New Mexico governor seeks revamp of child-protection agency - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Thursday an overhaul of the state's lead agency for protecting children from neglect and abuse, condemning what she described as an "antiquated" and "siloed" agency that struggles to adequately care for roughly 1,800 youths who are in state custody.
She signed an executive order that outlines new efforts to "ensure that a robust, statewide system exists for children and families in need of immediate services," promising to deploy a "tiger team" of at least four new top level managers.
The announcement arrived amid indications that foster children have routinely slept in central offices of an overwhelmed New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department in Albuquerque, and that a 10-year-old was sexually abused there last year by a teenager with a history of sexual misconduct, in an encounter reported to police. The events were first reported by Searchlight New Mexico and ProPublica.
"The No. 1 priority of that department is protecting children and improving their wellbeing. That is not what is occurring in the state of New Mexico in a way that either the (agency) secretary or I want," Lujan Grisham said at a news conference in her office in the state Capitol. "And our expectation is that that gets shifted quickly, expediently and immediately."
Retired state Supreme Court Justice Barbara J. Vigil took the reins of New Mexico's foster care and child welfare system in October 2021, amid a longstanding struggle to improve childhood wellbeing across the state.
Vigil said she too was eager to make the agency more effective.
"We need to transform Children, Youth and Families Department so it is responsive quickly to the needs of families and we're not on waiting lists," she said. "It ought to be one entry into the department, and then they're on their way with support and services."
Lujan Grisham also announced the creation of a new system for filing grievances with the agency and said an annual services audit will be performed by an independent, consulting firm from outside the state. A new "office of innovation" will research best practices in child welfare services.
Several leading Democratic legislators, including Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart, complimented the governor for publicly confronting shortcomings at the Children, Youth and Families Department.
Republican lawmakers, who are in the legislative minority, are calling for greater accountability at the agency through bills that would create a "chief child advocate" to investigate grievances, new standards for assessing the needs of children and tighter deadlines for courts to determine whether youths remain in state custody.
"I think that our hope is that we start to have some outside eyes on this," said state Sen. Crystal Diamond, of Elephant Butte. "The further and further, we get into it, it just seems like the entire agency needs to be dismantled at this point and rebuilt."
Lujan Grisham rejected calls for an independent accountability office at the agency because it might create an "adversarial setting" and hinder staff recruitment. She said checks and balances already are provided through civil rights laws, public prosecutors and law enforcement.
New Mexico House endorses $1B state spending increase - Associated Press
New Mexico's House of Representatives endorsed a 12% increase in annual state general fund spending Thursday, in a bill that would expand public support for early childhood education, shore up rural health care providers, and boost salaries and benefits for state workers and public school teachers.
The $9.4 billion spending plan for the fiscal year starting July 1 cleared the House on a 52-17 vote. The bill moves to the Senate for consideration and likely amendments. The Democratic-led Legislature has until March 18 to send a budget plan to Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
The House-approved budget bill responds to an eventual economic transition away from fossil fuels in the nation's No. 2 state for oil production, by investing up to $850 million in a trust to generate earnings and sustain public services in future decades.
The budget plan includes a separate $1 billion increase in infrastructure spending and leaves room for about $1.1 billion in possible tax reductions or rebates.
Lujan Grisham applauded the bill's approval but said she'll push to increase spending and remove limitation on funding for tuition-free college for in-state students.
The House-approved plan would increase annual K-12 spending by 8.6% and includes new investments in technical and vocational education programs. It proposes an 18% increase in spending on Medicaid that provides greater reimbursement rates to physicians and other health care providers amid complaints about shortages in access to medical care in rural communities.
The budget plan allocates $50 million to partnerships with private industry to advance energy projects.
An average pay increase of 5% for state employees and public school educators is included.
Public spending on day care and prekindergarten programs overseen by the Early Childhood Education and Care Department would increase by $135 million, or nearly 70%.
House Republican Minority Leader Ryan Lane said the bill would increase state spending at an alarming rate as New Mexico residents cope with inflation and increased costs for household energy.
