Albuquerque mayor vetoes city council decision to replace Air Quality Control Board - Alice Fordham, KUNM News
Mayor Tim Keller has vetoed a decision by the Albuquerque City Council to repeal and replace the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Air Quality Control Board.
Earlier this month, City Councilor Dan Lewis successfully introduced legislation to both replace the air board and establish a moratorium to stop air quality regulation until February next year.
The board had been due to hear a rule proposed by residents of the Mountain View neighborhood, which would have tightened rules for some businesses in areas where there are already several sources of air pollution.
The Mountain View Coalition says their neighborhood in the South Valley has long borne a disproportionate burden of industrial development.
Councilor Lewis' resolution, which passed on Nov. 8, would stop the board from hearing that proposed rule until next year.
He also introduced an ordinance to replace all the members of the board and change the rules for who could qualify.
Wednesday, Nov. 22, Mayor Kellervetoed both bills. He said in a statement that he was not consulted about the changes and that they should have been vetted through discussions with his administration and Bernalillo County, as well as the air board itself.
Keller also said in a memo to the city council that the legislation would interfere with the board's duties to ensure that Albuquerque has clean air.
In a statement from the city council, Councilor Lewis said that the mayor had sided with “environmental extremists” against crucial economic development.
The city council could override the mayor’s veto with six votes at its regular meeting on Dec. 4.
Thanksgiving air travel expected to reach all-time records - KUNM News, Albuquerque Journal
Air travel across the United States is expected to boom this Thanksgiving holiday – with the Albuquerque International Sunport expecting 178,000 travelers pass through its gates between Nov. 18-27.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, Sunport officials say it’s a 22% increase from last year and an 11% increase from 2019.
The busiest day for travel will be Wednesday, when roughly 20,000 passengers make their way through the Albuquerque airport.
Spokesperson Diana López Rabadán says about 19,000 are expected to travel through the Sunport as the holiday weekend ramps down on Sunday.
TSA recommends arriving two hours prior for domestic flights and three hours for international flights.
For Sunday morning, flying travelers should add an extra hour.
Albuquerque police cadet and husband are dead in suspected domestic violence incident, police say - Associated Press
The husband of an Albuquerque police cadet shot and killed her before taking his own life, authorities said Wednesday.
Investigators say the scene at an apartment in a northeast area of the city indicates 32-year-old Taylor Hagan was shot to death by Briton Hagan on Tuesday afternoon.
Briton Hagan, 41, died at the scene.
Police Chief Harold Medina says Taylor Hagan was a current member of the police academy. Fellow cadets learned of her death late Tuesday.
Her body was transported to the Office of the Medical Investigator with an honor guard.
Mayor Tim Keller called her death a tragic loss and urged people to look out for warning signs of domestic violence and abuse.
Counties spending $1 in every $3 on detention - By Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
New Mexico’s county governments are spending increasing amounts on keeping fewer people behind bars in county jails, the New Mexico Association of Counties told lawmakers Monday.
The nonprofit lobbies on behalf of all 33 New Mexico counties and also manages insurance for the governmental bodies.
General counsel for the group, Grace Philips, began lobbying lawmakers on the Courts, Corrections and Justice interim committee to increase payments from the state to counties for jailing people.
“Jail populations have definitely gone down,” Philips told the committee, noting the average daily population for 2022 was 5,210 people, compared to the peak of more than 8,500 people in 2005.
Philips said that people in detention, for the most part, have not been convicted of anything, but are awaiting hearings.
For the 25 counties operating jails, they spent a total of $336.8 million on jail operations, personnel, and medical expenses at adult facilities last year — out of $1.1 billion across those counties’ general funds. Counties build general funds by collecting local taxes on property, or for goods and services, or fees for utilities and other programs.
“On average, one of every three general dollars is going to detention,” Philips said, adding that for some counties it’s closer to spending $1 for every $2.
She said rising jail costs can impact other county responsibilities, like road maintenance, administering elections, emergency services, senior center operations and even trash collection.
