Complaint: Republican candidate for state AG hasn’t lived in NM long enough to run for office - By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
A former Bernalillo County official alleged on Wednesday that the Republican candidate for New Mexico attorney general has not lived in New Mexico for long enough to be qualified to run for the office.
Jeremy Michael Gay, of Gallup, is running against Democrat and Second Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez to become the state’s highest-ranking prosecutor.
In a civil complaint filed in First Judicial District Court, retired pastor James Collie alleges that Gay “fails to meet the New Mexico constitutional requirement of having resided continuously in New Mexico for five years preceding his election.”
“Nothing in Mr. Gay’s record suggests that prior to his move to Gallup, New Mexico in 2019, he had established any semblance of a residency in New Mexico,” Collie’s attorney Ryan Harrington wrote. “Nor is there any evidence that he was part of the New Mexico community or had knowledge of issues affecting the state of New Mexico.”
Collie is asking the court to order Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver to deem Gay unqualified to be a candidate for attorney general and ensure that his name does not appear on the ballot in November.
According to the complaint, to be eligible to run for attorney general, Gay must have lived in New Mexico since Nov. 8, 2017, but he “did not establish a continued physical presence in the state of New Mexico” until he moved to Gallup in May 2019.
Collie attached a Florida Elections Division voter registration that appears to show that Gay was registered to vote in Florida from 2008 to 2018.
The complaint also contains a Marine Corps release certificate that indicates Gay joined the Judge Advocates General Corps and was stationed in Twentynine Palms, Calif., until he left the Corps in May 2019.
It also cites a New Mexico business filing showing Gay joined the Advocate Law Center in Gallup in September 2019, and Gay’s voter registration dated Jan. 9, 2020.
Representatives for both campaigns were not immediately available for comment. We will update this story if we hear back.
The Democratic Party of New Mexico issued a statement Thursday morning calling for Gay to be removed from the ballot.
“Republicans are trying to run a candidate who does not even meet the bare minimum to be the state’s top attorney,” said state party Chair Jessica Velasquez. “The New Mexico GOP’s candidate for attorney general isn’t constitutionally qualified for the office, has minimal prosecutorial experience and little connection to our state.”
Update: Sept. 8, 2022 at 4:03 p.m.:
GAY CAMPAIGN’S STATEMENT
Campaign Manager Noelle Gemmer said Gay and his family have “called New Mexico home since 2014,” and his wife was born in Gallup.
“Jeremy and his family temporarily left NM on active duty orders with the U.S Marines and returned as soon as he entered the Reserve Forces,” Gemmer said. “This is a disgusting attack on a veteran for his service and a desperate attempt by the Raúl Torrez campaign to deny voters options at the ballot box. It’s nothing more than another attempt to distract from Torrez’s failed record as prosecutor where he declined to prosecute over 50% of violent felony cases and dismissed 40% of the cases that made it to court.”
BALLOTS SUPPOSED TO BE PRINTED FRIDAY
Whether Gay’s active duty orders affect his residency will have to be decided by the courts, Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Alex Curtas said. Whatever the judge decides, N.M. election administrators will follow that order, he said.
The complaint came just two days before the Secretary of State was set to print the ballots on Friday, Sept. 9, Curtas said. The timing of the printing is required by state law, Curtas said, and it is unclear if they would have to reprint the ballots in the event a judge grants Collie’s request and orders Toulouse Oliver to take Gay off the ballot.
“That’s the uncharted territory,” Curtas said. “A court has never ordered us to change these statutory deadlines. We’ve been very firm for a long time that this is the day the ballot gets set.”
This week, state election officials have been working with county governments to “lock the ballot” into its final version, he said.
US resumes prescribed fires at national forests after review - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
The U.S. Forest Service is resuming its practice of intentionally lighting fires to clear brush and small trees from forested areas nationwide after a three-month hiatus to review the risks of runaway wildfires under increasingly severe climate conditions, the agency announced Thursday.
The prescribed fire program was put on hold in late May in the midst of a devastating wildfire sparked by the federal government near Las Vegas, New Mexico, that burned across more than 500 square miles through remote communities in the southern reaches of the Rocky Mountains.
Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said prescribed burns will require new safeguards such as same-day authorization to keep pace with evolving weather and ground conditions.