Enforcement of oil and gas regulations under threat in New Mexico legislature - By Jerry Redfern, Capital & Main
As the 2023 New Mexico legislative session rolls up to its halfway point, the state’s volunteer legislators have reoriented themselves to the Roundhouse and caught up with where they left off at the end of the 2022 session. Over the last two weeks, the number and pace of hearings, as well as the number of bills filed, has jumped dramatically — and oil and gas issues began bubbling to the surface.
This is another record budget year for state government, and everyone has their hand out for some of the money sloshing around state coffers. Oil and gas revenues, depending on how you count, make up some 35%-40% of the total budget — courtesy of record high oil and gas production, coupled with continuing high energy prices. The sheer magnitude of that percentage, coupled with the unpredictable, rollercoaster nature of fossil fuel revenues, has legislators both excited at the near-term fiscal possibilities and nervous about a future when that money suddenly, inevitably shrinks.
But that’s not all. About 52% of all greenhouse gases emitted in New Mexico come not from consumers burning gas in cars or in furnaces to heat their homes, as is common in other states, but from oil and gas extraction operations themselves — operations that continue to increase in number. As the state suffers the effects of an ever-warming climate, reining in carbon pollution from its biggest industry is increasingly important for both state government and the planet going forward. Three factors in the physics of climate change make what New Mexico emits now more consequential than what has been emitted in the past.
First, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is cumulative, because it takes decades for the gas to cycle back out. Warming lags behind the CO2 added, so rising temperatures generated by CO2 added today won’t show up for years. Second, New Mexico emits a lot of methane in the form of natural gas, which is more than 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. And third, ever more climate studies show that the timeframe to avert catastrophic change is quickly shrinking. Among the latest from December: James Hansen of Columbia University, whose previous work laid much of the groundwork for current climate science and prognostication, was lead author on a new paper that finds global warming already in the pipeline is greater than previously thought, making further carbon emissions all the more fraught and immediate carbon emission reductions all the more urgent.
So if New Mexico is to meet its climate goals, at the very least it has to keep oil and natural gas — particularly natural gas — inside pipelines and out of the atmosphere where it forcefully adds to warming.
In light of these priorities, a quartet of environmental groups worked together to write a trio of bills designed to reform how the oil and gas industry operates in New Mexico. The biggest of the three has not yet been presented to the Legislature but would constitute a major overhaul of the state’s bedrock Oil and Gas Act, originally written in 1935. It proposes a laundry list of changes large and small, shifting the act’s focus from simply protecting the state’s most valuable mineral resource to also include protections for the environment and human health and wellbeing. Tannis Fox, a senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center (WELC), helped draft all three bills and says the four groups met with Dylan Fuge, acting director of the Oil Conservation Division (OCD) and general counsel for parent agency the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD), while drafting the bill and took agency worries over unfunded mandates into consideration while writing it. Through EMNRD spokesperson Sidney Hill, Fuge declined to answer questions about the process. But Fox says that she and the other lawyers fully discussed the bill with him and made changes based on his comments. “There’s no surprises,” she says. “Full transparency.”
The other two bills — one to weed out historical bad actors from oil and gas operations and another to allow citizen suits against law-breaking companies — were quickly killed in their first committee hearings. And because of the Legislature’s antiquated every-other-year schedule for general lawmaking, they are unlikely to be brought up again until 2025.
“Both bills’ failure to get out of committee is disappointing,” says Fox. “Both bills are well within established legal frameworks, making sure that the environment and public health are protected.” An interesting point in their failure is who voted against them — namely Democrats, including Rep. Nathan Small, widely seen as an environmental champion. In both cases, he didn’t just vote against the bills; he voted to table them, making it extremely unlikely either can be edited and resubmitted this session.