The estimated amount budgeted for jail operations next year by the 25 counties is about $383 million, a more than $46 million dollar increase, Philips said.
Katherine Crociata, a lobbyist for the New Mexico Association of Counties, requested the legislature put more funding to reimbursing counties for incarceration expenses in the upcoming 2024 session.
INCREASING COSTS, LITTLE TO NO SAVINGS
County jails are not profitable on the whole, the New Mexico Association of Counties said, showing the data from operating jails in 25 counties.
Correction officer salaries in New Mexico right now account for more than $150 million, nearly half of the budget for the 25 county-run jails in the state.
Operations consume nearly one-third of jail budgets, costing county governments statewide $104 million. Medical costs for people held in jails amounts to just under one-fourth of annual jail budgets, at $64 million.
The remaining $16 million goes to capital costs, such as updating facilities.
Last year, New Mexico counties that run detention centers only received $40 million in jail revenues. About $23 million of that revenue came from the U.S. government for counties to detain people in federal custody.
Counties paid other county governments in New Mexico about $8.9 million for keeping inmates in other county jails.
The state paid $4.6 million to counties on behalf of people arrested by state police and kept in county jails. Municipal governments paid $3.5 million, based on agreements hammered out between city and county to pay a per-bed per-person cost of people arrested by municipal police departments.
Revenues amount to about 11% of the expense of running jails, Philips said, meaning counties are eating the cost to incarcerate people on behalf of the agencies that make the most arrests — municipal and state police.
“When state police arrest someone and bring them to jail, how much do you think the state pays for that housing?” Philips asked rhetorically. “The big zero — the state does not pay for that.”
Philips said detention centers have high fixed costs, so unless counties close down parts of the facility, or shutter it entirely, they don’t see savings.
DATA GAPS REMAIN
For years, New Mexico was unique, because it held significantly more people in jails compared to its prison population, Philips said, jailing people at the second highest rate in the nation behind one other state.
Jail populations rose to a peak of more than 8,500 in 2005, Philips said. They declined in recent years, and dipped sharply after 2020, during portions of the pandemic, which included the temporary shutdowns of courts.
New Mexico is holding fewer people in jails, but the jail population is rising again, more slowly this time, she said.
Jail populations are based on two factors: how many people are booked into jail, and how long they stay. Philips said the increase now isn’t about more bookings but longer wait times before court hearings.
“The longer it takes someone to go through, then your population in your jail increases,” she said.
Philips told lawmakers there’s been no long-term tracking on jail data statewide by the New Mexico Sentencing Commission, which is the custodian of the data. Instead, she said, the studies have been infrequent and only on a sample of counties.
“We’ve never had a statewide — every detention facility — longitudinal study where we can really see: How are people moving? How long are they in for? And what are the trends?” Philips said. “I’m disappointed in that, it is really something that would be money well spent.”
Philips said some of the data available is outdated, pointing to numbers for length of stays for people with serious mental illness that are 10 years old.
“People with serious mental illness stay in custody longer than anybody else,” she said. “We have a lot of opinions about that, but we don’t have the hard facts. I wish we did.”
Rep. Andrea Reeb (R-Clovis) asked if there’s any data on how many people are serving felony sentences in county jails, and whether the state is reimbursing for those.
Philips responded that people with felony sentences shorter than one year, or who need certain medical treatment for substance use disorder, are still being held in county jails, but there’s not a “concrete” number.
She cited examples in Bernalillo County where people are kept in the Metropolitan Detention Center because their treatment programs cannot transfer with them to prisons since the state Corrections Department cannot conduct the treatment.
“The Corrections Department does not currently provide methadone maintenance or suboxone,” Philips said. “So, sometimes people, I was shocked to learn, are kept at MDC, which you’ve got to remember that jails are not meant to be long-term housing facilities.”
Rep. Gail Chasey (D-Albuquerque), asked if lawmakers should set up an automatic billing system for counties to charge the state.
“Right now, the Corrections Department has no incentive to change its probation, parole practices, and that might provide one,” she said.
Philips responded, “we love that idea.”
