$3.95B not enough to meet all New Mexico disaster victims’ needs, NM delegation says - By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
New Mexico’s federal delegation is pushing to urgently get more disaster relief money to all fire victims in the state. The members say there could be as much as $1.54 billion in unmet needs, even after Congress last year approved billions of dollars for disaster victims.
U.S. Sens. Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, joined by U.S. Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández, Melanie Stansbury and Gabe Vasquez, sent a letter on Friday asking Marcia Fudge, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to approve an imminent allocation and distribution of financial aid to New Mexico.
The delegation said the $3.95 billion Congress put aside last year isn’t enough to meet the needs of everyone in areas burned and flooded by last year’s historic fire season. The delegation is concerned HUD has already decided not to provide additional funding to disaster victims here because of how much has already been allocated from different sources.
The $3.95 billion is supposed to go to victims of the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history. Victims of the McBride, Nogal and Cerro Pelado Fires won’t get anything from that pot, the New Mexico delegation pointed out in the letter.
They sent HUD a list of questions about how and when New Mexico will get disaster recovery assistance.
As of Wednesday afternoon, it was unclear if the agency had responded to the letter. We will update this story if and when HUD responds to Source NM’s questions about it.
For those who are eligible for the $3.95 billion, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in charge of distributing the money through its Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Claims Office.
It’s not clear if FEMA has actually distributed any funds yet, though a Claims Office spokesperson said earlier this month the agency has started paying for flood insurance policies. In response to questions from Source NM, FEMA on June 6 declined to say whether they had paid out any loss claims.
The federal delegation said there has been a “delayed timeline to deliver that funding to communities” and asked HUD if that’s affecting their own disaster grant timeframe.
The letter says the federal grant funds could fulfill, at minimum, $242 million or, at most, $1.54 billion in needs not covered by FEMA, according to data from the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
“FEMA support alone will not be able to fully address the damages from New Mexico’s worst ever fire season,” they wrote.
The senators and representatives said they fought to make sure New Mexico would be eligible for Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery grant funds through HUD. That’s what the delegates want sent to the state.
HUD set aside more than $3 billion in March 2023 to help with recovery for disasters that happened in 2022 or later. Though New Mexico may be eligible, it’s not included on the list of states or territories HUD designated as “most impacted and distressed” areas resulting from qualifying recent disasters that require the grant funds.
After a disaster, these grants can cover housing repairs and construction efforts, infrastructure fixes for roads and water facilities, and workforce activities, such as job training or financial aid for businesses.
Before HUD gives out the money, officials have to figure out how much help victims are getting from FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Small Business Administration and insurance agencies.
The goal is to “supplement and fill remaining gaps” for long-term recovery efforts in presidentially declared disaster areas, according to HUD.
But New Mexico’s delegates are fighting to get that money sent to the state quickly without waiting for FEMA’s $3.95 billion to actually get into the hands of community members.
“The impacted communities cannot wait years while FEMA assistance and the Claims Office awards are finalized before (Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery) funding is allocated,” they wrote.
The delegation urged HUD to work with FEMA “to ensure that funding is distributed in a fair and efficient way.”
Luján’s office told Source New Mexico via email that the federal delegation is concerned HUD believes that the FEMA Claims Office will cover all the unmet disaster needs from last year’s fire season so the grant funding won’t be necessary.
“The goal of this letter was to make it clear that we do not agree with that assessment and urge HUD to assess unmet needs for all 2022 disasters, including the Cerro Pelado and McBride fires,” Luján wrote via spokesperson Adán Serna.
The New Mexico representatives and senators pointed out that the disaster victims are largely low-income families who have been living on that land for generations. These people need help in a timely manner, they said.
THE ESTIMATED UNMET RECOVERY NEEDS
The letter lays out funding still needed to help victims recover:
Between $95 million and $189 million for housing needs;
Between $118 million and $1.28 billion for infrastructure needs;
Between $2.7 million and $27.4 million for economic development needs;
Between $26.7 million and $39 million for planning and capacity building.
