Caregiver shortage next target for NM lawmakers - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Lawmakers are planning to introduce a bill in the upcoming 2023 legislative session that aims to address the critical shortage of caregivers that give therapy and other services to New Mexicans with developmental disabilities.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, two lawmakers –– Rep. Elizabeth Thomson and Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino –– want to start tackling the problem by collecting information on both starting caregiver wages and staffing levels.
Then, a plan would be made to address the shortage of workers and low wages that would, in theory, garner a robust workforce in agencies that serve those with disabilities.
In an interview with the Journal, Rep. Thomson says she’s seen the workforce turmoil first hand, as her 31-year-old son has severe autism and requires 24/7 care and attention from professionals.
APS to pilot equitable grading approach — Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Albuquerque Public Schools will wade into a new grading system meant to focus on students’ strengths, rather than their shortcomings.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the two-year pilot program was approved by the board last week and will provide training for teachers in “equitable grading.”
Chief of Schools, Chanelle Segura said the new approach to grading shifts the focus from averaged final grades more to tests the students can retake.
She said the approach would be more like training for a marathon, where only the final time for your marathon counts, not all the slower times from practice.
Segura said the approach also leans into students’ individual strengths and diverse learning experiences, allowing students to build upon early success.
The pilot is not being implemented districtwide. Officials said they are looking for around 100 teachers and 20 administrators for the initial launch of the program, but welcome as many people as they can get who are "excited to try the program.”
New Mexico court asked to reconsider electricity rate case — Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
The New Mexico Supreme Court is being asked to reconsider its decision allowing the state's largest electric utility to delay issuing rate credits to customers that were prompted by the recent closure of one of the Southwest's largest coal-fired power plants.
The state attorney general and consumer advocates filed motions this week, arguing that delaying economic relief to customers from the closure of the San Juan Generating Station in September undermines a New Mexico law that guides the state's transition away from electricity generated by fossil fuels.
Regulators in June had ordered Public Service Co. of New Mexico to begin issuing the credits since customers would no longer benefit from the San Juan plant. The utility challenged the regulatory order and requested a stay, which the courtgranted earlier this month.
The group New Energy Economy in its motion contends PNM is violating the most fundamental principle of utility regulation — that a utility cannot collect money from ratepayers for assets that are not providing service.
"This is a significant and unjust imposition on ratepayers, who must continue to pay PNM what is essentially 'free money' for the duration of this appeal or, according to PNM, until it chooses to initiate its next rate case, which may be years after this appeal is concluded," New Energy Economy said in a brief.
The Supreme Court has yet to decide the merits of the case, and it's unclear how soon it could consider the motions filed this week.
Consumer advocates also raised concerns that allowing the utility to delay the rate credits from the San Juan plant could set precedent for PNM delaying credits related to its divestment of shares in an Arizona nuclear power plant.
The utility has argued that the stay in the San Juan case should remain in place, saying the cost of doing business has gone up and that delaying credits would mean smaller rate increases for customers in the future.
New Mexico's Energy Transition Act was meant to ease the economic fallout of closing the coal-fired power plant near Farmington and establish a trajectory for ensuring a zero-carbon standard for investor-owned utilities by 2045 and rural electric cooperatives by 2050.
While PNM has stated it will meet the goal by 2040, there already have been delays of planned solar and battery storage projects that were supposed to replace the capacity lost with the closure of San Juan. The utility has blamed global supply chain problems and has acknowledged challenges of meeting customer demands in 2023 and 2024.
The joint motion filed by the attorney general's office, Western Resource Advocates, the Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy and Prosperity Works includes testimony from state Rep. Nathan Small, a Las Cruces Democrat who cosponsored the energy act in 2019.
Small stated the rate credits in question would offset increases to customer bills that PNM is now charging through its fuel and purchased power cost adjustment clause, which allows for quarterly increases in electricity rates to recover funds from purchasing power in wholesale markets and fuel for power plants.
The testimony of an energy consultant included with the motion shows PNM increased rates twice since July under the adjustment clause and that another increase was anticipated in January. The filing suggests PNM's financial interests could still be protected if the court were to lift the stay.
Animal shelters continue to be in crisis in 2022 — NM Political Report, Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Animal Shelters across the country are in crisis, filled to the brim with ever more pets while dealing with less options for adoption and fostering, and here in NM the story is no different.
The Albuquerque Journal reports Albuquerque’s Animal welfare department anticipates 21,500 pets will have come through the cities two shelters by the end of the year.
That is an increase of more than 25 percent from the roughly 17,000 pets the shelters would deal with before the COVID pandemic began.
