No. 2 oil-producing US state braces for possible end to income bonanza in New Mexico - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
A windfall in government income from petroleum production is slowing down but far from over in New Mexico as the nation's No. 2 oil production state grapples with how much it can effectively spend — and how to set aside billions of dollars for the future in case the world's thirst for oil falters.
The state is headed for a $3.5 billion general fund surplus for the year running through June 2025, according to a new forecast Monday. New Mexico's annual state government income has swelled by nearly 50% over the past three years, driven largely by oil an natural gas production in the Permian Basin, the most prolific shale-oil producing region in the country that extends across southeastern New Mexico and portions of western Texas.
The state will draw in a record-setting $13 billion — exceeding annual spending obligations by one-third, economists from four state agencies said in a presentation to a legislative panel. Monday's forecast anticipates 2.2% growth in state government income, on top of 10.2% growth during the current budget year.
The estimate of government income sets a baseline for budget negotiations when the Democratic-led Legislature convenes in January, and could extend efforts to set aside money to ensure critical programs endure when oil income falters. The forecast cautions that slowing oil production and lower prices are expected to generate significantly less federal payments next year and beyond.
By the end of the decade, oil income is likely to begin a long, steady decline, "becoming a drag on revenue growth as global demand wanes," the report states.
Permian Basin production and revenue would be lower in the future if countries "make good" on their promises as part of the Paris Agreement , said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at the Washington-based nonpartisan economics group Resources for the Future, which does not advocate on energy policies. In 2015, countries at the United Nations climate conference signed onto the agreement to limit the average warming across the globe to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) and pursue efforts to cap warming to 1.5 degrees (2.7 F).
"It really hinges a lot on the different policies that governments around the world implement."
About half of the New Mexico's general fund revenue can be traced to the oil and natural gas sector through an array of taxes and royalties on petroleum production that takes place largely on public lands — and distributions that flow from the state's $28 billion land grant permanent fund for education, which is nurtured by oil income and investment earnings.
New Mexico's largest source of income is tethered to decisions across the globe about renewable energy production, adoption of electric vehicles, and new applications for nuclear power that could reduce fossil fuel use.
The state is looking for new revenue streams that shift the state's dependence on oil, including Lujan Grisham's proposal last week to help preserve freshwater aquifers with a $500 million initiative to underwrite the treatment of fracking wastewater. Early critics fear the plan might only spur more drilling for petroleum.
"We put a ton of money into funds," New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said from the United Nations climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, where calls to phase-out the use of fossil fuels have been on prominent display. "But you also have to create revenue streams that go into those funds that are reliable."
Meanwhile, the growth in government income has allowed the state to expand agency budgets, scale back taxes, and offer new support to families, while bolstering spending on public education and colleges that account for roughly 58% of annual state general fund spending.
It's more money in many instances than school districts and state agencies can effectively spend, as lawmakers push to bring average high school graduation rates and academic attainment up to national averages.
"All the resources have been there to pay the teachers more, to do the afterschool programing to provide the tutoring and support," said Charles Sallee, director of the Legislature's budget and accountability office, at a recent community presentation. "It's the ability of the bureaucracy to organize and use those resources. In many cases it's strained at capacity."
Frustration boiled over at a recent legislative hearing that examined state spending on public education and stagnant average student performance at public schools.
Statewide, the share of students who can read at their grade level is 38%. Math proficiency is at 24%. The state's high school graduation rate hovers at 76% — well below the national average of 87%.
Funding is increasing while the student population is declining, said Democratic state Sen. George Muñoz of Gallup, chairman of the lead state budget-writing committee at a November hearing.
"So we're paying more for kids and we're still not getting there," Muñoz said. "What are we going to do to move the needle?"
New Mexico's early childhood education trust, created in 2020, already holds roughly $6 billion. It's designed to safeguard an ambitious expansion of public preschool, no-cost child care and home nurse visits for infants.
Last year, legislators agreed to set aside $150 million in a new land and water conservation fund and agreed to channeled more money from oil and natural gas into a savings account for construction projects — devoting $3 billion by 2027.
Legislators still are pushing to open new savings accounts. An emerging proposal would devote $100 million to a trust for Native American education including Indigenous language instruction among 23 tribal communities in New Mexico, including the Navajo Nation.
