Proposed merger of New Mexico, Connecticut energy companies scuttled; deal valued at more than $4.3B - Associated Press
Officials with New Mexico's largest electric utility said Tuesday that a proposed multibillion-dollar merger with a U.S. subsidiary of global energy giant Iberdrola has been scuttled.
Under the proposal, Connecticut-based Avangrid would have acquired PNM Resources and its two utilities — Public Service Co. of New Mexico and Texas New Mexico Power.
The all-cash transaction was valued at more than $4.3 billion and would have opened the door for Iberdrola and Avangrid in a state where more wind and solar power could be generated and exported to larger markets.
"We are greatly disappointed with Avangrid's decision to terminate the merger agreement and its proposed benefits to our customers and communities," PNM president and CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn said in a statement.
PNM officials previously said the proposed multimillion-dollar merger with Avangrid would have helped create jobs, serve utility customers and boost energy efficiency projects in New Mexico.
They said being backed by Avangrid and Iberdrola would provide the New Mexico utility greater purchasing power and help move it closer to its carbon-free goals.
The multimillion merger plan was originally crafted in 2020.
Last January, PNM Resources filed a notice of appeal with the New Mexico Supreme Court after regulators rejected the proposed merger. The court heard oral arguments last fall but has yet to issue a ruling.
Officials with Avangrid, which owns New York State Electric & Gas and other utilities in the Northeast, said Tuesday that there is no clear timing on the resolution of the court battle in New Mexico nor any subsequent regulatory actions.
The Public Regulation Commission had said it was concerned about Avangrid's reliability and customer service track record in other states where it operates.
The elected commissioners also pointed to the company initially withholding information during the lengthy proceeding, a move that resulted in a $10,000 penalty.
Mariel Nanasi, executive director of New Energy Economy and a critic of the proposed merger, said Tuesday that Avangrid and Iberdrola's customer service record and attitude toward regulatory oversight caused New Mexico regulators to reject the proposal.
"Their continuing failure to properly serve their customers is proof positive that the PRC made the right call," she said, adding that New Mexico escaped a multinational corporate takeover of what she described as an essential piece of infrastructure for the rural state.
Legislators will propose a bill creating a local solar fund - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Lawmakers plan to introduce a bill that would create a renewable energy initiative for solar projects around the state.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the bill would create a $110 million Local Solar Access Fund. It would focus on projects for certain public buildings and infrastructure.
That would include municipal, county and tribal governments, as well as school districts, conservation districts, and higher education institutions.
The money would be appropriated from the state’s general fund, of which nearly one-third is made up of oil and gas.
Representative Reena Szczepanski and Senator Harold Pope plan to sponsor the bill in the upcoming session. Last year Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham faced some criticism for vetoing climate-related bills.
Pope said the dollars can help communities looking to shift to solar because they often don’t have the resources to pursue it.
Lujan Grisham has not made her priorities known yet about the upcoming legislative session, which begins on January 16th.
BernCo Sheriff’s deputy arrested for alleged DUI - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
A Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputy was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence on New Year’s Day by the state police.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, Adrienne Marie Seay faces a charge of aggravated driving while under the influence, and was released on her own recognizance — which means she didn’t need to post bail by promising to appear in court when required to do so.
Seay has been with the Sheriff’s office since 2018 and is currently a deputy 1st class.
In a written statement posted to the social media site X, formally known as Twitter, Sheriff John Allen said Seay had been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation and apologized.
State police said Seay was stopped at a DUI checkpoint where she smelled heavily of alcohol, slurred her words and had bloodshot, watery eyes. Seay admitted to drinking wine just before driving.
More Hispanic families are reaching the middle class - Tim Henderson, Stateline via Source New Mexico
The Hispanic middle class has grown faster than the white or Black middle class in the past decade and has reached near-parity with the white middle class in seven states, according to a new Stateline analysis.
Between 2012 and 2022, the percentage of Hispanic households in the country that qualified as middle class grew from about 42% to 48%, while the share of white households in the middle class remained about the same at 51%. The proportion of Black middle-class households grew more slowly, from 41% to 44%.
Hispanic households’ increasing economic success reflects the maturing of a community that now has more U.S.-born residents. But it also reflects a change in fortunes for immigrants filling service jobs that are in high demand, as well as a broader labor shortage that has pushed up wages.