The bad actors bill would have amended the Oil and Gas Act in a manner similar to what was done with the state Air Quality Control Act in 2021. It would have kept people from receiving oil and gas development permits if they had ever been convicted of lying on permit applications, felony environmental crimes, price fixing, bribery or fraud convictions, operating oil or gas facilities without a permit, a history of violating New Mexico’s Oil and Gas Act or fiscal insolvency. During the hearing, Small said he was against the bill because it would increase the workload at an already underfunded and overworked OCD. In the end, three Democrats sided with the four Republicans on the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee to table the bill, keeping oil and gas development nominally open to people with a criminal history in the business or without the basic funds to safely conduct extraction operations.
The citizens’ suit bill is similar to a provision in the federal Clean Air Act. It would have allowed people who were physically or economically injured by a company violating New Mexico’s air quality, water quality, solid waste or hazardous waste acts to sue, provided the state wasn’t already prosecuting them. Rep. Small worried the bill could hamper construction of power lines and renewable energy projects, while Republicans raised a string of hypothetical arguments about frivolous suits hampering businesses, all of which clearly irritated bill sponsor Rep. Matthew McQueen. “I’m frustrated because I think there’s fear-mongering going on,” he said.
“The environmental laws we have passed shouldn’t be aspirational; they should be enforced,” he said. “And if [state agencies] can’t enforce them, then we should allow the public to do it.”
Sarah Cottrell Propst, secretary of EMNRD and its subdivision OCD, and James Kenney, secretary of the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED), are the lead oil and gas enforcement officers for the state. Last week, both gave their initial budget presentations to House and Senate finance committees.
Legislative budget negotiations and recommendations begin in the House, and in January, Speaker of the House Javier Martinez removed long-serving Rep. Patty Lundstrom as head of the House Finance Committee. This happened just after the House and Senate’s combined Legislative Finance Committee (chaired by Lundstrom) low-balled OCD’s and NMED’s oil and gas enforcement requests. Martinez tapped Small to replace Lundstrom, placing any enforcement funding increases squarely in his wheelhouse.
Both department secretaries manage vast domains: for Cottrell Propst, everything from state parks to forest firefighting to oil and gas development; for Kenney, everything from marijuana dispensaries to septic tanks to oil and gas air pollution. OCD was “the most glaring omission in terms of additions to EMNRD’s budget,” Cottrell Propst says, following last week’s presentation to the Senate Finance Committee. “I’m optimistic they’ll add something back for OCD, but I’m not sure … how much they’ll do.”
In 2021, OCD implemented groundbreaking rules to keep natural gas in pipelines and out of the air through its Methane Waste Rule, but didn’t see a commensurate increase in enforcement funding. Such unfunded mandates are “something I’m concerned about,” Cottrell Propst says. Meanwhile, she’s also asking for more funding for wildland firefighters as wildfires increase because of climate change fueled in part by what comes out of the OCD end of her division. “Every single division that we have is working on climate change at some capacity,” she says. “So, yeah, we need more staff. We didn’t get what we asked for last year, and so far we’re not getting the recommendations this year,” she continues. “But I’m optimistic.”
NMED also faces increased responsibilities with less money. “Our portfolio has expanded, our budget has not,” Kenney says. “Our boat did not rise with the tide.” He says that NMED is $2.3 million below where it should be if its budget followed the overall state budget between 2011 and now. In particular, the Legislature’s budget recommendation this year cut funding for enforcement of air quality violations stemming from his agency’s landmark Ozone Precursor Rule, which pairs with OCD’s methane rule to keep gases in pipelines. “It does seem there’s some a la carte funding happening,“ he says.
“If your destination is to pass laws and never enforce them, then I guess we’re successful,” Kenney says. Nevertheless, following his presentation to the House Appropriations & Finance Committee last week, he says that he is “definitely optimistic” that there will be more funding for enforcement.
And how much more are they asking for to fund oil and gas enforcement? About $3 million between the two agencies, in a $9.4 billion state budget. So while two out of three laws to police oil and gas operations have already died, largely over funding arguments, Small, the new finance committee chair, may hold this session’s key to future money with which to enforce laws already on the books in New Mexico.
