Proposal would professionalize only unsalaried legislature — Associated Press
Lawmakers in New Mexico — the nation's only unsalaried legislature — are looking for ways instill greater professionalism in their work that could result in a steady paycheck and lengthier legislative calendar.
Democratic state State Rep. Joy Garratt of Albuquerque told the Santa Fe New Mexican that she plans to co-sponsor a ballot initiative to create a commission with the authority to set salaries for legislators. Legislative approval is required to schedule the vote.
Members of the New Mexico House and Senate receive a daily stipend and reimbursement for travel that can add add up to more than $20,000 in some instances, with an optional pension plan for long-serving lawmakers.
New Mexico's Legislature meets for as few as 30 days a year, with 60-day sessions in odd-numbered years. There are more extensive duties and travel for members of year-round budget and policy committees.
This unsalaried status has been a source of public pride in the "citizens' legislature." Critics of the system say legislative salaries would help younger candidates who hail from working households serve as lawmakers and alleviate conflicts between legislative advocacy and private careers.
A new study by University of New Mexico professors Timothy Krebs and Michael Rocca ranks the state near the bottom of legislatures in its capacity to perform a wide range of government oversight duties and acquire broad expertise.
Legislators from Connecticut to Oregon recently cited meager financial compensation in their decisions to resign or leave office without seeking reelection.
In several states, bills that would increase pay for legislators faltered in 2022 amid fears that lawmakers might anger voters by approving their own pay raises.
In New Mexico, money is currently no obstacle to expanding pay for legislators. State government is forecasting a multibillion-dollar windfall from surging oil production and robust energy prices.
Economists estimate state government income of nearly $12 billion for the fiscal year running from July 2023 to June 2024. That revenue would exceed current annual general fund spending obligations by 43% or $3.6 billion.
Santa Fe Indian School joins community schoolyards program — Margaret O'Hara, Santa Fe New Mexican
Christie Abeyta envisions Santa Fe Indian School as a thriving campus, filled with spaces that foster Indigenous culture, art, language and teachings, something that's closer to reality now that the school has been selected to receive a newly developed schoolyard through a federal pilot program.
"We want to remain in line and in tune with place, as place is significant to Native people. Everything revolves around your place in this world," Abeyta, the school's superintendent, told the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The campus' open-air environments — a community garden, outdoor classrooms with facilities to prepare traditional meals and plazas where students interact, dance and sing together — are a start, she said. But she said she believes the school community and tribal elders will have even more ideas on ways to enhance the campus as the school joins the Tribal Community Schoolyards Pilot Program, a new partnership between the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.
Santa Fe Indian School is one of nine Native American schools across the country — and one of two in New Mexico — selected to receive the upgraded schoolyard.
Danielle Denk, the community schoolyards initiative director for the Trust for Public Land, said the new program is designed to transform vacant or drab schoolyards in Indigenous communities into vibrant spaces for outdoor learning and play.
The Trust for Public Land has constructed more than 200 community schoolyards in the past 25 years, she said, adding the yards improve community health outcomes by providing space for outdoor activities and climate resilience by reducing the effects of urban heat islands and conveying water to prevent flooding.
Community schoolyards also improve educational outcomes, Denk said, because the outdoor environment offers a stimulating space for learning.
In many places, the outdoor schoolyards also have decreased behavioral incidents. Denk noted one Philadelphia school in which student suspension rates dropped from 30 per year to zero after the Trust for Public Land constructed a new schoolyard.
The Tribal Community Schoolyards Pilot Program is intended to offer the same benefits in tribal community schools, Denk said.
"At the Department of the Interior, we have a solemn duty to honor and strengthen the federal government's nation-to-nation relationships with tribes," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo, said in late November when she formally announced the program. "Today's announcement affirms that commitment and will bring increased and much-needed resources to Indigenous communities."
The program marks the beginning of an effort to shift Native American boarding schools away from their traumatic history and instead create spaces that embrace Indigenous traditions and students as assets rather than deficits, Abeyta said.