However, the gains are fragile and could evaporate over time, said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which advocates for fair labor practices for Hispanic workers.
“While I welcome the progress, it’s not enough to say we’re close to solving the problems with inequity for communities of color. We’re not,” Saenz said. He noted that middle-class income takes a long time to translate into wealth, which often entails passing the financial benefits of homeownership to future generations.
A Pew Research Center report last year found Black and Hispanic adults are more likely than white adults to fall out of the middle class once they’ve reached it, based on data through 2021. Black and Hispanic Americans still lag in college education, which is associated with greater chances of economic success, Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher and author of the report, said in an email.
Furthermore, the percentage of Hispanic households that make more than twice the median income, 10%, is still far lower than the 21% of white households in that category.
For purposes of the analysis, Stateline defined as middle class those households making between two-thirds and twice the state median income adjusted for family size, which ranges from about $70,000 in New Mexico to almost $108,000 in Massachusetts. The analysis is based on responses to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey provided by the University of Minnesota at ipums.org.
According to the Stateline definition, a three-person household would have to earn $46,000 to qualify as middle class in New Mexico. The same size family would have to make $53,000 in Florida and $72,000 in Massachusetts and New Jersey. The analysis only included the 15 states where at least 10% of the population is Hispanic.
Among those states, the share of Hispanic families who are middle class is nearly the same as it is for white households in seven states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. In Illinois, Nevada and New Mexico, the Hispanic middle-class share is higher than the white share, and it is within 3 percentage points in the other four states.
In 2012, the only state where the Hispanic middle-class percentage approached the share for white households was New Mexico.
Nevada illustrates the progress that Hispanic families have made. Fifty-seven percent of Hispanic households in Nevada are middle class, compared with 52% of white households. That’s a reversal from 2012, when 53% of white households and 49% of Hispanic households were middle class.
Recently, the roller-coaster fortunes of the Nevada tourism industry have been an economic boon to Hispanic workers. Layoffs came in both the Great Recession and the pandemic, but lately jobs have come back with higher wages than before.
Last month, the Culinary Union ratified a contract for 40,000 Nevada resort workers that will raise pay 32% over five years. For Elsa Roldan, a single mother who cleans guests’ rooms at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas, that would put her over the middle-class threshold she is already approaching at her $25-an-hour pay. In Nevada, the middle-class household income range is about $54,000 to $161,000.
“I couldn’t be more happy or more proud. I feel like I’m middle class, or maybe working class but I have my benefits, my health care, I own my house in Henderson [a Las Vegas suburb], a very peaceful area where I feel safe, and my son is in college,” said Roldan, who was born in Chicago and lived in Mexico for a time before moving to Las Vegas 17 years ago.
Las Vegas has changed a lot since Antonio Munoz grew up there as the son of laborers who arrived in the 1960s as part of the Bracero Program that brought workers from Mexico to ease labor shortages. Back then, neighborhoods were segregated into different areas for white, Latino and Black families, but now neighborhoods are mixed, he said. Munoz is the first in the family to own his own business, the 911 Taco Bar restaurant and catering service.
Being a small-business owner is not easy, though.
“I feel like we’re doing pretty well, though there are always ups and downs in the restaurant business. We’ve been busy, but with all the inflation we’re not making any more money,” said Munoz. He’s considering buying his own restaurant building, but prices are as much as $1.5 million for a simple drive-thru location, and he’s not sure he can afford such a big loan.
The gap between Hispanic and white middle-class households is largest in Northeast states, where living costs are higher. Hispanic residents in states such as Rhode Island and New Jersey are also less likely to be U.S.-born and to speak English easily, factors that have been shown to boost access to middle-class incomes.
The disparity between the Hispanic and white middle class is still 10 percentage points or more in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
In Rhode Island, where 13% of households are Hispanic, 39% of Hispanic households are middle class compared with 56% of white households, a gap that’s about the same as it was in 2012.
Many Hispanic residents in Rhode Island are single mothers from Central America with low-paying work in house cleaning and child care, with little chance of buying homes and building wealth in today’s inflated housing market, said Marcela Betancur, director of the nonprofit Latino Policy Institute in Providence.
“Being middle class means more than money. It means being able to pass it on to the next generation,” Betancur said, adding that she sees hope for the future in increasing college enrollment among children of immigrants.