If HUD paid for the maximum recovery needs estimated, it would take up half of the $3 billion pot they have for fiscal year 2023.
THE FULL LIST OF QUESTIONS
The letter included the following questions for HUD:
When will HUD notify New Mexico on how much disaster recovery grant funding it will receive in response to the 2022 fires?
Is there any additional information from FEMA, the Small Business Administration, New Mexico, the federal delegation or other sources that HUD needs in order to make a determination?
Has HUD been coordinating directly with FEMA in assessing the impact of the funds FEMA will provide, given the significant administrative costs to standing up the claims office and the delayed timeline to deliver that funding to communities?
Does the timeline in which FEMA will provide support at all affect HUD’s timeline or allocation?
Are the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, McBride Fire, Nogal Fire and Cerro Pelado Fire all being assessed separately for their individual eligibility for the disaster recovery grant funds?
Read the letter in its entirety online at Sourcenm.com.
Amid heat wave, crews prep for prescribed burn across New Mexico, Colorado border - Bryce Dix, KUNM News
Fire crews with the Conejos Peak Ranger District are now preparing for a previously planned prescribed burn along the New Mexico/Colorado border amid heat warnings across large swaths of the state.
The National Weather Service is warning of temperatures reaching above 110 degrees in southeastern New Mexico and close to the 90s where the June 26th burn is set to be ignited in the Rio Grande and Carson National Forests.
Crews will take up to three days for the 700 to 900-acre Bighorn/Stateline Project ignition if weather conditions are favorable.
The burn is funded through Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. It’s one of 17 projects of its kind meant to boost forest health by introducing fire back into the forest ecosystem.
Once lit, officials say firefighters will continue to patrol the area to ensure containment of the fire.
PRC delays community solar energy reserve meant for low-income New Mexicans - By Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
Despite New Mexico having the highest number of Hispanic or Latino communities of any state in the U.S., it took over a year for officials to translate transparency documents for the state’s community solar program into Spanish.
That contributed to a recently enacted two-month delay on a requirement that’s supposed to save half of the program’s renewable energy for low-income communities.
That means solar energy supposed to be set aside for New Mexicans with low incomes doesn’t have to be reserved for a couple months later than originally planned.
Lawmakers authorized the community solar program with savings for low-income households in mind.
By law, at least 30% of New Mexicans who choose to opt into community solar have to be low-income residents, meaning they make an annual household income equal to or less than 80% of the area’s median income or are part of a state-facilitated low-income program, like Medicaid or SNAP.
The solar facility operators chosen to help run the program last month all committed to serving even more electricity to those communities, setting aside at least 50% of the energy generated for low-income participants, according to the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission.
Previously, by June 2024, at least 30% of the solar companies’ customer bases had to be low-income New Mexicans. The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission last week decided to postpone that mandate until August 1, 2024.
That means if a community solar program gets up and running, delivering electricity to New Mexicans before August 2024, companies aren’t required to save a portion of the energy for low-income communities until the new summer deadline.
The likelihood of that happening depends on if solar companies build their small-scale energy farms before that date. PRC spokesperson Patrick Rodriguez said it generally takes a year or two to construct the facility depending on the project’s complexity.
That means farms could potentially get started up as soon as May 2024.
WHY WAS IT PUSHED BACK?
Commissioners said companies who will run the community solar facilities and get New Mexicans to be part of the program need more time to understand and communicate how they’re required to be transparent with the public.
A two-page form lays out transparency details, like program costs, electricity rate discounts on utility bills, contract terms and grievance procedures. The PRC approved that form over a year ago and amended it in January 2023, but it didn’t get translated into Spanish until this month.
The companies who need to share that information with interested New Mexicans still don’t have the Spanish version, something important to share with the hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans who speak Spanish.
The solar companies won’t get those forms until InClime, the independent party who chose the facility operators, holds workshops to explain the documents. Rodrigez said InClime’s workshops are scheduled for July though invitations haven’t been sent out as of Tuesday.