Governor wants New Mexico legislators to debate new approach to regulating assault-style weapons - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
New Mexico could become an early political testing ground for a proposal to make assault-style weapons less deadly.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday said she'll encourage the state's Democratic-led Legislature to consider statewide restrictions that mirror an unconventional proposal from U.S. senators aimed at reducing a shooter's ability to fire off dozens of rounds a second and attach new magazines to keep firing.
The proposed federal Go Safe Act was named after the internal cycling of high-pressure gas in the firearms in question and comes from such senators as New Mexico's Martin Heinrich, a Democrat. If approved, it would mean assault-style weapons would have permanently fixed magazines, limited to 10 rounds for rifles and 15 rounds for some heavy-format pistols.
"I've got a set of lawmakers that are more likely than not to have a fair debate about guns, gun violence, weapons of war and keeping New Mexicans safe than members of Congress are," said Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, at a news conference in the state Capitol. "We will have to see how those votes all shake out."
Bans on assault rifles in several states are under legal challenge after the U.S. Supreme Court in June broadly expanded gun rights in a 6-3 ruling by the conservative majority. The decision overturned a New York law restricting carrying guns in public and affected a half-dozen other states with similar laws. After the ruling, New York and other states have moved to pass new gun restrictions that comply with the decision.
Lujan Grisham recently suspended the right to carry guns at public parks and playgrounds in New Mexico's largest metro area under an emergency public health order, first issued in response to a spate of shootings that included the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium. The order sparked public protests among gun rights advocates and legal challenges in federal court that are still underway.
The restriction on carrying guns has been scaled back from the initial order in September that broadly suspended the right to carry guns in most public places, which the sheriff and Albuquerque's police chief had refused to enforce.
New Mexico's Legislature convenes in January for a 30-day session focused primarily on budget matters. Other bills can be heard at the discretion of the governor.
Lujan Grisham said her urgent approach to violent crime is spurring more arrests and reining in gunfire. Her effort has come amid new concerns about gun violence after a shooting Friday involving two 16-year-olds that left one of them dead outside a high school basketball game in Albuquerque.
The governor's health order includes directives for gun buybacks, monthly inspections of firearms dealers statewide, reports on gunshot victims at New Mexico hospitals and wastewater testing for illicit substances.
Prosecutors say they need bigger budgets than public defenders because they have more legal burdens - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
Two prominent New Mexico prosecutors say it’s unreasonable to compare how much money the state spends on offices for local district attorneys versus public defenders.
District Attorneys Sam Bregman and Marcus Montoya wrote this in an opinion article published by the Albuquerque Journal on Dec. 3. The pair also doubled down in subsequent interviews with Source NM by arguing that the burden of proof to convict a person makes the prosecutor’s job more burdensome, and its annual budget with public defenders should not be the same.
“There shouldn’t be equal funding between the district attorney’s office and public defender’s office,” Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman said in an interview with Source NM.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appointed Bregman as the district attorney for the state’s largest prosecutorial office in January 2023 after Raúl Torrez left to begin his four-year term as New Mexico Attorney General.
Bregman has said he is running for election in 2024 to keep the job. Montoya is the Eighth Judicial District Attorney serving Taos, Colfax and Union counties. He is also the president of the New Mexico District Attorneys’ Association.
Source NM reported on Nov. 20 that New Mexico spends tens of millions of dollars more on annual budgets for prosecutors than on public defenders. Bregman said when he saw the report republished in the Albuquerque Journal, he and Montoya decided to write the newspaper a letter in response.
The pair wrote that New Mexico’s criminal legal system “requires that the prosecution do more work because we are required to bear the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“It is a burden that requires a different type of budget and not simply one that should be equal across the board,” Bregman and Montoya wrote under a shared byline.
In interviews, Bregman and Montoya said prosecutors and public defenders’ budgets should not be compared because they have different roles in the legal process.
Jennifer Burrill is president of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. Her organization represents both public defenders and private criminal defense attorneys, many of whom are contractors who represent people in New Mexico courts where there aren’t public defender’s offices.
Those areas include the Thirteenth Judicial District in central New Mexico, the Fourth Judicial District around the city of Las Vegas, the Eighth and Tenth Judicial Districts in the northeastern part of the state, and the Sixth and Seventh Judicial Districts in the southwest, according to the latest annual report from the public defender’s office.
Burrill said Bregman and Montoya are correct that the roles are different, but she was disappointed for them to paint the picture in their letter that prosecutors do more work.
