Rock strike, fall from ladder kills visitor at Bandelier - Associated Press
A visitor was fatally injured at Bandelier National Monument when struck by a falling rock while climbing ladders to reach a canyon alcove, monument officials.
The visitor fell about 30 feet (9 meters) after being struck Wednesday while climbing the second of the four ladders used to the reach the Alcove House, officials said in a statement.
The visitor died while being lowered to the ground with ropes and a litter, and resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful, the statement said.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the victim has been identified as 54-year-old Brenda Holzer, a resident of Yorkville, Illinois.
Alcove House will be closed until further notice while the incident is investigated, the statement said.
According to the monument's website, the Alcove House was once home to approximately 25 Ancestral Pueblo people and is 140 feet (43 meters) above the floor of Frijoles Canyon, reachable by four ladders and stone stairs.
The monument is 22.5 miles west of Santa Fe.
AG Files Criminal Complaint Against Former Española City Manager – By Megan Kamerick, KUNM News
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office has filed a criminal complaint against former Española City Manager David Valdez for allegedly stealing over $18,000 from city hall.
In a press release, Attorney General Hector Balderas said he looks forward to presenting the case to a jury.
Valdez served as city manager for four months and was fired on July 9, 2019 after he allegedly stole a bag containing checks and cash from customers for utility payments that were marked for deposit.
According to the complaint filed by Balderas, prior becoming city manager in Española, Valdez worked as city manager for Colorado City, Colo. In September 2019, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office filed four felony charges of theft and embezzlement against Valdez for fraudulent incidents that occurred while he served as district manager of the Colorado City Metropolitan District. Valdez pled guilty to felony 4 theft and was ordered to pay restitution.
Gallup hospital org names new CEO, a first step to avoid being kicked out - By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The nonprofit running a major Gallup medical center has named a new chief executive officer to lead the troubled hospital.
Robert Whitaker, currently the president and CEO of Southwest Medical Center in Liberal, Kansas, will take over at Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital. The Gallup hospital is the biggest in the region, apart from one run by the Indian Health Service, and it serves patients in a 120-mile radius.
In recent months, a group of activists, ex-employees and patients have grown frustrated with the hospital’s direction and the private company contracted to run it, Community Health Consulting.
They have accused the company and the former interim CEO, Don Smithburg, of driving out respected, longtime employees and reducing the quality of healthcare in the area. Smithburg cited the pandemic’s toll and nursing shortage as the hospital’s biggest challenges.
Recently, the McKinley County Commission got involved. It leases the hospital and land to Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services, which runs the hospital. Last week, commissioners voted to terminate the lease unless the nonprofit organization met a series of demands over the next six months.
One of those demands was to get a new permanent CEO by April 15. Others include improving communication and transparency between the hospital’s board of trustees and the community.
McKinley County Commission chair Billy Moore said he is pleased with Whitaker’s hiring, which has been in the works for months, he said.
“Seemed a real nice guy,” Moore said. “I guess we’ll wait and see.”
Whitaker’s top priority will be to help the organization get into better financial shape, according to a news release. The hospital and its associated clinics reportedly have a deficit of $9.4 million.
Community Hospital Consulting also recently brought in a new chief financial officer to the hospital.
The Community Health Action Group, which is leading the charge against Community Hospital Consulting, has continued its weekly protests. A spokesperson said the group did not immediately have a comment about Whitaker’s hiring.
Whitaker was hired as the CEO of Southwest Medical Center in 2020. He also served as the the chief operating officer between 2015 and 2016.
One concern community members had about Smithburg, the former CEO, was that he split his time between Gallup and Kansas City, Missouri. In addition to his role in Gallup, Smithburg is also a senior vice president for Community Health Corporation.
Rhonda Ray, a spokesperson for Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services said Whitaker will live full-time in Gallup.
New Mexico keeps its COVID-19 treatments despite federal sweeps - By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
With congressional funding for COVID protections in jeopardy, the amount of COVID treatments the federal government is sending to state health departments is being reduced by 30%.
