Otero declines to join other counties in opioid collaborative effort - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Otero County commissioners unanimously rejected a proposal to join other county governments pooling together their settlement funds from national opioid lawsuits.
At the April 13 meeting, commissioners were tasked with deciding whether to join seven other counties to pool resources to develop a treatment system to remediate from the opioid crisis.
This would include establishing a board to develop and implement a “sustainable, best practice, opioid treatment resource and/or program,” and close addiction treatment gaps for people with opioid addiction.
Catron, Cibola, Guadalupe, Hidalgo, Sierra, Socorro and Valencia counties have joined the Opioid Remediation Collaborative.
The New Mexico Opioid Allocation Agreement has more than $195 million for the state and counties. The money will be split 45% to the state, and counties and municipalities will share 55% of the funds.
Otero county attorney R.B. Nichols recommended the county not join the collaborative, adding that the county received $334,000 from a single settlement so far.
“I think we can use the money more effective, locally,” Nichols said, adding that funding could go to the Sheriff’s department.
Commissioners asked for input from Amber Mayhill, the director for the county’s health care services.
Mayhill agreed that the county should not join the collaborative, but recommended that the commissioners put the money towards improving health care options. She recommended increasing mental health services for youth and push the healthcare system to treat mental health concurrently with any substance-use disorder.
“We have zero services that focus on youth or adolescents with a substance use disorder or when they do misuse opioids,” Mayhill said. “That needs to be systematically addressed.”
Nichols proposed the county set up a future meeting to hear funding proposals from law enforcement, counseling services and others.
Otero County officials were not reached for comment for when that meeting may be scheduled.
Man convicted of killing mom of 2 New Mexico police officers — Associated Press
A Mexican national was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday in the 2019 slaying of the mother of two state police officers in a case that drew national attention and spotlighted Albuquerque's struggle with crime.
Jurors also found Luis Talamantes-Romero, 35, guilty of eight other felonies in the death of Jacqueline Vigil, who authorities say was killed outside her northwest Albuquerque home in an attempted burglary.
Vigil, 55, was shot in her driveway in November 2019 as she prepared to leave for a gym.
The case went unsolved for months, drawing the attention of then-President Donald Trump as he pushed his tough-on-crime agenda. Vigil's family also traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Trump.
Prosecutors said Talamantes-Romero also was convicted of aggravated burglary, attempted armed robbery, tampering with evidence, conspiracy and other charges.
They said a man who was with Talamantes-Romero when Vigil was shot agreed to testify against him as a condition of his plea agreement with the state on charges unrelated to the murder.
Former New Mexico governor remembered as Hispanic role model — Associated Press
Jerry Apodaca, a Democrat who became New Mexico's first Hispanic governor in 54 years when he took office in 1975, has died. He was 88.
He died at his home in Santa Fe on Wednesday after what may have been a stroke, his son Jeff Apodaca said.
His son talked about the legacy his father left behind, one that fellow Democratic politicians say paved the way for more minorities to enter public office and take on leadership roles in corporate boardrooms across the country.
He took his role seriously, said the younger Apodaca, an Albuquerque businessman and former media executive.
"I used to meet with people in Fortune 500 companies, and there was not a meeting that went by where I wouldn't run into a Latino executive who'd ask me, 'Are you Jerry's son?' They would tell me so many stories about what he'd done," Jeff Apodaca told the Santa Fe New Mexican. "General Motors, McDonald's ... he opened doors for Latinos in the '70s and '80s."
Apodaca ran an insurance business in Las Cruces before being elected to the state Senate in 1966. He was 40 when he was inaugurated as governor on Jan. 1, 1975, making him the first Hispanic governor in New Mexico since Octaviano Ambrosio Larrazolo left office in 1921.
During his four-year term, Apodaca's administration reorganized state government to its current form by creating a cabinet system with 12 departments. Delivering on a campaign pledge, his administration consolidated agencies and eliminated some boards and commissions.
In an interview shortly before his gubernatorial term ended, Apodaca cited the government reorganization and establishment of a statewide kindergarten system as major accomplishments. He claimed his administration made government more open and responsive to citizens.
Apodaca regularly held open office hours where residents could meet with him. His administration implemented tax relief programs, including tax credits, tax rebates and tax rate reductions, but Apodaca was criticized for appointing close friends to public positions.
"I didn't find any logical reason to exclude anyone from the administration just because he helped in the campaign or because he was a friend," he said in December 1978. "I think the record speaks for itself. The success of this administration does not rest entirely on my shoulders."
Apodaca also battled allegations linking him to organized crime figures.