“I think both of the jobs are hard. They’re both very taxing and stressful on the people in those positions. Nobody gets paid enough, and I hope that they’re still on board with the entire system needing funding,” Burrill said.
On that last point, prosecutors and public defenders agree.
“When it comes to the budget, the PD’s office and the DA’s office are in step,” Montoya said. “We both recognize: they need to get their resources to provide their constitutional obligations to the citizens of New Mexico and defendants here, as do we.”
Bregman also told the head of the Legislative Finance Committee on Nov. 17 that he wants lawmakers to “give as much money to the public defenders as they need.”
No statewide prosecutor workload study
Burrill said the New Mexico Legislature does not need to match the two sides’ budget line by line, but she does think it’s reasonable to say there’s a disparity in resources at a statewide level.
She highlights the American Bar Association’s study that found the state needs at least 602 full-time attorneys and is currently only meeting 33% of clients who need a legal defense. The report also shows that public defenders are spending most of their time handling high-level criminal cases, such as murder and crimes involving children.
The New Mexico District Attorneys’ Association has not commissioned a similar statewide study of prosecutors’ workloads, Montoya said. Nor has the Eighth Judicial District Attorney’s Office that he oversees, he said.
Bregman said prosecutors have much more work to do than just what happens in the courtroom, and Montoya said prosecutors are “straddled with more obligations and the burden to launch and prove a case.”
It may be true that prosecutors have more obligations under the law, but defense attorneys are the only lawyers mandated by the Constitution, Burrill said.
“There is no right to a prosecutor in the federal or state constitution,” she said. “There are rights against search and seizure and those types of things, but they never mention a police officer, they never mention a prosecutor, but they do represent defense counsel’s obligations.”
“I don’t agree that it’s a bigger burden,” Burrill said. “I do agree that both roles are very important, and are taxing and demanding.”
Prosecutors say they want more work, not less. When Bregman asked lawmakers on Nov. 17 for a bigger budget in the upcoming year, he told them there must be more preliminary hearings, more grand juries, and “we have to have more people doing that.”
Bregman and Montoya gave five examples of duties New Mexico’s prosecutors have that public defenders don’t. For example, DAs must screen and review every case police submit to them to see if they’re viable, and often present cases to a grand jury.
Montoya said this means prosecutors have the discretion to be the first to regulate an out-of-control volume of caseloads. Prosecutors can decline to prosecute in the first place, divert a defendant into treatment if eligible, postpone a trial date or dismiss a case altogether, he said.
“We’re the big end of the funnel,” he said. “We catch everything, and we screen out what’s not even going to get to a preliminary examination or a grand jury.”
Burrill listed nine examples of what defense attorneys have to do that DAs don’t, including driving up to six hours to talk to their clients in jail or to appear in court, calculating immigration consequences, and investigating cases way after the incident happens.
Burrill added when there isn’t enough funding to deal with the number of arrests being made in New Mexico “this results in cases getting dismissed and justice is not served for those accused of crimes and the victims of crime.”
She said New Mexico is in the same position it was decades ago when former New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Richard Bosson compared the state’s criminal legal system to a “three-legged stool” in his 2005 State of the Judiciary Address to lawmakers.
“When one leg is weakened, you know what happens: You end up on the floor,” Bosson said.
Bosson asked lawmakers back then for help, not because of any favor for criminal defendants over the prosecution, “but because without your help, the system will collapse.”
At that time, the Law Offices of the Public Defender was an executive agency entirely under the control of the state’s governor. It wasn’t until 2012 that voters amended the state constitution to create an independent Public Defender Commission to oversee the office, which allowed them to ask the Legislature for larger budgets without having to go through the executive branch.
Many prosecutions could not go forward due to lack of sufficient personnel, Bosson said.
“When that happens, when delay becomes so pervasive, those who suffer the most are the victims of crime, twice victimized if you will, their hope of justice a mere illusion,” he said.
Regulators' recommendation would mean 3% lower electric rates for New Mexico residential customers - Associated Press
Staff for New Mexico's utility regulators have recommended new rates for the state's largest electric provider that would result in about a 3% decrease for residential customers instead of the 9.7% increase Public Service Co. of New Mexico was seeking.
The Public Regulation Commission is expected to vote within a month on the rate case after its hearing examiners issued their recommendation on Friday.
Consumer advocates said they were pleased that New Mexican ratepayers would benefit from the recommendation, but argued even a larger reduction is warranted.