Tiger cub rescued in New Mexico finds new home in Colorado - Associated Press
A Bengal tiger cub found by Albuquerque police in a dog crate last month now has a new home in Colorado.
Officials at the ABQ BioPark Zoo, where the 4-month-old cub has been receiving care, told the Albuquerque Journal that he was transferred to The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, Colorado.
Caretakers there have named him Duke after Albuquerque's nickname of Duke City.
Albuquerque police officers served search warrants Jan. 10 on two residences in response to tips that a tiger was being illegally held at one of them.
Authorities spotted a blood trail and followed it to an unlocked trailer and that's where the tiger was found.
New Mexico bans residents from keeping tigers as pets and federal law now prohibits private owners from keeping tigers as pets or for breeding purposes.
BioPark Zoo officials said the cub could not stay with them because he was too "people-oriented." Also, he will eventually grow to be 400 pounds with long claws that can easily kill.
He had to undergo a 30-day quarantine period there. During that time, the zoo worked with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish to find the tiger a permanent home.
Because his genetic lineage was unknown, the animal was ineligible for a breeding program or zoo accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
Florida man sentenced in New Mexico pile-up that killed 4 - Associated Press
A Florida man who New Mexico authorities say drove recklessly before causing a pile-up that killed four people has been sentenced.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico announced Thursday that 50-year-old Alexis Riego, of Merritt Island, Florida, received a sentence of five years and 10 months for the 2019 crash.
He will then serve three years of supervised release.
A federal jury convicted him in September of four counts of involuntary manslaughter and two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury.
Riego was driving a commercial vehicle on Sept. 7, 2019 when he crashed into a line of cars in a construction zone on Interstate 40 near the Laguna Pueblo, according to court documents. The crash caused a six-car pile-up. Besides the four fatalities, two others were injured.
Prosecutors say Riego was speeding and using his cellphone. They say Riego was video chatting at the time.
Kill order for New Mexico feral cows issued by US officials - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
A helicopter with a shooter will fly over a portion of the vast Gila Wilderness in southwestern New Mexico next week, searching for feral cows to kill.
U.S. Forest Service managers approved the plan Thursday to protect sensitive spots in the nation's first designated wilderness area. The move sets the stage for legal challenges over how to handle unbranded livestock and other stray cows as drought deepens in the West.
The Gila National Forest issued the decision amid pressure from environmental groups who raised concerns about nearly 150 cattle whose hooves and mouths are damaging streams and rivers. Ranchers, meanwhile, have criticized the plan to shoot cows from a helicopter as animal cruelty. They said the action violates federal regulations and will be problematic when carcasses are left to rot.
A section of the Gila Wilderness will be closed to the public starting Monday. A helicopter will launch Thursday, with shooters spending four days looking for feral cattle in rugged areas that include the Gila River.
Forest Supervisor Camille Howes said the decision was difficult but necessary.
"The feral cattle in the Gila Wilderness have been aggressive towards wilderness visitors, graze year-round, and trample stream banks and springs, causing erosion and sedimentation," she said in a statement.
Ranching industry groups and other rural advocates are concerned that the action taken in New Mexico could set a precedent as more grazing parcels become vacant across the West.
Ranchers say fewer people are maintaining fences and gone are the rural neighbors who used to help corral wayward cows. Some have left the business because of worsening drought, making water scarce for cattle, and skyrocketing costs for feed and other supplies.
The New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association estimates roughly 90 grazing parcels are vacant in New Mexico and Arizona. Increased use of public lands — including hunting and hiking — also has resulted in knocked-down fences, the association said. Elk, too, are to blame for damaging fences meant to keep cows in check.
Tom Paterson, chair of the association's wildlife committee, said the group has tried to find a solution that wouldn't involve shooting feral cattle. He pointed to a recent directive issued by the New Mexico Livestock Board that allows neighboring permittees to gather and herd the cattle out.