The PRC commissioners decided the new August 2024 date would give the energy operators trying to enroll New Mexicans into the program a year to do so after the workshops take place next month.
This decision upends some of the rules previous commissioners laid out in March 2022 when figuring out how the community solar program should work. Those regulators were the ones who ordered the form to be available in English and Spanish, as well as Native languages when appropriate.
Rodriguez said there aren’t plans currently to make the transparency form available in any Native languages. But, he said, that has to happen if New Mexicans who want to be part of the program speak those languages.
The former commissioners didn’t include any deadline for when the Spanish translation had to be done.
New building, future roof concerns and repairs at Spaceport board meeting - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Repairs and renovations at New Mexico’s spaceport were prominent topics at last week’s New Mexico Spaceport Authority governance meeting.
The Truth or Consequences-adjacent spaceport is hosting the Spaceport America Cup Wednesday – where about 150 student teams from universities compete with different rocket designs and fuel types. The competition accounts for about 80% of all launches from the spaceport.
Washed-out roads and flash flooding postponed parts of the 2022 competition, and the agency is still working through some of the repairs from last year’s heavy monsoon season.
Completed repairs included fixing all 40 skylights after some started leaking into the Gateway to Space building, leased to spaceflight company Virgin Galactic. The building houses the company’s hangar for its space plane, control room and offices.
The undulating roof has about five more years of life, and lengthening that would entail costly fixes, Executive Director Scott McLaughlin told the governance board at Friday’s meeting. The agency commissioned a survey of the roof, which Source NM has requested a copy of through a public records request.
The report detailed options for extending the life of the roof. The cheapest option would be an $800,000 repair and recoat of the roof, which would only last a couple of years, and would need to be redone, he said. The other options ranged from $1.5 million to more than $3 million dollars to replace the roof completely, he said in the presentation.
“None of these are very happy options, right? Eight-hundred thousand dollars is not cheap, and it’s not a long-term solution,” he said. “But $3 million is expensive.”
The costs for the skylight fixes and roof survey totaled nearly $300,000, McLaughlin said.
Another problem is the hard water causing mineral build-up, causing damage to pipes and the firetrucks. The Spaceport will install an expensive water treatment system to remove the minerals, adding that to its utilities costs.The agency completed another repair to the two foundations beneath the Spaceport Operations Center, McLaughlin said.
That building includes the agency’s offices, fire department equipment and dorms, and a second control center with a view of the runway. One foundation holds up the domed roof, the other supports the building.
Repairs addressed damage from the foundations’ movement, including fixing interior cracks and “windows that would shatter spontaneously,” he said.
A $1 million dollar contract to design the new reception and IT center was awarded to Buffalo Design Architects in June. The 117-page request for bid is looking for a 30,000-square foot building including staff offices, conference rooms, an auditorium, cafeteria, dining area and server storage.
Buffalo Design Architects, an Albuquerque firm, estimated the costs to actually build something like that would range between $45 million and $60 million.
The original bonds – totaling $220 million – used to build the operational center and Gateway to Space buildings between 2008 and 2014 will not be paid off until 2029.
The spaceport is still in the process of renewing its reentry license, allowing planes and spacecraft to land at the location after launch, with the Federal Administration Agency. That will require an environmental impact statement and archeological survey.
The agency put out a request for bid on that work, and submissions are due at the end of the month. The agency plans to select a contractor in July.
The spaceport brought in $7.8 million in rents from tenants and other revenue, McLaughlin said. The total annual budget for the agency is nearly $11 million. The revenues pay for about 70% of the spaceport’s operations, McLaughlin told the board.
“That doesn’t include any of the infrastructure or any of the major repairs, but in terms of operating budget, we’re able to sustain that,” he said.
Virgin Galactic announced it expects to start its long-promised suborbital space flights (between 50 miles to 70 miles above Earth’s surface) from Spaceport once a month in August. A flight with the Italian Air Force which has been postponed since 2021 is scheduled to launch at the tail-end of June, a spokesperson said in an email.