The supply of antiviral drugs dwindles as New Mexico’s health authorities have all but abandoned policies to prevent infection, instead putting their hopes into having enough of those medications to help people after they catch the coronavirus.
All unused allocations of COVID treatments were expected to be reclaimed by the federal government starting Saturday if they had not yet been ordered by the states, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees how treatments are distributed around the country, is is reabsorbing unordered treatments to be divvied up again among the states, said Courtney Lovato, pharmacy director for New Mexico’s Public Health Division.
The state managed to avoid losing its share though, because N.M. health officials coordinated with hospitals and health care providers here to order all of the courses of treatment that had been promised to the state, so there was nothing left for the feds to sweep, she said.
State health leaders told providers about the congressional spending cuts and the planned sweeps, and urged them to order more monoclonal antibodies during the weekly ordering period, she said. They also expanded the number of pharmacies stocking the antiviral pills Molnupiravir and Paxlovid.
After the orders were received, the state worked with Presbyterian to accept the remaining courses allocated to New Mexico so that no monoclonal antibodies were left, Lovato said.
Presbyterian accepted an additional 222 courses of Sotrovimab and 1,040 courses of Bebtelovimab on top of their original order, she said.
Department of Health spokesperson Jodi McGinnis-Porter said New Mexico entered the situation in a strong position with more than seven months’ worth of COVID treatments on hand. But that time frame was calculated based on the number of treatment courses the state has in its stores divided by the number used by New Mexico patients in the second week of March. That number could change as more people are infected.
State officials do not expect that use rate to hold, Lovato said. During the omicron surge — a period of roughly three months — patients in New Mexico used 10,533 courses, she said. Officials are expecting the state’s total supply to increase to 10,932 once a shipment arrives this week, which Lovato said puts the state “in a good position for any potential surge.”
Before the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services started pulling back the unordered COVID treatments, the state already had quite a large pool of them, she said, and low positive case rates resulted in few health providers ordering shipments from the state.
Despite no longer offering regular public updates on the pandemic, DOH continues to monitor case counts, inventory and treatment rates weekly, McGinnis-Porter said, and the state could ask for more treatments. First, N.M. would have to use 70% of what it already has, Lovato added.
“We continue to advocate for congressional approval of additional funds,” McGinnis-Porter said.
For the last several months, the federal government had not been sweeping allocations of COVID therapeutics, Lovato said. Unused courses would remain in the state’s pool and could be allocated to N.M. providers later on. From now on, as Congress hedges on spending more emergency COVID money, sweeps will occur weekly on Saturday.
Supplies that are physically in New Mexico cannot be swept, Lovato said. If providers here do not have the capacity to accept more inventory down the road, the remainder of that week’s unordered allocation would be returned to the national pool. The state would still receive a regularly scheduled allocation the following week.
N.M. DOUBLES DOWN
Officials lifted the state’s indoor mask mandate in February, meaning there is potentially a lot more case spread and a lot more virus out in the air than there was before. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the way it calculates the risk level in each county, allowing for far more cases before masking is again recommended.
New Mexico health officials are doubling down on their position that the state will not return to universal masking.
Health Secretary Dr. David Scrase said in a news conference on March 11 that the state does not need non-pharmaceutical interventions like universal masking because of vaccines, treatments and better masks on the market should people choose to wear them.
Earlier that day, Scrase said Lovato told state health officials that “federal supplies are starting to increase” based on information she got from the federal government.
According to McGinnis-Porter, Lovato was told that federal supplies were increasing during a weekly “COVID-19 therapeutic update call” hosted by the federal government.
“She was told to anticipate greater availability of COVID oral therapeutics beginning in April,” McGinnis-Porter said.
That turned out to be wrong just five days later when the White House announced the opposite: that without more money from Congress, the federal government wouldn’t be able to keep buying treatments.