With snow on the ground, access is limited. Paterson said federal official are not giving enough time to see if the directive will work. His organization also has accused the U.S. Forest Service of skirting its own regulations that call for a roundup first, and shooting as the last resort.
"Easy is not an exception to their own rules. Frustration is not an exception to the rules," he said. "Our society should be better than this. We can be more creative and do it a better way where you're not wasting an economic resource."
Environmentalists in dozens of lawsuits filed in courts around the West over the years have argued that cattle ruin the land and water by trampling stream banks. They applauded the Forest Service's decision.
"We can expect immediate results — clean water, a healthy river and restored wildlife habitat," said Todd Schulke, co-founder of the Center for Biological Diversity.
The position marks a shift from the environmental community's stance on shooting other wildlife — from a fight over protecting bison at the Grand Canyon to annual complaints about the actions of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services, an agency often vilified for killing birds, coyotes, wolves, mountain lions and other animals.
Just last month, environmentalists sued in Montana over a program aimed at managing grizzly bears. In 2021, conservation groups settled another lawsuit over Wildlife Services' practices in Idaho. Environmental groups there and elsewhere have long claimed that the agency's predator-control activities violate environmental laws.
But in New Mexico, the Center for Biological Diversity contends that water quality issues will only worsen if feral cattle aren't removed. The group estimates that 50 to 150 cows graze, unauthorized, in the Gila Wilderness, a remote stretch that spans more than 870 square miles (2,253 square kilometers) and is home to endangered Mexican gray wolves, elk, deer and other wildlife.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association had asked the Forest Service to hold off on lethal action for a year after the New Mexico Cattle Growers' Association had reached an agreement with federal officials following last year's operation. The New Mexico group is expected to challenge the latest decision.
According to the Forest Service, the feral cattle problem dates back a half-century, when a cattle operation went out of business and subsequent grazing permits were suspended. Hundreds of unauthorized cattle have been removed over the years.
In 2022, a Forest Service contractor killed 65 cows in an aerial gunning operation similar to the one planned for next week.
Photos shared by ranchers of the 2022 operation showed dead cattle upside down in the Gila River. Federal officials said those carcasses were pulled out of the water. A survey done 90 days later found that no carcasses remained. Scavenging birds and other animals consumed them, officials said.
The upcoming operation will cover about 160 square miles (414 square kilometers).
No carcasses are to be left in or adjacent to waterways or springs — or near designated hiking trails or known, culturally sensitive areas.
The work, namely noise from the helicopter, also can't interrupt the breeding season for the Mexican spotted owl, the southwestern willow flycatcher and other endangered species. The aerial gunning operation is expected to be complete before April, when the season begins for Mexican gray wolves to have pups.
Environmentalists used to point to the removal of livestock carcasses as a preventative measure to limit conflict between wolves and ranchers. However, federal officials stated in documents that were released this week that there's no scientific research or observational data to suggest that once wolves scavenge on a livestock carcass, they become habituated to cattle.
Multiple NM police departments get calls about fake school shootings - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Fake reports of school shootings came into police departments in multiple New Mexico cities Thursday.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the calls came into authorities about shootings at Volcano Vista high school on the city’s westside, Bernalillo High School, Rio Rancho High School and Santa Fe High School — all of which turned out to be false.
An Albuquerque Police spokesperson said when officers arrived at Volcano Vista with a report that a shooting had occurred, administrators said they had not called one in, and an investigation turned up no evidence of a shooting.
Bernalillo High School was on lockdown for 40 minutes Thursday with panicked parents outside the campus gate while officers swept the building.
Albuquerque Public Schools said it contacted the FBI about the calls and tweeted that “making a hoax threat carries heavy federal penalties and will be thoroughly investigated.”
Santa Fe police say this issue was nationwide, with police in several states reportedly receiving calls about school shootings that turned out to be false.
Affirmative consent legislation one step away from Senate vote - Megan Taros, Source New Mexico
The affirmative consent bill that would make “yes means yes” the baseline for teaching consent in schools received unanimous approval from the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday.