While campaigning in 1982 for U.S. Senate, Apodaca disputed claims by a convicted felon that he had accepted a $10,000 bribe as governor in return for granting a pardon or parole for a New Mexico inmate. Apodaca called the accusation "a total fabrication."
A grand jury requested by Apodaca ultimately found no evidence of perjury.
He lost the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate to Jeff Bingaman, who went on to serve for 30 years.
Apodaca, who played halfback at the University of New Mexico in the mid-1950s, was appointed in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. While governor, he ran and completed the 1978 Boston Marathon.
After leaving office, he resigned from the fitness panel after being elected to the board of directors for tobacco giant Phillip Morris.
Carter also interviewed Apodaca for Secretary of Education when the U.S. Department of Education was created. The job went instead to Shirley Hufstedler, a federal appellate judge in California.
After leaving office, Apodaca endured a series of troubled business ventures, including failed real estate deals that led to a bankruptcy filing. In later years, he sought to return to politics but lost the Democratic primaries for U.S. Senate in 1982 and for governor in 1998.
Apodaca also ventured into publishing, taking over Hispanic magazine and Vista magazine, both English-language periodicals aimed at Hispanic readers. He also served on the University of New Mexico's board of regents from 1985 to 1991.
Apodaca started in politics as a state senator from Las Cruces, serving four terms from 1966-76. In the 1974 gubernatorial race, he defeated Republican Joe Skeen by just 3,752 votes. Campaigning during the post-Watergate era, Apodaca portrayed himself as "The Man Nobody Owns."
Born Raymond S. Apodaca in Las Cruces on Oct. 3, 1934, Apodaca graduated from UNM in 1957 and began teaching history and coaching high school football in Albuquerque. He later moved back to Las Cruces, opened an insurance business and branched out into retail and real estate.
He is survived by his ex-wife, Clara, three daughters, Cindy, Carolyn, Judy, and two sons, Jerry Jr. and Jeff.
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The story includes biographical material compiled by former AP reporter Tim Korte.
2022 bad year for silvery minnow; officials optimistic for upcoming season- Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
2022 hit the silvery minnow hard.
Federal agencies said the flash-drying of 50 miles in June of last year caused further harm to the endangered silvery minnow populations at the Rio Grande Compact commission Friday.
Federal officials were unable to collect any eggs in 2022, and there was no successful spawn.
This puts the short-lived fish on precipitous ground. The gap of an entire generation means the whole fish population loses out on genetic diversity.
“I dubbed it spawn or bust,” said Jennifer Faler, the area manager at the Bureau of Reclamation office in Albuquerque. “We really hit some alarm bells last year with the minnow population due to the hydrology.”
Faler said the Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife services have a series of plans for different drought conditions.
Federal officials were optimistic that the higher flows and the addition of 129,000 hatchery fish will bail out the 2023 generation, but there’s another wrinkle.
“Unfortunately, collecting eggs this year may actually be more difficult because the water is so high, but there are already ego monitors out in the river,” said Debra Hill, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist. “We’re really hopeful we’re going to get a spawn this year.”
Officials discussed the 2022 lawsuit brought by Santa Fe nonprofit WildEarth Guardians. A settlement session was extended from May 1 another 90 days. That period of talks between federal agencies and the nonprofit now ends in August.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife are assessing three other fish populations, the Rio Grande chub, the Rio Grande sucker and the Rio Grande cutthroat trout – all due in 2024.
US nuclear weapons modernization plan spurs cost questions - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
The U.S. agency that oversees development and maintenance of the nation's nuclear arsenal is moving ahead with plans to modernize production of key components for the weapons, but some watchdog groups and members of Congress are concerned about persistent delays and cost overruns.
The National Nuclear Security Administration released its annual plan on Monday, outlining the multibillion-dollar effort to manufacture plutonium pits, the spherical cores that trigger the explosion in thermonuclear weapons, at national laboratories in New Mexico and South Carolina.
The Savannah River Site in South Carolina faces a 2030 deadline to make 50 pits per year. Officials already have acknowledged they won't meet that timeline, and this year's report no longer includes a target date for Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, to meet its goal of 30 pits per year.
Last year's report had pegged 2026 as the year when manufacturing would be up and running at Los Alamos, which played a key role in the Manhattan Project during World War II and was the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
The top priority continues to be restarting production activities given the world's deteriorating security environment, Jill Hruby, head of the nuclear agency, recently told a congressional subcommittee. She pointed to Russia's development of new nuclear weapon delivery systems, China's growing capabilities, and destabilization in North Korea and Iran.