“The federal government is unable to purchase additional life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments and will run out of supply to send to states as soon as late May,” according to a statement from the White House.
There are more effects, too. Without the funding, the U.S. will also be forced to scale back payments to health care providers that treat uninsured people for COVID-19. If Congress does not approve more spending, those payments will completely stop in April, according to the White House.
McGinnis-Porter said state health officials are concerned about congressional funding cuts, but the new circumstances do not change the decision-making process on interventions, such as mask requirements. Pressed on whether the threat to treatment supply changes health officials’ thinking at all when it comes to non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking requirements, McGinnis-Porter said it does not.
“This is an evolving situation, and we are adapting to the information that we have available to us,” she said. “We will continue to monitor COVID therapeutics availability. We will continue to take all actions within the state’s power to ensure COVID therapeutic access to New Mexicans.”
White House releases report on Native American voting rights - By Felicia Fonseca Associated Press
Local, state and federal officials must do more to ensure Native Americans facing persistent, longstanding and deep-rooted barriers to voting have equal access to ballots, a White House report released Thursday said.
Native Americans and Alaska Natives vote at lower rates than the national average but have been a key constituency in tight races and states with large Native populations. A surge in voter turnout among tribal members in Arizona, for example, helped lead Joe Biden to victory in the state that hadn't supported a Democrat in a White House contest since 1996.
The Biden administration's report comes a year after he issued an executive order promoting voting rights and establishing a steering committee to look at particular barriers to voting in Indigenous communities. Those include state laws and local practices that disenfranchise Indigenous voters, unequal access to early voting and reliance on a mail system that is unreliable, the report stated.
"For far too long, members of tribal nations and Native communities have faced unnecessary burdens when they attempt to exercise their sacred right to vote," the White House said.
The administration called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation, including the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and another focused on Native Americans. But those bills are going nowhere. Republicans wouldn't support them, and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have been unwilling to override the filibuster to allow the legislation to pass.
In the states, Republican legislatures and governors recently have passed dozens of restrictive laws dealing with voting and elections. They have limited the use of mail voting, which proved hugely popular during the pandemic, implemented strict voter ID requirements, eliminated ballot drop boxes and created several penalties for local election officials who could be accused of violating certain laws.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in a broader case over Arizona voting regulations to uphold a prohibition on counting ballots cast in the wrong precinct and returning early ballots for another person. Native American voting rights advocates saw it as another notch in a long history of voting discrimination.
Bills that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed last year to codify the practice of giving voters who didn't sign mail-in ballots until 7 p.m. on Election Day to do so and that address voter rolls, also complicate voting, tribal leaders said.
Democrats say the new laws are designed to target their voters, although the mail voting restrictions also tend to hurt Republicans.
In the absence of action, the Biden administration is seeking changes at more local levels while maintaining pressure on Congress. The White House pointed to enhanced safeguards for Native American voters in Nevada, Washington and Colorado and suggested other states follow their lead.
The report recommended further recommended that jurisdictions serving Native voters offer language assistance even when they're not legally required to. And the U.S. Postal Service should consider adding routes or boosting personnel in Indian Country, the report said.
The White House highlighted efforts within federal agencies that include the Interior Department working to designate tribal colleges in New Mexico and Kansas as voter registration centers. The Treasury Department will provide voter education through its income tax assistance centers, the White House said.
And the U.S. Department of Justice has more than doubled its voting rights enforcement to ensure election officials are complying with federal law, senior administration officials said. The administration noted, though, that the protections in the Voting Rights Act to prohibit racial discrimination in voting no longer are adequate.
Tribal leaders in Alaska told the steering committee that despite successful litigation to ensure language assistance, the services haven't reached their communities, according to the committee's report. A tribal leader on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana said a county election official did not comply with a directive to provide drop boxes on the reservation until three days before the election, the report states.
Poverty among Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, hostility between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and cultural disrespect also impact voting patterns in Indigenous communities, the administration noted.
