safety called by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was intended to demonstrate the public’s concern about crime, it was a huge success. They expected it to draw about 200 people and take two hours to complete. Instead, a crowd of more than 500 packed the Convention Center ballroom for a discussion that lasted long into the night. There were a couple of clear takeaways. The first is a growing belief among residents that Las Cruces is no longer the safe community that it once w...
If you need assistance with your federal benefits, you can speak with staff members for U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan at their district offices. If you have issues with the city or county that need to be resolved, you can reach your representative on the city council and county commission at their offices. Constituent services are a vital part of the job for most elected officials. If, however, your problems are with the state, you can try reaching your state senator and representative, but they don’t have an o...
Several years ago, when I was covering state government from Santa Fe, I attended the annual briefing given to reporters prior to the upcoming wildfire season. After going over the current conditions and expectations for the coming months, the discussion turned to reporters’ safety. We were warned about the unpredictable nature of fire and the importance of following their directions at all times. At the end, they talked about worst-case scenarios. The instructor pulled out what looked like an aluminum-foil blanket and e...
The U.S. Supreme Court has just stripped away the final protections against gerrymandering. With a series of rulings in the 1960s, the court established that the 14th Amendment required political districts to be redrawn so that “the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the state.” The Roberts court has taken a two-step approach to dismantling those protections. In 2019, the court ruled that while gerrymandering intended to dilute the political strength of racial minorities was...
Here’s to the deep state, or, what we used to refer to as the federal government. With little fanfare, the Federal Trade Commission has leveled the playing field for millions of workers. The FTC freed an estimated 30 million employees who are now bound to their current employers through non-compete clauses. On a 3-2 vote, the commission found that the clauses are an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting com...
While mental illness isn’t a crime, it’s also not a permission slip to excuse crimes. Yet that’s what happens in New Mexico once a defendant has been found by the court to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. It’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for future crimes. That freedom from accountability has allowed a small number of offenders to act with increasing brazenness against both property owners and police. “We deal with them all day, every day,” Las Cruces Police Chief Jeremy Story said during a recent community radio...
Everybody wants to start at the top. And so, of course, the deep-pocketed investors behind the attempt to build a centrist third party under the No Labels banner started with a presidential election. And not just any presidential election, but one in which the Republican nominee is a former president who is facing 88 felony indictments in four separate cases and is vowing vengeance if he wins. Democratic voters with sour memories of Ralph Nader and Jill Stein still haunting them greeted the No Labels effort with fear and...
The capital outlay bill passed by the Legislature this year provides just under $290 million for 136 projects throughout the state, including $20 million for steam tunnel and electrical infrastructure upgrades at New Mexico State University. NMSU will also get $10 million for facility construction in the Creative Media Institute and $1.575 million for road improvements on the Gadsden campus. All 136 projects will be funded without any kind of ranking system to determine what our top priorities are, or vetting process to ensur...
The geographic political divisions in New Mexico have become so entrenched that both parties have just stopped trying in areas of the state where the other side has the advantage. Of the 42 seats up for election in the state Senate this year, only 15 will be decided in the general election. Democrats will claim 17 seats and Republicans will win 10 without posting a yard sign, shaking a hand, making a campaign promise or kissing a baby. Democrats have apparently given up on the seat they held from 1989 to 2020 when John...
Most Americans think we have the right to attend public meetings and let our elected officials know what we think about how they’re doing. There is no such right in New Mexico. Our open meetings law requires that accommodations be made for the public to attend and listen to meetings of the city council, county commission and other government boards and commissions. But, there’s nothing that says we have the right to speak at those meetings. It’s up to each board to set its own rules. Typically, elected leaders under...
After having her Bernalillo County gun ban overturned by the court, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tried to do it the right way. She put together an impressive public safety package of proposed legislation that addressed not only guns but also bail reform, sentencing, and police pay and recruitment. If passed, it would have been a huge step toward addressing our state’s gun violence epidemic. New Mexico ranked seventh in the nation in gun deaths, according to a 2020 report by Johns Hopkins, which found that firearms were the lea...
In the days leading up to the primary election in New Hampshire, several voters received phone calls from a voice that sounded like and claimed to be President Joe Biden encouraging them to stay home on election day. It was the first well-publicized use of artificial intelligence in a dirty tricks political campaign, but it undoubtedly will not be the last. The New Mexico Legislature took action this session to get in front of the problem. House Bill 182, which awaits the governor’s signature, amends the Campaign Reporting A...
Throw my brain in a hurricane And the blind can have my eyes And the deaf can have both of my ears If they don’t mind the size. — John Prine I wasn’t blind yet when I had cornea transplant surgery in my left eye a couple of weeks ago, but I’m told that would have likely been my eventual fate. I was diagnosed with Fuchs’ dystrophy, which impacts a thin layer of cells that pump fluid to the cornea. The loss of those cells causes fluid to build up on the cornea, leading to cloudy vision and, over time, blisters that can break...
I was driving through Colorado last summer when I encountered a series of electronic highway signs warning me to, “Slow the fast down.” Being a product of the Colorado school system, I was taken aback by the poor grammar and sentence construction. Then it occurred to me that “fast” was a four-letter word starting with “f” so I was supposed to think — well, you know. How edgy. Just what I want in my highway signs. Now, it’s posted alongside Interstate 25, next week it will be doing the opening set at Jimmy’s Chuckle Hut. Ther...