He said the Forest Service will adopt mandatory tactics, taken from an in-depth review and public consultation process, that include a more robust scientific analysis of burn plans and a final on-site evaluation of the potential for human error linked to fatigue or inexperience.
Permission to light fires and other communications will be standardized to avoid missteps, amid efforts to learn from the small share of prescribed fires that escape control.
"It's our due diligence and I can't overstate that," Moore said of the new safeguards and tactics. "Every time one of these fires happened, like the one down in New Mexico, you know, we lose trust and credibility in the communities that we serve and so we have to do this right."
Moore said the agency won't back away from intentional burns that he sees as a crucial tool in reducing the buildup of combustible material on forest floors and grasslands.
"Our climate is changing and we have the science to back that up," Moore said. "We need to increase the amount of work that we're doing by up to four times. We do feel that if we want to make a difference on that landscape, between forest thinning and prescribed burning, we really need to ramp it up. And we need to do it in a way that is safe, in a way that really instills public trust."
By the end of the year, the agency also wants to expand training not only for Forest Service staff but also local community members who could be certified to participate directly in controlled wildfires.
To instill greater accountability, Moore said he will soon designate a specific Forest Service member at the national level to oversee implementation of the new requirements and tactics for prescribed burning.
Many forestry experts outside the federal government say prescribed burns need to be accompanied by better oversight and new scientific tools for modeling of fire behavior.
Owen Burney, director of the John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center at New Mexico State University, said the Forest Service could instill greater trust in prescribed burns with independent oversight from outside the agency – not just Forest Service administrators.
"I don't think the Forest Service should be self-serving," Harrington said. "What they need to have is external advisors."
Anticipated changes to the prescribe burn program also will be geared toward economic development and the possible introduction of new composite building products made from small diameter trees and wood particles, products that might incentivize better forest management and create local jobs.
Couy Griffin attends Otero County Commission meeting as a member of the public after his ouster - By Ryan Lowery, Source New Mexico
The Otero County Commission met Thursday for the first time since former Commissioner Couy Griffin was removed from office by court order earlier this week because of his participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Griffin’s nameplate and chair were both absent from the dais as the two remaining commissioners called the regular meeting to order. Griffin, however, attended the meeting and even spoke during the public comment session.
Each speaker was given three minutes to address the commission, and Griffin used his time to discuss two items on the agenda — funding for a road and a contract extension for the county attorney. But Griffin also used the final minute of his allotted time to address his removal from office, telling those in attendance that his computer was seized by county officials before he was notified that District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew had ruled Griffin could no longer serve in his elected position — or any other for the rest of his life.
“This has been the hardest time of my life, not that I’m trying to get anybody’s sympathy. But it’s been very difficult for me,” Griffin said. “I think that it’s just very difficult that I don’t have the respect of being able to be out by Friday without having the county sheriff or the sheriff’s department standing guard.”
In an interview Thursday, Griffin told Source New Mexico that he learned of the judge’s ruling during a phone call from the Otero County manager. That’s also when he learned he no longer had access to his county office, and that his county-issued computer had been removed from his office.
“That’s the thing that has hurt the most in this. I kind of was bracing myself because I figured that it was going to go this way,” Griffin said. “I’ve been in my office, cleaning my office out today with the undersheriff standing guard in the room. They won’t even give me a key to my office so I can get my stuff out without being surveilled by the sheriff’s department.”
Judge Mathew ruled Tuesday that Griffin was to be removed from his elected position and barred for life from holding any other elected federal and state positions.
The case against Griffin was initially filed in March by three New Mexico residents who argued Griffin should be removed from his elected position for violating the Constitution, specifically because of his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Griffin represented himself during a two-day bench trial last month in District Court in Santa Fe. In Tuesday’s decision, Judge Mathew ruled that Griffin had broken his oath to support the Constitution when he participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack in Washington, D.C., violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Griffin said he plans to appeal the ruling and that during the appeals process, he won’t be representing himself. Instead, he will be hiring “some great legal minds.”
The decision to represent himself during the bench trial was made, Griffin said, because he felt he’d provided the judge with strong evidence to have the case dismissed, and he never thought the case would go to trial. He also expressed frustration that a judge, and not Otero County voters, had the final say.
“The left is always crying about how our democracy is under attack. Well what bigger example is there whenever the courts remove a duly elected representative only to make way for the governor to hand select who she wants to represent the people?” Griffin said. “Now it’s no longer the people’s choice. It’s the governor’s choice.”