PNM filed a request for its first rate hike in years in December, saying the nearly $64 million in additional revenue was needed as part of a long-term plan to recoup $2.6 billion in investments necessary to modernize the grid and meet state mandates for transitioning away from coal and natural gas.
It also cited the upcoming expiration of lease agreements for electricity from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station in Arizona and desire to refinance utility debt to take advantage of lower interest rates.
The hearing examiners recommended disallowing costs associated with the sale of leases at Palo Verde to a third party. They also said PNM's 2016 decision to invest in extending the life of the Four Corners Coal Plant was "imprudent."
Overall, they concluded PNM's projected revenue deficiency is only $6.1 million, not $63.8 million.
New Mexico court reverses ruling that overturned a murder conviction on speedy trial violations - Associated Press
The New Mexico Supreme Court has upheld a man's murder conviction, overruling a state Court of Appeals decision that found his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated.
Jeremiah Gurule waited nearly six years in jail before a jury convicted him in 2016 of murder and evidence tampering in the stabbing death of his girlfriend, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
But the state's high court ruled 3-2 Thursday that Gurule's speedy trial rights weren't violated because the circumstances involved lengthy considerations of his mental competence to stand trial.
Gurule, 36, was convicted by a 2nd Judicial District Court jury of second-degree murder and tampering with evidence in the April 2010 stabbing death of 22-year-old University of New Mexico student Elizabeth Brito.
According to the Journal, witnesses testified that Gurule had been smoking methamphetamine before he stabbed Brito 26 times in the neck while she was on the phone with a 911 operator.
In 2019, the New Mexico Court of Appeals reversed Gurule's conviction in a split decision — remanding the case to District Court with instructions to dismiss the charges.
The appellate court ruled that the 70-month delay in the trial weighted heavily against state prosecutors and that Gurule's constitutional rights to a speedy trial were violated.
"The Court of Appeals erred in weighting that delay against the State," Supreme Court Justice David Thomson wrote for the three-member majority. "Instead, we weigh the reasons for the delay in large part against (Gurule) because much of the delay was the result of multiple considerations of (Gurule's) competence to stand trial."
Thomson also said the state Supreme Court has previously ruled that delays resulting from competency considerations do not affect the defendant's right to a speedy trial.
The New Mexico Correction Department told the Journal that Gurule has a projected release date of November 2025, but that timetable is "subject to change, based on his conduct."
New Mexico police are trying to identify 4 people who died in fiery head-on crash - Associated Press
Authorities said Sunday that they are still trying to identify four people who died in a fiery two-vehicle crash on a New Mexico highway about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Española.
State police said officers were called to the scene on U.S. Highway 84 around 3:30 a.m. Saturday.
Two people were in each vehicle in a head-on collision, according to police.
They said the jeep and pickup truck were fully engulfed in flames and all four victims were pronounced dead at the scene.
The State Police crash reconstruction unit is assisting in determining the details that led up to the crash.
Biden and Congress are mulling big changes on immigration. What are they and what could they mean? - Rebecca Santana Associated Press
President Joe Biden is taking a more active role in Senate negotiations over changes to the immigration system that Republicans are demanding in exchange for providing money to Ukraine in its fight against Russia and Israel for the war with Hamas.
The Democratic president has said he is willing to make "significant compromises on the border" as Republicans block the wartime aid in Congress. The White House is expected to get more involved in talks this week as the impasse over changes to border policy has deepened and the funds remaining for Ukraine have dwindled.
"It's time to cut a deal that both sides can agree to," Biden's budget director, Shalanda Young, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Republicans say the record numbers of migrants crossing the southern border pose a security threat because authorities cannot adequately screen all the migrants and that those who enter the United States are straining the country's resources. GOP lawmakers also say they cannot justify to their constituents sending billions of dollars to other countries, even in a time of war, while failing to address the border at home.
Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is leading the negotiations, pointed to the surge of people entering the U.S. from Mexico and said "it is literally spiraling out of control."
"All we're trying to do is to say what tools are needed to be able to get this back in control, so we don't have the chaos on our southern border," Lankford said on CBS.
But many immigration advocates, including some Democrats, say some of the changes being proposed would gut protections for people who desperately need help and would not really ease the chaos at the border.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democratic bargainer, said the White House would take a more active role in the talks. But he also panned Republican policy demands so far as "unreasonable."