Trump adviser faces possible disbarment over his efforts to overturn 2020 election - By Stefanie Dazio, Michael R. Blood And Alanna Durkin Richer Associated Press
A prosecutor seeking the disbarment of the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power says Santa Fe-based lawyer John Eastman concocted a baseless theory and made false claims of fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Eastman faces 11 disciplinary charges in the State Bar Court of California stemming from his development of a dubious legal strategy aimed at having Vice President Mike Pence interfere with the certification of President Joe Biden's victory.
If the court finds Eastman culpable of the alleged violations it can recommend a punishment such as suspending or revoking his law license.
The California Supreme Court makes the final decision.
Duncan Carling of the office of chief trial counsel said Eastman's legal theory was "unsupported by historical precedent and law."
Eastman's attorney countered that his client never intended to steal the election, but was merely engaging in what he said was a serious debate at the time about what authority the vice president had concerning election certification.
The proceedings are expected to last at least eight days.
Forest officials decide to contain rather than extinguish small northern NM wildfire — By Nash Jones, KUNM News
The U.S. Forest Service announced Tuesday that it will allow a lightning-sparked wildfire in northern New Mexico to “play its natural role.” Rather than attempt to extinguish the blaze, crews are employing a strategy focused on confining and containing it, according to a news release.
Forest officials say the Comanche Fire was first detected on June 8th and has so far burned around 40 acres in the Carson National Forest west of El Rito. The fire is 1% contained as of the latest update.
Since lives and homes are not presently under threat, officials say crews began Tuesday to manage the fire within a selected area, attempting to slowly bring the flames to the containment line using firing operations.
Some of that firing is being conducted using drones, according to Incident Commander Luke McLarty.
Forest officials are warning residents of El Rito, Abiquiu and surrounding areas that they may be impacted by smoke from the fire.
Community members interested in an update on the fire and the strategies fire managers are implementing to fight it can attend an open house on Thursday from 5-7 p.m. at the El Rito Community Center.
Native American tribes say Supreme Court challenge was never just about foster kids - By Michael Warren Associated Press
Native American nations say the Supreme Court's rejection of a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act has reaffirmed their power to withstand threats from state governments.
They say the case conservative groups raised on behalf of four Native American children was a stalking horse for legal arguments that could have broadly weakened tribal and federal authority.
"It's a big win for all of us, a big win for Indian Country. And it definitely strengthens our sovereignty, strengthens our self-determination, it strengthens that we as a nation can make our own decisions," Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said Monday.
In fact, the 7-2 ruling released Thursday hardly touched on the children, who were supposed to be placed with Native foster families under the law. The justices said the white families that have sought to adopt them lack standing to claim racial discrimination, in part because their cases are already resolved, save for one Navajo girl whose case is in Texas court.
Instead, the justices focused on rejecting other arguments aimed at giving states more leverage, including sweeping attacks on the constitutional basis for federal Indian Law.
"This was never a case about children," Erin Dougherty Lynch, senior staff attorney for the Native American Rights Fund, told The Associated Press. "The opposition was essentially trying to weaken tribes by putting their children in the middle, which is a standard tactic for entities that are seeking to destroy tribes."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion said these plaintiffs wrongly claimed that "the State gets to call the shots, unhindered by any federal instruction to the contrary."
"This argument runs headlong into the Constitution," Barrett wrote. "The Supremacy Clause provides that 'the Laws of the United States ... shall be the supreme Law of the Land.' ... End of story."
Justice Neil Gorsuch spent 38 pages explaining how up to a third of Native children were taken from their families and placed in white homes or in boarding schools to be assimilated. In response, the 1978 law requires states to notify tribes if a child is or could be enrolled in a federally recognized tribe, and established a system favoring Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings.
"In adopting the Indian Child Welfare Act, Congress exercised that lawful authority to secure the right of Indian parents to raise their families as they please; the right of Indian children to grow in their culture; and the right of Indian communities to resist fading into the twilight of history. All of that is in keeping with the Constitution's original design," Gorsuch wrote.