Carolyn Ortega, director of animal welfare for Albuquerque, said both the increase in intakes and the decrease in adoptions and foster homes are caused in part by inflation and the economy.
She said the shelters have seen an increase in the number of people surrendering pets because they simply cannot afford to keep an animal anymore, or because they are moving from a house into a smaller apartment, or even becoming homeless.
She said the Albuquerque shelter currently has more than 950 pets waiting to find homes.
Man accused of dismembering wife before thanksgiving gathering at West Side home – Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Police say an Albuquerque man killed and dismembered his wife mere hours before they were supposed to host family for Thanksgiving dinner at their westside home.
TheAlbuquerque journal reports Karlan Denio is charged with a open count of murder in the death of Connie Denio, and it is unclear whether he has a attorney at this time.
Family members originally called police for a welfare check when they arrived at the home at 1pm for thanksgiving celebrations, and found no one answering the door.
While waiting for police to arrive, a family member removed a
door from its hinges to gain access to the home, and found Karlan Denio in bed and his wife’s remains on the floor.
Family told police Karlan Denio was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia two years ago, a disease that can result in a host of mental issues including unusual behavior and emotional problems.
As utilities spend billions on transmission, support builds for independent monitoring Robert Zullo, Virginia Mercury
An aging electric grid, fossil fuel power plant retirements and a massive renewable electricity buildout are all contributing to a boom in transmission and distribution wire projects by electric utilities across the country.
In 2020, investor-owned electric utilities spent $25 billion on transmission, up from $23.7 billion in 2019, figures that the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned electric companies, expected to only grow going forward.
Ohio-based American Electric Power, which is one of the nation’s largest electric companies and which operates the largest transmission system in the country (serving 5.5 million customers in 11 states) said last year that it plans to spend $23.3 billion between 2022 and 2026 on transmission and distribution.
But much of that spending is happening on local projects in states with widely differing regulatory regimes. And there’s been growing concern at the state and federal level that too much of it is occurring without enough transparency and oversight to ensure transmission owners are appropriately planning for new technology, considering more cost-effective regional approaches or alternate solutions and not ripping off their ratepayers.
“There’s going to be a significant amount of transmission built,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Richard Glick said at a Nov. 15 meeting of a joint federal and state task force on electric transmission. “We need to make sure consumers get the best bang for their buck.”
The meeting came more than a month after a FERC technical conference during which electric utility regulators and consumer counsel from a wide variety of states said, to varying degrees, that they often lacked the authority, information and expertise to properly vet and oversee the rising number of transmission projects happening in their states.
That’s led to growing support for the idea of an independent monitor to examine the need, costs and planning behind the wave of new projects to protect customers and ensure utilities — for whom transmission spending and the return on equity it comes with is a major profit stream — are looking beyond their own narrow financial interests.
“It is inexplicable, other than perhaps explained by utility influence, that massive expenditures for these utility local transmission projects are being charged to consumers without the government regulatory oversight that has been developed over a century for consumer protection,” Mike Haugh, director of the analytical department at the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, wrote in comments to FERC in support of independent transmission monitors.
“The ITM would allow for another level of protection for consumers that are paying for the transmission system.”
Not everyone, of course, is on board.
Electric companies and transmission owners see it as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, and even some utility regulators say it’s a job best left to states.
‘SCREAMS OUT FOR MORE OVERSIGHT’
At the task force meeting Nov. 15, Andrew French, a commissioner at the Kansas Corporation Commission, which regulates electric utilities, said transmission costs in his state have gone from $4 a month on the average customer’s bill 10 or 15 years ago to $20 today.
“We are seeing a flood of capital investment in that area and that screams out for more oversight,” he said.
Jennifer Easler, the Iowa state consumer advocate, which is responsible for reviewing and investigating regulated services provided by gas and electric utilities, said during the October conference that regulators need more information in advance to perform a holistic assessment of local transmission projects that aren’t being properly vetted at the federal or regional transmission operator level.
“By the time it arrives at the state regulator, when a utility wants to replace a new line because of age and condition, the regulator is hard pressed to say no to that,” she said.
But some state regulators do have processes in place to properly vet transmission projects and utility building plans, which are called integrated resource plans.
“In Nevada we have one vertical (investor-owned utility) that’s regulated, and it handles just about all the transmission in the state, which means that any time new transmission is being proposed, in an interstate context at least, there’s a lot of robust and review and analysis of that transmission,” said Cameron Dyer, assistant general counsel for the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada at the October FERC conference.
And not all utility regulators see the need for an independent monitor.