The Trust for Public Land and Bureau of Indian Education selected the nine participating schools based on maximizing benefits for local people, Denk said, saying the agencies decided "when we do this, let's be intentional about where we work to have the biggest impact."
Sites were selected based on two primary criteria. First, officials used localized data — including the proportion of the population that identifies as people of color; the percentage of low-income households and children living in poverty; and the number of adults with less than a high school education — to generate an environmental justice score. Then they generated a health score based on factors like the local COVID-19 death rate, the number of days per week people experience mental unhealthiness and levels of physical inactivity.
These scores generated a short list of schools, from which the Trust for Public Land and Bureau of Indian Education selected the finalists — a mix of residential and day schools operated by tribes and by the Bureau of Indian Education.
Wingate Elementary School in Fort Wingate was the second New Mexico school to participate in the pilot program, joining schools in South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Wisconsin.
Students, teachers, school and tribal leaders and community members will assist in designing and creating the yards, Denk said.
"With tribal and Indigenous voices leading the design, creation and activation of these schoolyards, there's amazing potential to infuse centuries of knowledge into these schoolyards to connect tribal and Indigenous communities to their culture and inspire future generations of tribal and Indigenous leaders," Trust for Public Land President and CEO Diane Regas said in a news release.
With assistance from the University of New Mexico and input from students and staff, Santa Fe Indian School officials have planned out their ideal campus footprint, Abeyta said.
Abeyta hopes to see the construction of new walking paths for students with signs offering historical and cultural information, outdoor classrooms that lend themselves to discussions of ecology and natural catchment systems to limit flooding on campus.
Collaboration with tribal leaders and the school community was the most important aspect of the process, she said: "What do they envision for the build out of our campus? What does the ideal schoolyard look like for a Pueblo, Navajo, Apache student who comes to Santa Fe Indian School? In that thought, there's so much that potentially could be considered."
The outreach and design phases of the project will double as an applied learning project for students at Santa Fe Indian School, Denk said. Throughout the process, students will create a survey for fellow students, parents, teachers and community members and analyze its results, examine budgetary constraints and learn to compromise.
Fundraising for the nine new schoolyards — which are expected to cost $16 million — will be led by the Trust for Public Land and begin in 2023. The trust expects to raise most of the projects' funding through public sources supplemented by private philanthropic donors.
Abeyta is excited about the possibilities.
"The potential is endless. I think that we've done an awesome job so far in doing it for ourselves with limited to no resources. Now that we have funding and resources, it can only get better," she said.
Spending bill secures funds for Native American health care — Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
Access to health care for Native Americans and Alaska Natives will be bolstered with funding included in a massive government spending bill awaiting President Joe Biden's signature.
The U.S. House passed the measure Friday, avoiding a government shutdown and providing more certainty for a federal agency that delivers health care to more than 2.5 million people.
A coalition of lawmakers from Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, California and elsewhere fought to include advanced appropriations for the Indian Health Service in the bill, marking a first for the chronically underfunded agency as a way to ensure that services continue in case of potential funding disruptions.
With the legislation, IHS joins other federal health care programs that receive advance funding, including Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Health Administration.
"This will ensure that patients are not subject to the uncertainty of the government funding process, saving lives and creating stronger, healthier communities," Rep. Sharice Davids, D-Kan., said in a statement. "Along with increased funding for education, housing, and economic development, this bill brings us closer to upholding our federal trust and treaty obligations to American Indian and Alaska Native communities."
Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., said tribal health facilities are the primary source of health care for Native communities in his district. He called the inclusion of advance funding for IHS a historic step.
IHS, which runs two dozen hospitals and nearly 100 other clinics around the country, repeatedly has been the focus of congressional hearings and scathing government reports that seek reform.
The House Native American Caucus, in a letter sent earlier this month, urged the Biden administration, IHS and tribal nations to work toward authorizing the shift away from discretionary funding.