It now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee for review.
This is the third time Rep. Liz Thomson (D-Albuquerque) brought the bill to the Roundhouse, and each time it has drawn strong support from high school students.
The measure recently passed the House by a 49-12 vote. That debate saw some of the same concerns brought over in the recent Senate committee.
Senate Republicans wondered aloud about punishments if a student commits sexual violence,and if schools had the training and capacity to take on new methods of teaching responses to sexual violence.
The measure would not create any new punishments for school districts in New Mexico to enforce, because local schools already have to follow federal statutes when addressing sexual violence.
Sen. Gay Kernan (R-Hobbs) said situations involving allegations of assault can cause harm during the investigation process because she fears students may change their mind about consent after the fact.
“You can have two people in a room and they agree ‘I’m fine with all of this,’ and then there could be a regret later,” said Kernan. “How do you account for that? When one of them says, ‘no, I didn’t say that?’ We don’t know because no one was there to witness that…then you’ve got a person that’s kind of in a difficult position because now there’s an accusation that can’t be substantiated either way.”
People who experienced sexual violence said the criticism is a repeated trope that a is harmful and discourages people from coming forward about what happened to them.
Jess Clark, an expert witness for the bill and director of sexual violence prevention for the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, said the bill is trying to stop that before it happens and teaching students that consent should be enthusiastic, even empowering.
Kernan asked why the contents of the bill should be in statute if some schools are already teaching affirmative consent. Expert witnesses said the measure would create a uniform policy that the public education department could provide for local districts that would teach all students an understanding of consent, instead of it varying from school to school.
Alexandria Taylor, an expert witness and executive director of the New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, said her schooling on consent when she grew up in Alamogordo is drastically different from what her own child is learning in Albuquerque.
“For us it’s about really equal access to education that all students in New Mexico have a baseline of what they’re being taught,” Taylor said. “When students are taught affirmative consent prior to entering into post-secondary school, incidents of sexual violence are actually reduced at college and university campuses.”
Sen. William Soules (D-Las Cruces) said the bill could help bring an understanding around consent that would prevent expensive lawsuits and help students understand what their responsibilities are to one another.
Settlements and penalties for sexual assault in schools also spiked to $8.4 million in the 2018-19 school year, according to the New Mexico Public Schools Insurance Authority. That’s more than three times the amount from the 2017-18 school year.
In 2021, nearly 10% of high school students in New Mexico reported being coerced into having sex, according to legislative analysts.
“The students appreciate it because as adults, we’re somehow afraid to talk about sexuality as being taboo, which makes it almost more exciting or interesting for the kids,” Soules said. “The more we can talk about it straight up, the better I think all of society is.”
New Mexico man sentenced in murder of Army vet girlfriend - Associated Press
A New Mexico man was sentenced to 33 years in prison Thursday for the 2019 murder of his girlfriend, a retired U.S. Army veteran whose remains were found nearly two years later in the Nevada desert.
The New Mexico Attorney General's Office said 61-year-old Jerry Jay of Farmington was sentenced after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and kidnapping.
They said it was the first case prosecuted under the murdered and missing indigenous person bill passed last year.
Prosecutors said Cecilia Finona, a 59-year-old Farmington resident of Navajo descent, was reported missing by her family in June 2019.
Her remains were found in February 2021 in a remote desert culvert just outside of Las Vegas and identified through DNA testing.
Finona's family says she retired in 2019 as an Army master sergeant after 31 years of service and Jay was her boyfriend.
Authorities said Jay struck Finona on the head with a blunt object after an argument on May 31, 2019 and he put the victim in the backseat of her truck.
Finona bled to death as Jay drove through Arizona, Nevada and California, using her debit card along the way to pay for new truck tires and gas before dumping the body, according to prosecutors.
They said Jay was later arrested for stealing the debit card and allegedly told a jailmate that he had killed Finona.
Financial records plus video and forensic evidence connected Jay to the murder, authorities said.