Tricia Pridemore, chairman of the Georgia Public Service Commission, touted Georgia’s pro-business rankings, economic development wins, below average electric rates, growth in solar energy, lack of outages or brown-outs and a collaborative process between regulators and utilities that “has been perfected over decades” at the Nov. 15 FERC task force meeting. (According to the federal Energy Information Administration however, Georgia is hardly an electric rate utopia, ranking 15th most expensive in average residential retail electric price.)
She admonished other state utility regulators to secure the budget and staffing to properly oversee projects rather than rely on a federally imposed monitor.
“It lessens your authority to do the hard things that simply must be done,“ she said.
During the FERC proceedings, several large transmission owners have also dismissed the concept of an independent monitor as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy that could gum up the works at a crucial juncture for the electric grid.
“We are currently living at a time when the need for transmission infrastructure investment has likely never been greater since the dawn of the industry. However, there remain a few who continue to throw sticks in the spokes with a desire to divert the focus from progress to regress,” wrote Charles Marshall, vice president of transmission planning for ITC Holdings, which describes itself as the largest independent electricity transmission company in the United States. ITC owns and operates high voltage transmission in Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
“This has led to a push for additional layers of bureaucracy that could introduce new uncertainty and jeopardize needed investments in reliability and resilience,” Marshall wrote.
Jeff Burleson, a senior vice president of environmental and system planning at Atlanta-based Southern Company, which operates electric companies in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, said the company posts transmission plans twice a year on the Southeastern Regional Transmission Planning website and gets “a significant amount of oversight at our state regulatory agencies.”
“I also don’t feel that there is value for us from thinking about some sort of independent monitor because we already have so much scrutiny that comes through all of our processes,” he said.
But Easler, the Iowa consumer advocate, said in her comments filed with FERC that growing transmission costs are hitting many Iowa ratepayers hard and there’s often little state regulators can do.
“I would disagree with the notion that this is creating additional bureaucracy. It’s addressing a major oversight gap that exists,” Easler said at the October conference.
THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
The Federal Power Act, which dates to 1920, grants FERC oversight over electric transmission in interstate commerce and charges it with ensuring that costs billed to customers are “just and reasonable.”
“Yet, over the past few decades, the commission has used its expansive ratemaking authority to institute several shortcuts that reduce its direct oversight,” according to comments filed with FERC by Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University Law School. “The commission’s policies do not protect consumers.”
Peskoe singled out FERC “formula rates,” which, instead of relying on a contested rate case to establish the utility’s cost of service for transmission, allows the companies to file information with FERC in various categories — including rate of return, operations and maintenance, depreciation, taxes and other factors — that is used to calculate the formula rate they’re able to charge customers for local projects.
“Formula rates are a vehicle for avoiding burdens of proof and limiting protests. The commission’s default presumption that all transmission expenditures are prudent allows utility costs to flow through to consumers’ bills without scrutiny,” Peskoe wrote, adding that FERC policies for transmission asset replacement and end-of-life projects amount to “a blank check that may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the next few decades.”
While there’s some opportunity to challenge utilities’ formula rates, “it’s not practical to do so on the piecemeal basis that these other projects are progressing,” Easler said.
“The absence of customer-initiated challenges to local transmission upgrades in formula rate reviews is not an indication that all is well,” she wrote in her comments to FERC. “Rather, in the face of relentless transmission rate increase, it is an indication that this regulatory process is inadequate to protect customers from unjust and unreasonable charges resulting from inefficient siloed transmission planning processes.”
FERC Commissioner Mark Christie, a former member of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, has said the amount of transmission spending utilities are packing into their rate bases (the total value of a regulated utility’s assets and upon which its electric rates and profits are calculated) nearly tripled between 2012 and 2020.
“What goes into rate base goes into consumer bills,” Christie said at the Nov. 15 task force meeting. “This is a hugely important issue. This is a ton of money.” Christie questioned task force members on whether FERC should deny formula rate treatment to utilities in states that can’t certify that they have a “credible process” for evaluating need and prudence of projects.
Transmission projects that span different utilities’ service territories in areas managed by regional transmission organizations go through a vetting process involving multiple parties, but utilities have almost total control over local projects, a major incentive to avoid regional projects in which they may have to share control and profits with another utility.
“They like the status quo, which is them building their own transmission wholly within their own territory and not having to share,” said Nick Guidi, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who works on electric regulation issues at FERC and is pushing for market reform in the Southeast.
Guidi quibbled in particular with the characterization by Burleson, the Southern Company executive, that the company’s state regulators conduct a thorough review of transmission projects.