The lawmakers pointed to a 2017 report by the Government Accountability Office that showed per capita spending for IHS trailed by more than two-thirds the $13,185 spent by Medicare. They said insufficient funding has led to persistent staffing shortages, limited equipment availability, extended wait times and other problems.
More recently, a GAO report issued in March noted that outdated facilities, few inpatient beds and health care provider shortages made the agency's response to the coronavirus pandemic even more challenging.
IHS received more than $9 billion in COVID-19 relief funding — which it used to address both immediate and longstanding needs — but some members of Congress have argued that the agency's overall budget needs to catch up with the actual needs in tribal communities.
Advocates also have argued that every time Congress passes a continuing resolution to keep government operating, IHS has to modify hundreds of contracts to adjust for the available funding.
During the last government shutdown, the National Council of Urban Indian Health noted that urban Indian organizations reported at least five patient deaths and significant disruptions in patient services as some clinics were forced to shut their doors.
Law protects export of sacred Native American items from US — Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press
Federal penalties have increased under a newly signed law intended to protect the cultural patrimony of Native American tribes, immediately making some crimes a felony and doubling the prison time for anyone convicted of multiple offenses.
President Joe Biden signed the Safeguard Tribal Objects of Patrimony Act on Dec. 21, a bill that had been introduced since 2016. Along with stiffer penalties, it prohibits the export of sacred Native American items from the U.S. and creates a certification process to distinguish art from sacred items.
The effort largely was inspired by pueblo tribes in New Mexico and Arizona who repeatedly saw sacred objects up for auction in France. Tribal leaders issued passionate pleas for the return of the items but were met with resistance and the reality that the U.S. had no mechanism to prevent the items from leaving the country.
"The STOP Act is really born out of that problem and hearing it over and over," said attorney Katie Klass, who represents Acoma Pueblo on the matter and is a citizen of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma. "It's really designed to link existing domestic laws that protect tribal cultural heritage with an existing international mechanism."
The law creates an export certification system that would help clarify whether items were created as art and provides a path for the voluntary return of items that are part of a tribe's cultural heritage. Federal agencies would work with Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians to outline what items should not leave the U.S. and to seek items back.
Information provided by tribes about those items would be shielded from public records laws.
While dealers and collectors often see the items as art to be displayed and preserved, tribes view the objects as living beings held in community, said Brian Vallo, a consultant on repatriation.
"These items remain sacred, they will never lose their significance," said Vallo, a former governor of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. "They will never lose their power and place as a cultural item. And it is for this reason that we are so concerned."
Tribes have seen some wins over the years:
— In 2019, Finland agreed to return ancestral remains of Native American tribes that once called the cliffs of Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado home. The remains and artifacts were unearthed by a Swedish researcher in 1891 and held in the collection of the national Museum of Finland.
— That same year, a ceremonial shield that vanished from Acoma Pueblo in the 1970s was returned to the tribe after a nearly four-year campaign involving U.S. senators, diplomats and prosecutors. The circular, colorful shield featuring the face of a Kachina, or ancestral spirit, had been held at a Paris auction house.
— In 2014, the Navajo Nation sent its vice president to Paris to bid on items believed to be used in wintertime healing ceremonies after diplomacy and a plea to return the items failed. The tribe secured several items, spending $9,000.
—In 2013, the Annenberg Foundation quietly bought nearly two dozen ceremonial items at an auction in Paris and later returned them to the Hopi, the San Carlos Apache and the White Mountain Apache tribes in Arizona. The tribes said the items invoke the spirit of their ancestors and were taken in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The STOP Act ties in with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act that requires museums and universities that receive federal funds to disclose Native American items in their possession, inventory them, and notify and transfer those items to affiliated tribes and Native Hawaiians or descendants.
The Interior Department has proposed a number of changes to strengthen NAGPRA and is taking public comment on them until mid-January.
The STOP Act increases penalties for illegally trafficking Native American human remains from one year to a year and a day, thus making it a felony on the first offense. Trafficking cultural items as outlined in NAGPRA remains a misdemeanor on the first offense. Penalties for subsequent offenses for both increase from five years to 10 years.