The ruling leaves an opening for another challenge that could fundamentally undermine the status of federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native nations — the idea that Natives should be treated as a racial group, not as citizens of sovereign governments with rights that derive from treaties, acts of Congress and other federal action.
The conservative Goldwater Institute had invoked "the Constitution's nearly absolute prohibition on race-based differential treatment" in its brief, saying that the act "imposes a racial category, not a political classification" on adoptees, unconstitutionally treating them differently based "not on their religious, cultural, or political tribal identity, but on genetics."
But Lynch, whose brief represented nearly 500 tribes, told the AP that "there is nothing racial about the law."
"There's no mention of blood quantum, or anything that hints at race. It's all about citizenship in a tribe," Lynch said. "If that was to be rewritten and understood by the court as racial in nature, literally every other law for tribes would be racial in nature."
Attorney Matthew McGill said he'll return to Texas courts on behalf of Chad and Jennifer Brackeen of Fort Worth, who adopted a Native American boy after a prolonged legal fight with the Navajo Nation, and are trying to adopt his 5-year-old half-sister, who has lived with them since infancy.
"We took this case for one reason only: to help our foster-parent clients and their foster children whose adoptions are frustrated by ICWA," McGill's Gibson Dunn law firm said in a statement to the AP.
But had the conservative groups prevailed, states might have gained more leverage in disputes with tribes over oil and gas pipelines and leases, social services, law enforcement, education, contracting and many other areas now governed by federal laws that define tribes as political sovereigns, Native American attorneys said.
"If Indian Law was just race-based law — if it's just affirmative action — practically every federal law that's ever been passed" would be struck down, said Robert Miller, an Eastern Shawnee tribal citizen and law professor at Arizona State University. "You would be stunned — it's thousands and thousands and thousands of laws."
Some states have long sought control over tribal matters, and they've been particularly anxious since the court's 2020 McGirt decision clarified that tribal jurisdiction still applies to much of Oklahoma, Miller told the AP. "Oklahoma is in shock now because they found out 43% of their state is Indian Country under the federal definition. So I think that's a little bit that's behind all of this."
The Wisconsin-based Bradley Foundation, known for bankrolling conservative causes, granted $250,000 in 2014 to support the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute's efforts to "restore the rights of states to exercise their authority to check federal power," according to its news release.
The case kicked off around 2017, when Gibson Dunn, working pro bono, filed a complaint in federal court in Texas. At the time, the firm was opposing tribal objections to the Dakota Access Pipeline and preparing to win a landmark Supreme Court case that enabled states to legalize sports betting, potentially drawing business away from tribal casinos.
Attorney Mary Kathryn Nagle, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, said she considers it no coincidence that groups opposing the pipeline protests of 2016-2017 took a "profound interest in the welfare of Indian children, and decided that this fancy law firm, that invests lots of time and resources into making money from oil and gas companies, all of a sudden really cared about Indian children, and wanted to all of a sudden get involved in custody disputes."
This was the child welfare act's third Supreme Court challenge, and though Justice Brett Kavanaugh sided with the majority this time, he invited another case with prospective foster or adoptive parents claiming they've been denied equal protection because of race.
Miller thinks Kavanaugh won't get the votes now that Barrett and Gorsuch have so firmly endorsed Indian Law as fundamental to the U.S. Constitution, which he said the founding fathers drafted in part because states were ignoring federal treaties and fomenting wars.
This historical record is hard for "originalists" to deny, Miller said: "There's no principled way they could come to a conclusion that it's race and not a political relationship with your tribal nation."
Still, this fight is far from over, "and probably never will be," said Nagle, whose sister, investigative journalist Rebecca Nagle, explored the case in her "This Land" podcast. "That's the sad thing about being Indigenous in the United States. Here it is, it's 2023. And in some ways, we're still fighting some of the same fights we fought since 1492."