Even where certificate of public need procedures (a permit to build and operate a utility facility) exist in the Southeast, it’s generally only for new lines, not lines that are being rebuilt, upgraded or replaced.
“So we don’t always have this fulsome review of a comprehensive plan,” he said. “An (independent transmission monitor) would be a tremendous resource for states who don’t often have the resources to monitor the process.”
LOCAL LIMITATIONS
Many states limit what their public utility commissions can approve based on size of transmission line, leading to utilities often picking solutions that fall under that threshold in order to avoid scrutiny.
That means that while the project might not be the most efficient or cost effective, it’s the easiest one for the utility to get built with the least amount of oversight.
Lauren Azar, a former commissioner at the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, said Wisconsin also has no certificate requirement for smaller transmission lines.
In Ohio, only lines above 100 kilovolts require a certificate of public need.
In North Carolina, a public need certificate is only required for new construction of a transmission line that’s 161 kilovolts or larger, said James McLawhorn, director of the energy division at the North Carolina Utilities Commission’s Public Staff, which is the state’s consumer advocate.
“So we have a lot of 115, and we find out about it when, as we said this morning, when it shows up in rates,” McLawhorn said in October at the FERC conference.
THE ROLE OF A MONITOR
In October, Kentucky Public Service Commission Chairman Kent Chandler, said the monitor could serve a similar function to the independent market monitor in PJM, the nation’s largest regional transmission operator that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. The market monitor is tasked with helping maintain “competitive and nondiscriminatory” power markets.
There seemed to be little appetite among consumer advocates or utility regulators for giving the monitor authority to issue orders rejecting or requiring any particular projects to be built.
“Certainly they’re not going to issue an order requiring something to be built, but they can provide information to the states to whatever agency has jurisdiction to consider a transmission expansion, whether it’s in their own state, or three or four states over,” said Henry Tilghman, an energy lawyer representing the Northwest and Intermountain Power Producers Coalition, a regional organization for independent power producers and other companies. “Just some good information that gives them confidence that they have the information they need to make an informed decision for their ratepayers.”
A final FERC decision on independent monitors, however, isn’t imminent. Though the current discussion on independent transmission monitoring is occurring as the commission is weighing a proposed rule aimed at encouraging more effective long-term regional transmission planning and changing how benefits and costs of new transmission are allocated, an order on independent monitoring would most likely come in a future rulemaking proceeding, experts said.
“It would require another NOPR (notice of proposed rulemaking),” Guidi said.
Adrienne Mouton-Henderson, director of market and policy innovation at the Clean Energy Buyers Alliance, an association for commercial, industrial, nonprofit and other organizations looking to purchase clean energy, said the same objections to transition monitors were raised about electric market monitors.
“Everyone complained when it was first raised. … It’s going to stop the system, we’re just going to be stalled out. And that’s simply not been the case,” she said. “Band-Aiding the system right now and putting the same assets in place is not helping us get renewables there, it’s not helping corporate sustainability goals, it’s not helping us get to clean energy. Transmission lines need to be rebuilt, they need to be upgraded regionally, and we need to make sure that we do it in a cost-effective manner for all ratepayers. … and we simply aren’t doing it right now.”
Lujan Grisham positive for COVID-19, not celebrating holiday - Associated Press
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has tested positive for COVID-19, marking the second time she has gotten the virus.
In a statement, the governor said she was experiencing mild symptoms and was isolating. The governor said she was fully vaccinated and had received the latest COVID-19 booster.
She wasn't taking part in Thanksgiving celebrations with family.
"While testing positive just before the Thanksgiving holiday is disappointing, I know that I am protecting my loved ones by isolating and not joining them for holiday festivities," Lujan Grisham said.
The governor, who tested positive on Wednesday afternoon, had returned on Tuesday from a United Nations climate change conference in Egypt.
Lujan Grisham first tested positive for the virus about three months ago.
Student charged in New Mexico campus shooting is released - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
A University of New Mexico student was released from jail Wednesday after being accused of plotting with friends to confront a basketball player from a rival university, resulting in the shooting death of one UNM student and the wounding of the player.
A state district judge denied a request by prosecutors to keep Jonathan Smith, 19, in custody pending trial on charges of aggravated battery, conspiracy and tampering with evidence. Smith's attorney has said his client had no previous criminal record and comes from a good home.
Authorities say the plan for revenge on Mike Peake, the New Mexico State University basketball player, followed a brawl at a college football game earlier this fall. The shooting happened just hours before the scheduled tipoff of a basketball game between the two schools, and authorities say Peake was allegedly lured to the UNM campus in Albuquerque early Saturday.