The White House report will be translated into six Indigenous languages: Diné, Ojibwe, Cherokee, Yup'ik, Lakota and Native Hawaiian.
The report builds on the work of other groups, including the Native American Rights Fund that outlined the challenges to voting in Indian Country, deepened by the pandemic: online registration hampered by spotty or no internet service, ballots delivered to rarely-checked post office boxes and turnout curbed by a general reluctance to vote by mail.
"It is a strong first step in ensuring that Native American voters have equal access to the vote," the Native American Rights Fund said Thursday.
Despite the challenges, Native American voting rights groups increasingly have mobilized over the years to boost turnout that is about 13% lower than the national average, according to the White House. The states with the largest percentage of Native Americans and Alaska Natives are: Alaska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Dakota and Montana.
US states seek to ease inflation burden with direct payments - By Patrick Whittle Associated Press
With inflation raging and state coffers flush with cash, governors and lawmakers across the U.S. are considering a relatively simple solution to help ease the pain people are feeling at the gas pump and grocery store — sending money.
At least a dozen states have proposed giving rebate checks of several hundred dollars directly to taxpayers, among them California, Kansas and Minnesota. Critics, including many Republican lawmakers, say those checks won't go far enough given the pace of inflation and are pushing instead for permanent tax cuts.
A proposal from Maine Gov. Janet Mills is among the most generous in a state where the cost of food and fuel has skyrocketed in recent months. The Democratic governor wants to send $850 to most residents as part of the state's budget bill.
The rebate "will help Maine people grapple with these increased costs by putting money directly back into their pockets," Mills said.
But Wendell Cressey, a clamdigger in Harpswell, said the soaring cost of fuel for people in his business means the check will provide just temporary relief.
"It might help a little, but it would have to be a lot more because we're paying for gas. Most of us have V-8 trucks," Cressey said. "I just don't think it's going to help as much as they think it is."
In addition to the direct rebates, lawmakers and governors across the country are considering cuts to sales taxes, property tax relief and reducing or suspending state gas taxes.
The proposals come at a time when many states actually have too much money on their hands because of billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid and ballooning tax revenue. It's also happening as the war in Ukraine has compounded soaring prices for fuel and other essentials.
It's also no coincidence that the relief is being floated during an election year, said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine. Maine's governor's race is one of many closely watched contests at the state level this year.
"There's some real policy reason to do this," Brewer said. "But at the same time, it's also clear that this is an election year, and in an election year there are few things as popular as giving voters what voters see as free money from the state."
The states are moving toward sending people money as consumer inflation has jumped nearly 8% over the past year. That was the sharpest spike since 1982.
Inflation boosted the typical family's food expenses by nearly $590 last year, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a project of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School. Overall, the average family had to spend $3,500 more last year to buy the same amount of goods and services as they purchased in previous years.
In New Mexico, some have questioned whether Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's plan for a $250 rebate goes far enough given how much consumer prices have risen.
Wayne Holly and his wife, Penny, were among the small business owners in the state who were forced to shut their doors early in the COVID-19 pandemic because of the governor's public health orders.
Their T-shirt and screen-printing business narrowly weathered that storm but is now feeling the pinch again as the cost of materials skyrockets and customers look to keep their own bank accounts from being drained.
"Do we get customers who are angry and irate because things have changed? Yes, we sure do," Wayne Holly said. "Do we get customers who say 'I never used to pay that before?' I say 'Yeah, I've never paid $4.50 for a gallon of gas.'"
The rebate plan in New Mexico, and concerns about how much it will help, reflects a growing trend among states as they try to find some relief for their residents amid criticism that they could do more.
Many states are awash with record amounts of cash, due partly to federal COVID-19 relief funding. Measures enacted by presidents Donald Trump in 2020 and Joe Biden last year allotted a combined total of more than $500 billion to state and local governments. Some of that is still sitting in state coffers waiting to be spent.