New Mexico U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez, who introduced the House bill, said time will tell whether the penalties are adequate.
"We should always look at the laws we pass as not static but as living laws, so we are able to determine improvements that can be made," she said.
Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, the former cultural preservation director for the Hopi Tribe, said the enhanced penalties are helpful. But he wants to see countries embrace a principle of mutual respect and deference to the laws of sovereign Native American nations when it comes to what's rightfully theirs. For Hopi, he said, the items are held by the community and no one person has a right to sell or give them away.
The items can be hard to track but often surface in underground markets, in museums, shows, and auction house catalogs, Vallo said.
He said Finland, Germany and the U.K. shared intentions recently to work with U.S. tribes to understand what's in their collections and talk about ways to return items of great cultural significance.
"I think if we can make some progress, even with these three countries, it sends a strong message that there is a way to go about this work, there is a mutual reward at the end," he said. "And it's the most responsible thing to be engaged in."
___
Fonseca covers Indigenous communities on AP's Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: @FonsecaAP
Scope of New Mexico’s fake elector scheme detailed in Jan. 6 committee report - By Ryan Lowery,Source New Mexico
The House select committee investigating the violent and deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results released its final report late Thursday.
The 846-page report is the culmination of an 18-month investigation that included more than 1,000 witness interviews and nearly a dozen public hearings. While detailing Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of an election he lost, the report describes how the former president and his allies tried to use fake electors in New Mexico and six other states to help him ignore the will of voters and stay in power.
The report led the committee to issue four criminal referrals against the former president, and one of those criminal referrals focused on the effort to appoint fake electors in states where Trump lost to President Joe Biden.
“This scheme involved lawyers, such as Kenneth Chesebro and Rudy Giuliani, as well as Mark Meadows,” the report stated. “It also was aided at key points by Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee Ronna McDaniel, members of Congress, and Republican leaders across seven states.”
The goal of the fake elector scheme was to have alternate slates of electors in place so the outcome of the election could be ultimately decided by Congress. The idea was that by having fake electors in New Mexico, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Congress could accept the decisions made by those alternate slates of electors and reject the official slates.
The report concluded that Trump oversaw the scheme himself, and that Republican leaders in some states “did not know exactly what they were being asked to do.” It also concluded that Trump campaign officials pitched the idea as a contingency, just in case any given state changed course and declared Trump the winner of its electoral votes.
Electors in each state were required to sign documents certifying their state’s election results by Dec. 14, 2020. When that date arrived, there was still no real evidence disputing the election results, making any contingency unnecessary.
“Trump and his advisors wanted Vice President Pence to disregard real electoral college votes for former Vice President Biden, in favor of these fake competing electoral slates,” the report stated. “But there never were real, competing slates of electors. By the time the fake Trump electors met on Dec. 14, appropriate government officials in each of the seven states had already certified their state’s official election results for former Vice President Biden.”
Not one court had issued an order reversing or calling into question those results of the election, either, and most election-related litigation had concluded as well. The committee also determined that the vice president does not have the authority to pick which presidential electors to count during a joint session of Congress, making the entire fake elector scheme superfluous.
“These groups of Trump backers who called themselves presidential electors were never actually electors, and the votes they purported to cast on Dec. 14 were not valid,” the report stated. “They were fake. They had no legal standing, and their fake votes could not have been used by Vice President Pence to disregard the real votes of electors chosen by the voters.”
THE “MIGHT” IN NEW MEXICO’S DOCUMENT
New Mexico’s fake elector documents differed slightly from most of the others in that the idea that this was a contingency plan was expressly written into the document.
“[I]t might later be determined that we are the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of New Mexico…,” the document stated.
Pennsylvania is the only other state to include this sort of contingency wording. Documents filed by fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin didn’t contain the same hedge.
THE ILLEGAL ACT THAT LED TO VIOLENCE
During a speech at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, Trump exhorted those assembled that day to march to the Capitol and to “demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.”
The House committee contends this comment was made intentionally as part of an overarching scheme to overturn the election and hold onto power.