The NNSA is undertaking what Hruby described as a once-in-a-several-generation opportunity to reform and modernize the nation's nuclear enterprise. She acknowledged challenges when it comes to construction projects, supply chain delays, worker shortages and higher-than-expected inflation.
"We must adjust our cost estimates, delay starting additional large projects, and find innovative ways to successfully deliver," she said.
The Biden administration is requesting $18.8 billion for weapons activities, a 10% increase over spending for the last fiscal year. Modernization of production accounts for $5.6 billion of the request.
Members of congressional subcommittees blasted Hruby and top defense officials during hearings in recent weeks about the delays and the increasing price tag. Hruby acknowledged that it would be another year before her agency would have a full cost estimate.
The NNSA fell short when it came to having a comprehensive schedule for the project and ran the risk of delays and increasing budgets because its plans for reestablishing plutonium pit production didn't follow best practices, according to a January Government Accountability Office report.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts suggested during a hearing this month that the NNSA was making up its plan as it goes along and that the timeline would be extended even further.
"It is not unreasonable for Congress to ask you to tell us how long a project is going to take and how much it's going to cost in exchange for our forking over billions of dollars. And I suggest that's what NNSA be required to do before we give them another penny," Warren told Hruby.
U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, both Democrats from New Mexico, have been supportive of the work at Los Alamos. Lucrative government spending on weapons work and hundreds of jobs will result from restarting production. Neither senator responded to emailed questions about whether they were concerned about the slipping schedules.
The NNSA also did not immediately respond to an email about the schedule for work at Los Alamos.
Greg Mello with the Los Alamos Study Group, which advocates for nuclear disarmament, said ballooning schedules and budgets are hallmarks of incipient failure even in normal times and that the U.S. is facing economic turbulence that will only exacerbate the agency's problems.
"This is the other reason why NNSA has refused to provide a schedule and budget for pit production. It's too terrifying," he said.
Funding to support oral histories in boarding school era - Associated Press
The U.S. government is embarking on an effort to record the oral histories of survivors and descendants of boarding schools that sought to "civilize" Indigenous students, often through abusive practices.
The Interior Department announced a partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities on Wednesday to document the experiences of thousands of Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students at federally funded schools across the country.
The National Endowment for the Humanities contributed $4 million for the project and will look for other ways to support research, educational programming and gatherings, the group said.
"The first step toward addressing the intergenerational consequences of these schools is to squarely acknowledge and examine the history of a federal system intended to separate families, erase Native languages and cultures, and dispossess Native peoples of their land," National Endowment for the Humanities' Chair Shelly Lowe said in a statement.
The endowment has supported other efforts, including a permanent exhibit on boarding schools at the Heard Museum in Phoenix and a project to digitize and transcribe records at the Genoa Indian School in Nebraska.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who is a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, has prioritized publicly examining the trauma caused by the schools. The department released a first-of-its kind report pointing out 408 schools the federal government supported. Religious and private institutions that ran many of the schools received federal funding and were willing partners in assimilating Indigenous students.
The U.S. enacted laws and policies in 1819 to support the schools, most of which closed long ago. None still exist to strip students of their identities.
Victims and survivors of government-backed boarding schools have been sharing emotional stories during a "Road to Healing" tour organized by the Interior Department. They have recalled being locked in basements as punishment, hair being cut to stamp out their identities, and physical and mental abuse.
Lowe, who is Navajo, attended sessions in Many Farms on the Navajo Nation and in Tulalip and heard former boarding school students talk about the effect the schools had their adult lives, and within their families and communities. Those include the diminishment of Native languages and cultures, she said.
"It is also clear tribal leaders and family members want to find avenues for healing for these former students while strengthening and expanding the teaching, use, and revitalization of Indigenous languages and cultural practices across their tribal nations," she told The Associated Press.
The Interior Department found in the first volume of an investigative report on boarding schools that at least 500 children died at some of the schools, though the number is expected to increase dramatically as research continues. A second volume is expected by the end of the year, the agency said.
Interior used existing resources to begin the work. Congress allocated $14 million over the past two fiscal years, the agency said.
The tour has made stops in Oklahoma, South Dakota, Michigan, Arizona, the Navajo Nation and, most recently in Washington on the Tulalip Indian Reservation.
The oral history collection is an extension of the tour and comes at the request of Indigenous communities, Haaland said. It will ensure that future generations can learn from those stories, she said in a statement. "This is one step, among many, that we will take to strengthen and rebuild the bonds within Native communities that federal Indian boarding school policies set out to break," Haaland said.