Nora Meyers Sackett, a spokesperson for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, confirmed that the governor will fill the vacancy, adding that the governor accepts “applications from eligible residents” as possible replacements.
“Gov. Lujan Grisham knows that New Mexicans expect their elected officials to uphold our Constitution and rule of law,” Sackett said. “Protecting our democracy cannot be optional — the people of Otero
County deserve elected officials committed to protecting and upholding our laws.”
And though he’s been removed from his seat on the county commission, Griffin showed that he won’t be silenced when it comes to county matters and is more than willing to address decisions made by his former colleagues as a private citizen. And being in the audience of Thursday’s meeting instead of being seated with the commissioners brought a specific feeling to his mind.
“Humility, brother,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s very humbling, and it’s very disappointing. … I know that sometimes you travel down a hard road to get to a better road, but God’s a gracious God, and I think he’s got me on that track.”
Sanctioned encampments will be legally allowed, after ABQ Council fails to override mayor’s veto - By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
In the latest chapter of a months-long saga, the Albuquerque City Council on Wednesday opted to allow the establishment of “safe outdoor spaces” within the state’s largest city, an effort to give unsheltered folks a safe place to stay overnight.
At the meeting, the Council failed to muster the six votes required to override a veto from Mayor Tim Keller on legislation that would have prohibited city-sanctioned encampments from being allowed in the zoning code. It also would have imposed a one-year ban on them being built.
The Council actually approved legislation allowing for “safe outdoor spaces” in June but reversed course soon after. After initially supporting them, Councilor Brook Bassan has said outcry from constituents prompted her to introduce a bill banning sanctioned encampments.
The Council voted 6-3 on Aug. 15 to prohibit “safe outdoor spaces” from being created in city limits, though Keller vetoed the legislation soon afterward. His office has said sanctioned encampments are one of many tools city officials would like to deal with an ongoing housing crisis here.
Sanctioned encampments are allowed after a local group or entity applies to the city’s Planning Department. Neighbors and others are then allowed to weigh in. And they can appeal if the city approves it.
According to the city’s website, there are two approved “safe outdoor spaces,” though neither has opened. One is on the 700 block of Candelaria Road NE, and the other is at the 1200 block of Menaul Road NE. There have been eight applications so far. Four are awaiting or under review, and two were denied, according to the city.
The approved space on Menaul would have capacity for up to 50 people. The approval has prompted at least seven appeals from those in the area, including a law firm, a hotel and a neighborhood association.
Before the moratorium bill passed, Keller floated the idea of making Coronado Park into a sanctioned encampment at some point. Coronado Park was home to as many as 125 people without shelter, but the encampment was not sanctioned by the city. Citing safety risk to residents and city employees, the city recently closed the park to the public. At least 40 people were at the park at the time, many of whom are now finding shelter on city streets or elsewhere.
Before the park closed, city staff and a nonprofit organization surveyed 94 residents of the park about various topics, including whether they’d be happy to return to Coronado Park “if there are rules and security and limits on the number of belongings you have.”
Of respondents, 49 said they would be “very willing.”
In a statement about the council vote, Keller’s office said sanctioned encampments are one of many tools the administration will use to tackle homelessness.
“Albuquerque, as with nearly all major cities and towns across the United States, needs more tools, not less, to address the homelessness crisis while keeping our neighborhoods, parks and businesses safe,” spokesperson Ava Montoya said.
Those seeking new omicron boosters left to fend for themselves safety-wise - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
New Mexicans started getting the new omicron-specific coronavirus vaccine on Wednesday but were left to figure out on their own how they will safely get the shot.
The CDC and state governors around the country this year rolled back public health protections, including indoor mask mandates for essential services and business that advocates say would provide safety, freedom and autonomy to immunocompromised and medically vulnerable people.
The Biden administration is pitching the new bivalent COVID-19 booster shots as an upgraded version of the previous ones, and said the country’s on track for people to only need one per year.
But as of Wednesday, there was no scientific evidence that these newly developed boosters offer any more protection from infection, transmission or serious illness than the older versions of the shot.
And the administration is setting expectations for high-risk people to have to get boosted more than once per year. But that could mean more risky settings more frequently for people who could sustain the most damage from the illness.