Police identified Brandon Travis as the University of New Mexico student who was fatally shot and accused of planning the assault on Peake, the starting power forward for the Aggies basketball team.
Court documents state that a 17-year-old female UNM student conspired with Smith, Travis and another young man to get Peake on campus. Once there, the men confronted Peake, and Travis shot him in the leg. Peake returned fire, killing Travis. The teen girl is facing conspiracy charges in juvenile court.
University officials confirmed Wednesday that Peake, who is expected to recover, is still a member of the team. While Peake violated curfew rules and the student code of conduct for taking a gun on the team trip, he has not been charged with a crime.
New Mexico State University officials said during a news conference Wednesday that student athletes who were involved in that previous fight were disciplined, and that officials from both schools have been in talks about how to ensure the safety of students and other fans during rivalry games.
"We are taking these events extremely seriously and we are looking at everything we can and should be able to do to avoid these kinds of things in the future," NMSU Chancellor Dan Arvizu said.
Arvizu was joined by Athletics Director Mario Moccia and Dean of Students Ann Goodman. They all talked about the high expectations for student athletes and the values that are preached by NMSU coaches.
Goodman said the New Mexico rivalry is not unlike many others around the country when it comes to college athletics, and fights that erupt during such games are not always motivated by the rivalry itself but rather something else.
What sparked the fight in October is part of the ongoing investigation. Still, the officials said they have talking with the University of New Mexico about ways to "lower the temperature" so hostility can be avoided during future games between the two schools.
According to data collected by UNM and NMSU authorities, it's rare for weapons to be found on campus.
At New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, officials said there were no arrests involving weapons in 2021, only one in 2020 and three in 2019. There have been 10 cases of weapons found in student housing at UNM in Albuquerque in the last four years, with only two in 2019 leading to an arrest, citation or summons.
National UFO Historical Records Center coming to Albuquerque - By Toby Martinez Roswell Daily Record
A group of historians and archivists have announced plans to open a new national archive in the Albuquerque area focusing on unidentified aerial phenomenon. Led by author and researcher David Marler, the National UFO Historical Records Center will establish the largest historical archive dedicated to the preservation and centralization of UFO/UAP information in the United States.
At a presentation announcing the new archive during International UFO Congress in Phoenix on Oct. 14, Marler said, "What's the importance of all this? Looking at these historical cases, providing context for what we're hearing about today, well, it demonstrates that there's a rich, diverse history of this UFO phenomenon wherever you look, whether it's newspapers, government documents, historical archives, etc."
Marler continues, "I was thinking about this a while back, when you look at the UFO subject we have the National UFO Reporting Center, great. And we also have the National Archives, okay, but the one thing we don't have is, you put these two ideas together, there is no National Archives of Ufology despite the need for one."
The archive is set to include official and civilian case files, audio and video recordings, correspondence, photographs, books, magazines, news clippings, research notes, microfilm, along with and digital and physical artifacts. Documents from the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and J. Allen Hynek's personal Project Blue Book files. It also includes personal collections from researchers Philip Mantle, Antonio Huneeus and Lou Farish, among others.
"I want to postulate this to you: What if we could centralize all the historical data under one roof," Marler said. "What if we could be able to cross-reference all this data to look for patterns, to gain insights, to add to the already growing amount of information and knowledge we have? What if we could scan and make accessible all of this material to the worldwide UFO community and get some really important people looking at this data?"
Marler continues, "Imagine the case files and reports that have never been seen. The audio tapes that have never been heard. The potential discoveries that could lead to answers, potentially, to this mystery. So what am I proposing? The largest gathering of UFO historical U.S collections."
Members of the new organization include Jan Aldrich, Rod Dyke, Barry Greenwood, Dr. Mark Rodeghier and Rob Swiatek. "Many people data mine the internet," Marler said. "I'm here to tell you I would argue only 40 to 50 percent of the data is out on the internet. We still have physical case holdings that need to be digitized. I really look forward to trying to preserve the history and hopefully we'll be here at future events to share that history with you and to help researchers and producers like James Fox."
In a press release, the organization stated, "Our mission is to collect, preserve, and provide historical UFO materials to the general public and interested parties. With the accumulated data, we hope to assist with serious research endeavors and aid in an accurate chronicling of UFO/UAP history for present and future generations regardless of belief or non-belief in the subject."
Efforts are currently underway to find a building for the new non-profit archive. "We want to base it in Albuquerque, New Mexico because of the state affiliation with the subject," Marler said.