Those federal pandemic relief laws also provided stimulus checks to U.S. taxpayers, which helped boost consumer spending on goods subject to state and local sales taxes. From April 2021 to January 2022, total state tax revenues, adjusted for inflation, increased more than 19% compared to the same period a year earlier, according to a recent Urban Institute report.
"Overall, the fiscal condition of states is strong, and much better than where we thought states would be at the start of the pandemic," said Erica MacKellar, a fiscal policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
That's given state officials greater confidence to consider tax rebates or direct payments to residents. But some financial experts are urging caution, noting that inflation also could drive up state expenses and wages.
"State legislatures should not rush into enacting permanent tax cuts based on what very well might be temporary growth in real revenues," Lucy Dadayan, senior research associate at the Urban Institute, wrote in a recent analysis.
The relief plans vary by state. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, released a plan for spending the state's budget surplus that included a proposal for income tax rebate checks of $1,000 per couple. In California, Democratic lawmakers have released separate proposals to send rebates of $200 to $400 to each taxpayer, while Gov. Gavin Newsom said he wants to distribute fuel debit cards of up to $800 to help ease the burden on residents paying the highest gas prices in the nation.
Democratic governors in other states have proposed other approaches. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is seeking a one-time property tax subsidy for lower-income homeowners and renters. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has proposed halting a 2.2-cent increase in the motor fuel tax, suspending a 1% grocery sales tax for a year and providing a property tax rebate of up to $300.
New Jersey got out front early. Gov. Phil Murphy and the Democrat-led Legislature included cash checks of up to $500 to about 1 million families as part of a budget deal last year, when the governor and lawmakers were up for election.
The state's rosy financial picture, fueled by healthy tax receipts and federal funds -- as well as higher taxes on people making $1 million — has continued this year. But Murphy's fiscal year 2023 budget doesn't call for additional cash rebates.
Proposals for relief haven't gone so smoothly in other states. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has proposed returning half of a $90 million surplus in the state Education Fund to the state's property taxpayers with a check of between $250 and $275, but the Democrat-controlled Legislature has shown little interest.
"Typically, when you overpay for something, you get some of that money back," Scott said when he made the proposal earlier this month.
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Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vermont; and Business Writer Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.
Methane survey from small plane finds more pollution, waste - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
A pollution survey using sensors on small airplanes to detect methane emissions across a major U.S. oil and natural gas production zone points to greater releases of the potent climate-warming gas than previous estimated by other methods, according to results published Wednesday.
Underwritten by philanthropists and the fossil fuel industry, the study examined emissions from October 2018 through January 2020 across New Mexico's portion of the Permian Basin, one of the world's largest sources of oil and natural gas that extends into West Texas.
The study estimated that methane emissions are equivalent to roughly 9% of the overall gas production in the surveyed area. That's more than double the rate in several previous studies of the Permian Basin and national estimates by the U.S. government of natural gas lost to leaks and releases.
"The bad news is that emissions in this time and this region were as high as they are," said Evan Sherwin, co-author of the study and a research fellow at Stanford University's department of energy resource engineering. "The good news is it was only about 1,000 sites out of 26,000 active wells. ... It's just a few percent that were emitting during this extensive study."
The study arrives during a pivotal period for efforts by government regulators and industry to measure and rein in greenhouse gas emissions from oilfield infrastructure.
For more than a decade, government auditors have warned that bad data was blinding regulators to the amount of greenhouse gases being pushed into the atmosphere by the oil and gas industry's flaring and venting.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new regulations to eliminate venting at both new and existing oil wells and require companies to capture and sell gas whenever possible.
New Mexico recently adopted its own rules to limit most venting and flaring in oilfields to reduce methane emissions and environmental regulators are poised to impose new restrictions on oilfield equipment that emits smog-causing pollution.
Robert McEntyre, a spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, said progress already has been made to address methane emission since surveys were conducted for the study.