“This was no off-the-cuff remark; it was the culmination of a carefully planned scheme many weeks in the making,” the report stated. “This plea by the president turned the truth on its head. There was only one legitimate slate of electors from the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and Trump wanted them rejected.”
The committee stated that the plan to prepare alternative slates of electors in these key states — and the plan to have Vice President Pence choose electoral votes from fake electors over the real ones — was devised by John Eastman, a lawyer and law professor in California who lives in Santa Fe and is registered to vote in New Mexico. The committee also asserts that Eastman knew the plan was illegal but that he pushed for it anyway.
“Eastman knew before proposing this plan that it was not legal. Indeed, in a pre-election document discussing Congress’s counting of electoral votes, Dr. Eastman specifically disagreed with a colleague’s proposed argument that the vice president had the power to choose which envelopes to ‘open’ and which votes to ‘count,’” the report stated.
By the time Trump spoke at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, his top lawyers had implored that he not follow through with the plan to have Pence accept votes from the fake electors, the committee said in its report. Some senior campaign staff members had expressed concerns as well, and days before the joint session, the acting attorney general and the deputy attorney general blocked the sending of a letter indicating that there were “competing slates” of electors.
“The fake elector effort was an unlawful, unprecedented and destructive break from the electoral college process that our country has used to select its president for generations,” the report stated. “It led directly to the violence that occurred on Jan. 6. To address the damage that it caused, it is important to understand how it transpired.”
Santa Fe Indian School joins community schoolyards program - By Margaret O'hara Santa Fe New Mexicans
Christie Abeyta envisions Santa Fe Indian School as a thriving campus, filled with spaces that foster Indigenous culture, art, language and teachings, something that's closer to reality now that the school has been selected to receive a newly developed schoolyard through a federal pilot program.
"We want to remain in line and in tune with place, as place is significant to Native people. Everything revolves around your place in this world," Abeyta, the school's superintendent, told the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The campus' open-air environments — a community garden, outdoor classrooms with facilities to prepare traditional meals and plazas where students interact, dance and sing together — are a start, she said. But she said she believes the school community and tribal elders will have even more ideas on ways to enhance the campus as the school joins the Tribal Community Schoolyards Pilot Program, a new partnership between the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.
Santa Fe Indian School is one of nine Native American schools across the country — and one of two in New Mexico — selected to receive the upgraded schoolyard.
Danielle Denk, the community schoolyards initiative director for the Trust for Public Land, said the new program is designed to transform vacant or drab schoolyards in Indigenous communities into vibrant spaces for outdoor learning and play.
The Trust for Public Land has constructed more than 200 community schoolyards in the past 25 years, she said, adding the yards improve community health outcomes by providing space for outdoor activities and climate resilience by reducing the effects of urban heat islands and conveying water to prevent flooding.
Community schoolyards also improve educational outcomes, Denk said, because the outdoor environment offers a stimulating space for learning.
In many places, the outdoor schoolyards also have decreased behavioral incidents. Denk noted one Philadelphia school in which student suspension rates dropped from 30 per year to zero after the Trust for Public Land constructed a new schoolyard.
The Tribal Community Schoolyards Pilot Program is intended to offer the same benefits in tribal community schools, Denk said.
"At the Department of the Interior, we have a solemn duty to honor and strengthen the federal government's nation-to-nation relationships with tribes," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico's Laguna Pueblo, said in late November when she formally announced the program. "Today's announcement affirms that commitment and will bring increased and much-needed resources to Indigenous communities."
The program marks the beginning of an effort to shift Native American boarding schools away from their traumatic history and instead create spaces that embrace Indigenous traditions and students as assets rather than deficits, Abeyta said.
The Trust for Public Land and Bureau of Indian Education selected the nine participating schools based on maximizing benefits for local people, Denk said, saying the agencies decided "when we do this, let's be intentional about where we work to have the biggest impact."