Immigrants waiting 10 years in US just to get a court date - By Elliot Spagat Associated Press
Some asylum-seekers who crossed the border from Mexico are waiting 10
U.S. immigration offices have become so overwhelmed with processing migrants for court that some asylum-seekers who crossed the border at Mexico may be waiting a decade before they even get a date to see a judge.
The backlog stems from a change made two months after President Joe Biden took office, when Border Patrol agents began now-defunct practice of quickly releasing immigrants on parole. They were given instructions to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at their final destination to be processed for court — work previously done by the Border Patrol.
The change prevented the kind of massive overcrowding of holding cells in 2019, when some migrants stood on toilets for room to breathe. But the cost became evident as ICE officers tasked with issuing court papers couldn't keep pace.
Offices in some cities are now telling migrants to come back years from now, and the extra work has strained ICE's capacity for its traditional work of enforcing immigration laws in the U.S. interior.
"We're being stretched to the limit," said Jamison Matuszewski, director of enforcement and removal operations in San Diego.
As for migrants, waits to get a court date vary. In New York, ICE told asylum-seekers this month to return in March 2033, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, said at a recent hearing. In nine other cities — San Antonio; Miramar, Florida; Los Angeles; Jacksonville, Florida; Milwaukee; Chicago; Washington; Denver; and Mount Laurel, New Jersey — the wait is until March 2027.
Until then, the migrants in question won't even get an initial court appearance on the books, though they can live and work in the U.S. After that, their case will work its way through the U.S. immigrant courts — a process that takes about four years amid a backlog that reached 2.1 million cases in January, up from about 600,000 in 2017.
"The asylum system is in dire need of reform from top to bottom," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last week when asked about the waits for a court notice.
Tae Johnson, ICE's acting director, told lawmakers the agency wants to use online interviews to help cut the 10-year waits and that he wants congressional authority to issue court orders electronically. He also said more funding would go a long way toward "quickly eliminating" the backlog.
Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people show up at ICE offices seeking answers. A recent Government Accountability Office report mentioned one office — city unnamed — that saw 300 to 500 recent immigrants appear some days, mostly without appointments.
"The lines outside the building are just massive," said Camille Mackler, executive director of Immigrant ARC, a coalition of legal service providers in New York. "People are lining up the night before. It's been chaos."
ICE officials say it takes up to six hours to process a large family for court, fueling delays. ICE was responsible for 5.3 million cases of families and individuals not in custody at the end of February, up from 3.6 million 17 months earlier.
In March, a federal judge in Florida ordered the Biden administration to stop releasing migrants at the border with instructions to report to an ICE office. The administration didn't appeal that ruling but had virtually ended the practice known as humanitarian parole anyway as it implemented stricter immigration measures at the U.S.-Mexico border. There were only seven cases in March.
But ICE offices — particularly in cities such as New York and Miami that are the final destination for many migrants — are still dealing with a huge backlog.
In San Diego, which is not a final destination for many migrants and therefore not as affected, people showing up get court dates immediately. But there's still a line. Shortly after opening one recent morning, a receptionist had given out some two-dozen pagers for overflow visitors to wait in a cafeteria.
ICE also still must fulfill its role of deporting people in the United States — painstaking work that can require hours of surveillance for one person.
On a recent day in Oceanside, north of San Diego, about 10 agents convened in a shopping mall parking lot at about 4 a.m. to be briefed on a 49-year-old who had been returned to Mexico 17 times since 1999. U.S. authorities believed he smuggled migrants across the border, making him a priority.
"It's going to be quick and swift," the lead investigator told the team, advising them that the man leaves home between 5:50 a.m. and 6:10 a.m. When the man entered his car on a quiet cul-de-sac street 10 minutes early, officers in three vehicles with flashing lights pulled up to the front, back and driver's door.
No sirens were used and it was unlikely that neighbors were woken, except perhaps by the man's wailing cries for his mother as he was handcuffed against his car.
Matuszewski said he has shied away from knocking on doors and cajoling people outside to make arrests, partly because it has become widely known that officers generally lack court-ordered warrants and have no authority to enter.
"Now we focus more on watching when you leave the house, where you go, where's your business, where you stop in between," Matuszewski said.
Despite a $9-billion budget last year, ICE has always been limited by resources. Biden tried narrowing priorities to people deemed public safety or national security threats or recent border crossers in a case that the Supreme Court is expected to decide this year.
The GAO report found 75% of migrants paroled at the border reported to ICE as instructed.
Matuszewski is turning attention to those who fail to appear.
In February, he started issuing misdemeanor citations in the San Diego region with fines up to twice the value of the monitoring device. If successful, he hopes the tactic will be used nationally.