Public Education Secretary promises to hold school leadership accountable for performance - KUNM News
Public Education Secretary Arsenio Romero said in light of continued poor performance at far too many New Mexico public schools, new accountability measures should be put in place to ensure they are fully using state dollars and implementing evidence-based learning.
A statement released by the Public Education Department Tuesday said that school performance data show troubling trends. For instance, the number of schools requiring targeted support and improvement rose from 113 to 368 over the last school year
Overall, statewide reading proficiency is at 38% and math is even lower, at 24%.
Ina letter to district leadership, Sec. Romero wrote, “Like many New Mexicans, I am deeply alarmed by the high number of low-performing schools and what that means for the state, the children who are being educated here, and our future."
He said that he would include additional accountability measures in the department’s budget request in the upcoming legislative session.
He plans to implement a new model designed to ensure that districts that do not provide their students with an effective education implement programs and policies that are proven to produce positive results.
Mora will be site of greenhouse meant to help New Mexico forests ravaged by fires - Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
State officials have chosen the county of Mora as the site for a greenhouse the size of a Walmart supercenter, that will grow millions of seedlings to restore forests ravaged by fire and climate change.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the greenhouse will be part of a reforestation center slated to be built next toNew Mexico State University’s Forestry Research Center in Mora.
The center was initiallyannounced in January 2022 as a remedy for forests scorched by wildfires, which scientists predict will grow more intense and frequent in the changing climate.
Then a few months later, two prescribed burns that went awry merged into the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the largest runaway blaze in the state’s recorded history.
The inferno validated the need for the reforestation center more vividly and swiftly than anyone involved had imagined.
Owen Burney, NMSU ecophysiology professor and director of the forestry research center said “We knew that these type of fires would happen, man-made or natural," adding, "It really gave us momentum, and it’s a sad truth: It took the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire for people to see light ... to listen to us more attentively.”
Santa Fe to miss another financial audit deadline - Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
The City of Santa Fe announced this week that it will miss the deadline for this year’s financial audit. It’s not the first time this has happened.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports it’s actually the sixth time in seven years the capital city has failed to turn the annual report into the state on time.
City officials say an outside auditor informed them that the document, which is due next month, won’t be ready until the middle of May.
The announcement did not provide rationale for the delay. Officials had said earlier this year that it was on track to be completed on time.
Meanwhile, last year’s audit still hasn’t been submitted. Santa Fe Finance Director Emily Oster told the New Mexican that her office is working to get that one done by Dec. 4, which would be about a year behind schedule. The office only completed the 2021 audit this past summer, making that one over a year and half past due.
Oster said in a statement that her team is “modernizing the City’s financial systems and processes” and that from here on “late audits will be a thing of the past.”
New Mexico makes interim head of state's struggling child welfare agency its permanent leader – Associated Press
The temporary head of the New Mexico's embattled foster care and child welfare agency has officially been given the job, the governor said Monday.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Teresa Casados has been appointed permanently as secretary of the Children, Youth and Families Department. Casados has been interim secretary since April.
The Democratic governor said in a statement Casados has "left an indelible mark" at the agency in the past few months.
Casados said she was honored to take on the role. She took on the position after the departure of Barbara Vigil, a former state Supreme Court justice who started in October 2021.
New Mexico's Children, Youth and Families Department has faced controversy in recent years. In September, the department reached a $650,000 settlement in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by two former agency officials.
Former CYFD public information officer Cliff Gilmore and his wife, Debra Gilmore, who headed the agency's office of children's rights, were fired in 2021. They said it happened after raising concerns about the agency's practice of conducting official business through an encrypted messaging app and automatically deleting messages in potential violation of New Mexico's public records law, according to their lawsuit.
CYFD admitted no wrongdoing or liability in agreeing to settle.
New Mexico's repeat rate of reported child abuse cases is among the worst in the country, amid chronic workforce shortages in the child welfare system and high turnover among employees in protective services.
The state has responded in recent years with increased investments in services aimed at preventing abuse.
Republicans say they have been frustrated by Vigil's departure and rejection of legislative proposals on child welfare.