Sites were selected based on two primary criteria. First, officials used localized data — including the proportion of the population that identifies as people of color; the percentage of low-income households and children living in poverty; and the number of adults with less than a high school education — to generate an environmental justice score. Then they generated a health score based on factors like the local COVID-19 death rate, the number of days per week people experience mental unhealthiness and levels of physical inactivity.
These scores generated a short list of schools, from which the Trust for Public Land and Bureau of Indian Education selected the finalists — a mix of residential and day schools operated by tribes and by the Bureau of Indian Education.
Wingate Elementary School in Fort Wingate was the second New Mexico school to participate in the pilot program, joining schools in South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Arizona and Wisconsin.
Students, teachers, school and tribal leaders and community members will assist in designing and creating the yards, Denk said.
"With tribal and Indigenous voices leading the design, creation and activation of these schoolyards, there's amazing potential to infuse centuries of knowledge into these schoolyards to connect tribal and Indigenous communities to their culture and inspire future generations of tribal and Indigenous leaders," Trust for Public Land President and CEO Diane Regas said in a news release.
With assistance from the University of New Mexico and input from students and staff, Santa Fe Indian School officials have planned out their ideal campus footprint, Abeyta said.
Abeyta hopes to see the construction of new walking paths for students with signs offering historical and cultural information, outdoor classrooms that lend themselves to discussions of ecology and natural catchment systems to limit flooding on campus.
Collaboration with tribal leaders and the school community was the most important aspect of the process, she said: "What do they envision for the build out of our campus? What does the ideal schoolyard look like for a Pueblo, Navajo, Apache student who comes to Santa Fe Indian School? In that thought, there's so much that potentially could be considered."
The outreach and design phases of the project will double as an applied learning project for students at Santa Fe Indian School, Denk said. Throughout the process, students will create a survey for fellow students, parents, teachers and community members and analyze its results, examine budgetary constraints and learn to compromise.
Fundraising for the nine new schoolyards — which are expected to cost $16 million — will be led by the Trust for Public Land and begin in 2023. The trust expects to raise most of the projects' funding through public sources supplemented by private philanthropic donors.
Abeyta is excited about the possibilities.
"The potential is endless. I think that we've done an awesome job so far in doing it for ourselves with limited to no resources. Now that we have funding and resources, it can only get better," she said.
Torrance County official known as dedicated public servant - Associated Press
Torrance County Commissioner LeRoy Candelaria, a semi-retired rancher and Vietnam veteran known for his public service, has died. He was 73.
Torrance County officials made the announcement late Thursday, saying Candelaria had health issues. He was finishing the second year of his latest four-year term. The Republican was elected to the commission in 2004, again in 2012 and most recently in 2020.
Colleagues said Candelaria always had the rural county's best interest at heart and that his experience and wisdom will be missed. Members of the tight-knit community east of Albuquerque shared their condolences on social media, with one saying Candelaria would walk a mile just to say hello.
"This is a hard day for Torrance County residents and staff. Today, we lost a dedicated public servant and friend," Commission Chair Ryan Schwebach said in a statement.
The commission earlier this year endured much criticism from voters who denounced certification of the primary election results. At the time, the New Mexico secretary of state's office had said it was inundated with calls from officials around the country concerned that certification controversies like those in Torrance and Otero County in southern New Mexico would become a new norm.
In Torrance County, commissioners were denounced as "cowards and traitors" by a hostile crowd before voting to certify results from June's primary. Candelaria explained that he had taken time outside commission meetings to explain his position that New Mexico's vote-counting machines are well-tested and monitored.
Candelaria supported the county clerk and acknowledged that many people were still upset about the 2020 presidential election.
"Let's worry about the next election and not take things personally," he said at the time.
Candelaria graduated from Mountainair High School in 1968 and joined the U.S. Army, where he served in the 4th Infantry Division during the Vietnam War. He later served in the Army Reserves, 387th Combat Engineers.
Family and friends said he was a strong advocate for veterans as well as active duty personnel and first responders.
After retiring from the state transportation department, Candelaria went to work for San Bar Construction in 1998 and continued with the company until his death.