Carol Ezell is a retired accountant living with Type 1 Diabetes in Las Cruces. She called Mesilla Valley Pharmacy on Tuesday morning hoping to get the new shot.
They didn’t have the new boosters yet, she said, but they did agree to have an employee wear a mask while administering it curbside, rather than requiring her to go inside the building.
Ezell said it doesn’t make sense for the government to tell people to get their shot in settings where they can be exposed to COVID.
“For people like us, that’s the biggest risk that we will have taken in months,” Ezell said. “I believe we should have masking required at all points of health care service.”
That, along with a central place to find out which health care providers require masking, would be the least that the government could do, Ezell said.
However, neither of two of the largest pharmacy retail store chains in New Mexico require customers and patients to wear masks when they come in for a vaccine or other care.
When asked how medically vulnerable people could safely visit one of their stores without masking requirements, spokespeople for both CVS and Walgreens pointed to boilerplate news releases they published on Sept. 2, neither of which say anything about preventing infection during vaccination appointments.
When pressed, a CVS spokesperson said pharmacists, interns, technicians, family nurse practitioners, physician associates and nurses are required to wear masks during immunizations.
“For patients and customers, we comply with all local and state mandates as it relates to masking,” the spokesperson said.
CVS refused to answer a question about which mandates they were referring to. There are no state or local mask mandates in New Mexico, and very few local mandates anywhere in the U.S.
The Walgreens spokesperson said when a patient checks into an appointment, pharmacy workers will take their temperature and screen for the presence of symptoms or illness prior to giving them the shot.
The company requires workers administering the shots to wear disposable face masks and face shields, and wear gloves during immunization, but its response does not mention masking requirements for patients and customers.
Meanwhile on social media, complete strangers were sharing anecdotes about where they could safely get the shot for themselves and their loved ones. One poster said the private Ribera Healthcare Clinic on Albuquerque’s Westside requires masks, while another said everyone was wearing one at the Walgreens on Fourth St. and Griegos Rd.
Anna Reser, a historian in Albuquerque, got her omicron booster on Wednesday morning at the Walgreens at 12th St. and I-40.
“The person who checked me in and did my shot was wearing a mask, but no one else I saw in the pharmacy was, and most customers were not,” she said. “The person who gave me the shot put on gloves and a face shield over her existing surgical mask before we went in the little patient room.”
There was no additional air ventilation and no air filtration devices anywhere in sight at the store, she said.
Back down in Las Cruces, Jaye Williams said she will likely wait until November to get another booster. As far as Williams can tell, the new boosters will probably give the most protection about three months after she gets the shot, so she will wait so that she can take the risk of seeing her family for the 2022 holiday season.
She said she hasn’t read anything that shows these new boosters will last longer than the old ones.
“They don’t know,” she said. “So I’m taking the layman’s guess that it’s basically sort of the same.”
Mesilla Valley Pharmacy called Ezell back on Wednesday morning to tell her they ordered some bivalent boosters, but don’t expect them in until late next week or early the week after that.
So Ezell, too, is waiting.
“That’s the only place I’m considering going right now,” she said, “because it’s the only
place I know will do curbside.”
US changes names of places with racist term for Native women - By Mead Gruver Associated Press
The U.S. government has joined a ski resort and others that have quit using a racist term for a Native American woman by renaming hundreds of peaks, lakes, streams and other geographical features on federal lands in the West and elsewhere.
New names for nearly 650 places bearing the offensive word "squaw" include the mundane (Echo Peak, Texas) peculiar (No Name Island, Maine) and Indigenous terms (Pannaite Naokwaide, Wyoming) whose meaning at a glance will elude those unfamiliar with Native languages.
"I feel a deep obligation to use my platform to ensure that our public lands and waters are accessible and welcoming. That starts with removing racist and derogatory names that have graced federal locations for far too long," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
The changes announced Thursday capped an almost year-long process that began after Haaland, the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency, took office in 2021. Haaland is from Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico.
Haaland in November declared the term derogatory and ordered members of the Board on Geographic Names, the Interior Department panel that oversees uniform naming of places in the U.S., and others to come up with alternatives.
Haaland meanwhile created a panel that will take suggestions from the public on changing other places named with derogatory terms.
While the term in question, identified as "sq___" by the Interior Department on Thursday, has met wide scorn in the U.S. only somewhat recently, changing place names in response to broadening opposition to racism has long precedent.