"This report being 2 years old offers a snapshot in time that may not be reflective of conditions today but certainly underscores the industry priority and the industry commitment to advancing those rules that will help eventually in reducing the emissions over time," he said. "We would certainly expect that that primary figure cited would only continue to decline."
Plumes of methane can be detected by signature frequencies of light. Images of methane were collected by a small propeller plane flying 3,000 feet (1,000 meters) above ground over the course of 115 flight days, in the survey of New Mexico oilfields by Kairos Aerospace.
"The main advantage of airplanes is that they strike a balance between sensitivity and rapid coverage," said Sherwin, acknowledging recent advances in satellite surveying technology. "This is the largest survey that has been used to estimate total methane emissions from a region."
Sherwin says he and colleagues at Stanford and the University of Michigan quantified significant methane emissions not only at well sites but also pipelines where they merge. Funding came from sources including the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative, and industry consortium.
Climate scientists have warned that without immediate and steep reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, the world will miss its chance to avert the most destructive and deadliest effects of climate change.
Jans: Mississippi State hoops will have swagger, confidence - Associated Press
Chris Jans leaned down to pick up a cowbell and rang it during his introduction as Mississippi State's basketball coach. It's an MSU sports tradition he acknowledged struggling with upon getting off the plane.
He plans to get better at it by ringing up more wins with the Bulldogs.
Jans was introduced Wednesday and vowed his program will play with confidence and swagger. While that depends on which players stay, who arrives via the transfer portal and recruiting, he's intent on transforming MSU from its current state of mediocrity and into a NCAA Tournament regular.
"This is a dream opportunity for me," said Jans, who was hired on Sunday, a day after guiding New Mexico State to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. "I've been coaching for 30 years and when I started this odyssey, I wanted to be in a place like Mississippi State.
"I didn't dream of being at Mississippi State. I didn't really have a dream job. I just wanted to be somewhere where it was important and we were on the biggest stage, we're competing with and against the best players in college basketball and the best coaches in college basketball. And obviously in the SEC and at Mississippi State, we're going to get the opportunity to do that."
Jans, 52, received a four-year contract with a base salary of $2.4 million for 2022-23 and up to $650,000 in performance incentives. He led the 12th-seeded Aggies to a first-round upset of No. 5 Connecticut before falling to No. 4 Arkansas, a team he'll see often in the Southeastern Conference. He brings in a career head coaching record of 143-44 including 122-32 in five seasons at NMSU with three Western Athletic Conference Tournament championships.
His .765 winning percentage ranks fourth among active head coaches, behind Gonzaga's Mark Few (.837), Kansas' Bill Self (.768) and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski (.766).
MSU's 2019 NCAA appearance was the only one in seven seasons under veteran Ben Howland, who departed last week. The Bulldogs were 134-98 during his tenure with three NIT berths the past four years including this season. But since a fourth-place SEC finish in the 2019-20 season halted before the tournament by the coronavirus outbreak, they never got above ninth and finished 18-16 in 10th this season.
Athletic director John Cohen said tremendous interest in the job made it important to move quickly to find Howland's replacement. Jans checked off all the qualities he sought, his impressive record being the most obvious.
"Coach Jans is a proven leader and a proven winner," Cohen said. "He's considered by many industry experts to be one of the elite coaches in the entire country. His overall résumé really speaks for itself."
Jans met with half of his roster earlier this week before severe weather postponed a meeting with other players. The Fairbank, Iowa, native didn't promise a style, but the Aggies' ability to hold Arkansas' high-octane offense to season lows in scoring and shooting (28%) in the 53-48 West Region loss suggests his teams won't be awed.
"We're never going to step on the floor without a chip on our shoulder," he added, "and we're never going to look down at the other bench or the other half of the court as we're warming up and fear anybody."
Jans' arrival follows MSU's March 12 hiring of longtime Louisville assistant Sam Purcell as women's basketball coach. He will take over the program when the top-seeded Cardinals are finished in the women's NCAA Tournament.