"We don't want to shut off the United States of America to people who are coming here to be rescued from dangerous, miserable circumstances, in which their life is in jeopardy. The best of America is that you can come here to be rescued from terror and torture," Murphy said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Much of the negotiating is taking place in private, but some of the issues under discussion are known: asylum standards, humanitarian parole and fast-track deportation authority, among others.
A look at what they are and what might happen if there are changes:
HUMANITARIAN PAROLE
Using humanitarian parole, the U.S. government can let people into the country by essentially bypassing the regular immigration process. This power is supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis for "urgent humanitarian reasons" or "significant public benefit." Migrants are usually admitted for a pre-determined period and there's no path toward U.S. citizenship.
Over the years, administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have used humanitarian parole to admit people into the U.S. and help groups of people from all over the world. It's been used to admit people from Hungary in the 1950s, from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the latter half of the 1970s, and Iraqi Kurds who had worked with the U.S. in the mid-1990s, according to research by the Cato Institute.
Under Biden, the U.S. has relied heavily on humanitarian parole. The U.S. airlifted nearly 80,000 Afghans from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and brought them to the U.S. after the Taliban takeover. The U.S. has admitted tens of thousands of Ukrainians who fled after the Russian invasion.
In January the Democratic administration announced a plan to admit 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela via humanitarian parole, provided those migrants had a financial sponsor and flew to the U.S. instead of going to the U.S.-Mexico border for entry.
The latest U.S. government figures show that nearly 270,000 people had been admitted into the country through October under that program. Separately, 324,000 people have gotten appointments through a mobile app called CBP One that is used to grant parole to people at land crossings with Mexico.
Republicans have described the programs as essentially an end run around Congress by letting in large numbers of people who otherwise would have no path to be admitted. Texas sued the administration to stop the program aimed at Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
WHAT MIGHT CHANGE WITH ASYLUM?
Asylum is a type of protection that allows a migrant to stay in the U..S. and have a path to American citizenship. To qualify for asylum, someone has to demonstrate fear of persecution back home due to a fairly specific set of criteria: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinions. Asylum-seekers must be on U.S. soil when they ask for this protection.
They generally go through an initial screening called a credible fear interview. If they are determined to have a chance of getting asylum, they are allowed to stay in the U.S. to pursue their case in immigration court. That process can take years. In the meantime, asylum-seekers can start to work, get married, have children and create a life.
Critics say the problem is that most people do not end up getting asylum when their case finally makes it to immigration court. But they say migrants know that if they claim asylum, they essentially will be allowed to stay in America for years.
"People aren't necessarily coming to apply for asylum as much to access that asylum adjudication process," said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the U.S.
Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants need to meet during that initial credible fear interview. Those who do not meet it would be sent home.
But Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration court judge who blogs about immigration court issues, said the credible fear interview was never intended to be so tough. Migrants are doing the interview soon after arriving at the border from an often arduous and traumatizing journey, he said. Schmidt said the interview is more of an "initial screening" to weed out those with frivolous asylum claims.
Schmidt also questioned the argument that most migrants fail their final asylum screening. He said some immigration judges apply overly restrictive standards and that the system is so backlogged that it is hard to know exactly what the most recent and reliable statistics are.
WHAT IS EXPEDITED REMOVAL?
Expedited removal, created in 1996 by Congress, basically allows low-level immigration officers, as opposed to an immigration judge, to quickly deport certain immigrants. It was not widely used until 2004 and generally has been used to deport people apprehended within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian border and within two weeks of their arrival.
Defenders say it relieves the burden on the backlogged immigration courts. Immigration advocates say its use is prone to errors and does not give migrants enough protections, such as having a lawyer help them argue their case. As president, Republican Donald Trump pushed to expand this fast-track deportation policy nationwide and for longer periods of time. Opponents sued and that expansion never happened.
WHAT MIGHT THESE CHANGES DO?
Much of the disagreement over these proposed changes comes down to whether people think deterrence works.
Arthur, the former immigration court judge, thinks it does. He said changes to the credible fear asylum standards and restrictions on the use of humanitarian parole would be a "game changer." He said it would be a "costly endeavor" as the government would have to detain and deport many more migrants than today. But, he argued, eventually the numbers of people arriving would drop.
But others, like Schmidt, the retired immigration court judge, say migrants are so desperate, they will come anyway and make dangerous journeys to evade Border Patrol.
"Desperate people do desperate things," he said.
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Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.