The department ordered the renaming of places carrying a derogatory term for Black people in 1962 and those with a derogatory term for Japanese people in 1974.
The private sector in some cases has taken the lead in changing the offensive term for Native women. Last year, a California ski resort changed its name to Palisades Tahoe.
A Maine ski area also committed in 2021 to changing its name, two decades after that state removed the slur from names of communities and landmarks, though it has yet to do so.
The term originated in the Algonquin language and may have once simply meant "woman." But over time, the word morphed into a misogynist and racist term to disparage indigenous women, experts say.
COVID-19 vaccine may become annual, like flu shot - Jennifer Shutt, States Newsroom via Source New Mexico
COVID-19 boosters shots are on track to become as frequent as the annual flu shot, though high-risk people may need more than one dose per year, Biden administration officials said Tuesday.
“For a large majority of Americans, we are moving to a point where a single annual COVID shot should provide a high degree of protection against serious illness all year,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Ashish Jha said during a briefing.
Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, conveyed a similar message, saying that “in the absence of a dramatically different variant, we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine.”
The move could provide clarity and possibly simplicity for people who have been trying to keep track of if and when they should get a COVID-19 booster.
The most recent announcement about booster shots came last week when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended people 12 and older get another COVID-19 booster dose in the coming weeks.
Jha said Tuesday he expects there may be updates on the booster for kids under 12 at some point later in the fall.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement about the boosters last week that the new bivalent shots are “formulated to better protect against the most recently circulating COVID-19 variant.”
“They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants,” Walensky said.
During Tuesday’s briefing Walensky urged people to get the booster shot, noting that 375 people on average are dying daily from COVID-19 within the U.S.
That number, she said, is “well above the around 200 deaths a day we saw earlier this spring, and in my mind, far too high for a vaccine preventable disease.”
Despite a lack of new funding from Congress to address COVID-19 domestically and abroad, Biden administration officials stressed Tuesday that there are enough doses for all eligible people to get a booster shot heading into the winter.
But, Jha said that only happened after officials pulled money from other public health priorities to secure the vaccine doses. He also said it is “critical” U.S. lawmakers provide the White House with the $22.4 billion officials believe is neededto continue responding to COVID-19.
“Congress is aware that if we do not continue to fund the response, things can easily go backwards,” Jha said.
Ronchetti releases education plan citing low academic performance among NM students - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Republican candidate for governor Mark Ronchetti announced an eight-point education plan Wednesday that he says will boost classroom funding and help students catch up after learning loss during the pandemic.
In a press release, Ronchetti pinned New Mexico’s poor test scores on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham — who he says kept schools closed longer than necessary — and the state Public Education Department. A statewide assessment released by the department last week showed most New Mexico students are not proficient in math, science or language arts.
He proposes spending $100 million on stipends for first through third graders from families with low incomes. His plan says the families of nearly 60,000 students would receive $1,500 annually for three years to purchase out-of-school tutoring.
Ronchetti’s education plan cited a Think New Mexico analysis that showed around 70% of districts grew the budgets of their administrations faster than that of their classrooms. He says he’d change state law to limit that growth, directing more education dollars into classrooms and increasing transparency of how that money is spent.
The Albuquerque Journal reports Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, at a press conference following Ronchetti’s announcement, said administrative spending isn’t a problem. She called the candidate “a danger to public education as we know it,” noting that the governor’s policies — including upping teacher salaries and instructional time — are working, but the data on their impact takes time.
Ex-bookkeeper at Albuquerque firm pleads guilty to $2M fraud - Associated Press
A former bookkeeper for an Albuquerque-based auto body firm has pleaded guilty to charges that she defrauded her employer out of $2 million over a seven-year period, authorities said.
According to the plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court of New Mexico, 47-year-old Christina Joyner of Rio Rancho admitted Tuesday that she stole the money from her former employer from July 2014 through September 2021.
Federal prosecutors said Joyner faces up to 20 years in prison when she's sentenced at a later date.
The Albuquerque Journal reported that Joyner worked as a bookkeeper for the auto body firm for 25 years and held information about the firm's bank accounts, credit cards, on-site cash and accounting software.
She was accused of issuing checks to herself and coded them to give the appearance they were for legitimate business expenses.
The newspaper said Joyner also allegedly created fraudulent payroll check stubs for her husband's name and used them as proof of income when applying for loans.