Candelaria also was a member of the local soil and water conservation district, the Estancia Basin Resource Association and the New Mexico Acequia Association.
He is survived by his wife of 35 years, Concepcion "Concha", his son Anthony and daughters Adriana and Miranda. Service plans were pending.
Judge finds man linked by DNA to Albuquerque rape not guilty - Associated Press
A man accused of raping a woman who sued the city of Albuquerque over its backlog of untested rape kits has been acquitted of all charges.
A judge in 2nd Judicial District Court dismissed one count of kidnapping and two counts of criminal sexual penetration this week against 45-year-old Victor Gonzales.
Judge Jennifer Wernersbach presided over the bench trial.
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas expressed his disappointment on the verdict, citing the fact that Gonzales' DNA was linked to the rape kit the victim gave after her attack.
"I am deeply concerned that the prior sexual history of an alleged victim of a violent sexual assault was used to discredit her testimony," Balderas said in a statement.
Gonzales' attorney, Raymond Maestas, says the judge made the right ruling.
Maestas previously argued that the DNA evidence could still mean consensual contact had occurred. Gonzales has repeatedly denied sexually assaulting the victim.
The victim gave a rape kit in December 2010 after reporting being kidnapped, bound and raped at knifepoint. Her kit was not tested until 2018.
Meanwhile, Gonzales was previously charged with multiple attacks on women that occurred between 2010 and 2012. He was arrested for this case in 2020.
The victim filed a lawsuit in February, accusing Albuquerque police of discriminating against women and girls by treating violent rapes as a low priority. She asked for unspecified damages.
At the time, city officials' only comment was to point to Mayor Tim Keller's executive order in 2018 ordering police to make a plan for clearing the backlog.
New Mexico state historian target of free speech complaint - Associated Press
New Mexico's state historian is being sued by a Santa Fe man who claims his free speech rights were violated when his comments were deleted from the state official's Facebook page.
Daniel Ortiz filed his civil rights complaint Dec. 16 in state district court, accusing Rob Martinez of violating free speech protections in the New Mexico Constitution. The complaint states the comments were deleted based on the point of view Ortiz expressed.
The complaint asks the court to order Martinez to stop deleting comments based on people's viewpoints and award Ortiz an unspecified amount of damages.
"He's been using his position to put forth a narrative that is Hispano-phobic and against Hispanic history and culture," Ortiz told the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Martinez said in an email to The Associated Press that he could not comment on the pending litigation.
The New Mexico Commission of Public Records and Archives, the state agency where Martinez works, is also named as a defendant in the complaint and did not respond to a request for comment.
Martinez writes a monthly history column for The New Mexican and at times has written sympathetically about the treatment of Native people by the Spanish and criticized Don Juan de Oñate over his massacre and enslavement of people from Acoma Pueblo more than 400 years ago.
The lawsuit says Martinez deleted Ortiz's comments when Martinez shared a link on the Facebook page to an Oct. 1 column about the Christian Reconquista of Spain from the Moors and how institutions developed in that process — such as the Inquisition and the Spanish system of racial classification — were brought to the New World.
"While some feel a need to demonize the Spanish, and Juan Oñate specifically, it is important to ask 'What would the alternative been if it wasn't the Spanish who arrived first?'" Ortiz commented on the post, according to the lawsuit.
Martinez replied that the article was not demonizing anyone. Ortiz then called the article "historically inaccurate."
Ortiz is the second plaintiff that attorney Kenneth Stalter has represented in a lawsuit over the deletion of comments from a social media page maintained by a public official.
Earlier this year, Stalter obtained a $25,000 settlement for a man who sued Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies, claiming she deleted comments and blocked the man for posting comments critical of her handling of criminal cases associated with the 2020 felling of an obelisk in the Santa Fe Plaza.
Stalter said the constitution is clear that when the government sets up a public forum, it can't pick and choose from the points of view that it likes and doesn't like.
"That message hasn't filtered down to all the government officials who have adopted Facebook pages," he said.