Rosa Flores was born in the Dominican Republic and owns a beauty salon in Providence where she moved after studying at a beauty college in New York City about 20 years ago. A single mother, she endured some hard times in the pandemic, living on her savings when the salon, Disnalda, closed for 72 days.
“People came back, thank God, that was a big relief and we’re doing well now,” Flores said. “I do feel middle class and it’s much easier to get by now that I have my own business. I’m very happy.”
The middle-class gap between white and Hispanic households is 12 percentage points in Massachusetts, 11 points in Connecticut and 10 points in New Jersey.
Overall, the growth of the Hispanic middle class is “rapid but not surprising” as the community matures and includes more U.S.-born citizens who are educated and speak English, said William A.V. Clark, a geography professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wrote a 2003 book on immigration and the middle class.
A report published this year by The American Journal of Economics and Sociology also emphasized the importance of fluency in English.
The report looked at spending between 2010 and 2019 and found that English-speaking Hispanic families spent more than those who spoke only Spanish on expenses considered middle-class like home mortgages, car payments and family vacations, said author Hua Zan, a family economics researcher at the University of Hawaii.
Bernalillo County incentivizes landlords to rent to low-income tenants - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Starting Tuesday, Jan. 2, Bernalillo County will incentivize landlords to rent to tenants with low incomes who qualify for the federal Section 8 rental assistance program and the county’s housing program.
The Landlord Incentive Pilot Program will reimburse landlords up to $7,500 per unit for any damages caused by a voucher participant. The program also offers landlords up to a month of rent if their unit is vacant while those repairs are being made, according to a county announcement.
The Bernalillo County Commission allocated $750,000 to the program for this fiscal year, which ends June 30. It also funded a full-time position to help run the program.
The county says its housing department will evaluate the 6-month program to determine whether it’ll continue in the future.
State spends $1.8 million to help illuminate Downtown Albuquerque - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has announced $1.8 million in state dollars is heading to the City of Albuquerque to better illuminate sidewalks Downtown.
The funds will be used to repair and upgrade lighting on some of the area’s most-used sidewalks, according to the Governor’s Office. The new lights are also meant to be more tamper-resistant.
The governor is billing the project as an effort to curb crime.
Mayor Tim Keller thanked Lujan Grisham in a statement, adding that “well-lit streets create a sense of security, improving downtown Albuquerque for residents, visitors, and first responders.”
The city has already installed over 100 lights Downtown over the last five years, according to the announcement. This newly-funded project should be finished in three to six months.
Bernalillo County joins city in recycling Christmas trees - By Nash Jones, KUNM News
Bernalillo County kicks off its free Christmas tree recycling program Tuesday, Jan. 2. It joins the City of Albuquerque, which has been running a similar program since last week.
The county has three drop-off locations available from 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Those include a lot at 1900 Bridge Boulevard and the Paradise Hills Little League Park in Albuquerque, and the East Mountain Transfer Station in Tijeras.
The county’s program runs through next Saturday, Jan. 13.
Meanwhile, the city’s ongoing “Treecylcing” program is available through Sunday, Jan. 7, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
It also boasts three locations. The Eagle Rock Convenience Center in the Northeast, the Montessa Park Convenience Center in the Southeast, and the Ladera Golf Course in the Northwest.
Trees must be real and undecorated. Both programs offer free mulch made from the trees on a first-come, first-served basis.
Klee Benally, Navajo advocate for Indigenous people and environmental causes, dies in Phoenix - Associated Press
Klee Benally, a Navajo man who advocated on behalf of Indigenous people and environmental causes, has died, his sister said. He was 48 years old.
Benally died Saturday at a Phoenix hospital, Jeneda Benally said. His cause of death was not disclosed.
Klee Benally was among the most vocal opponents of snowmaking at Arizona Snowbowl ski resort in Flagstaff. At least 13 tribes consider the mountain on public land to be sacred.
He protested police violence and racial profiling and was among activists who gathered outside metro Phoenix's NFL stadium in 2014 to denounce the offensive team name previously used by the franchise from Washington, D.C.
Benally advocated for the cleanup of abandoned mines, where uranium ore was extracted from the Navajo Nation over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities during the Cold War.
He also spoke out against an ordinance that, in a bid to address the problem of homelessness, had banned camping on public property in Flagstaff.
"There is no compassionate way to enforce the anti-camping ordinance," Benally said in 2018 when officials declined to alter the 2005 ordinance. "Life is already hard enough for our unsheltered relatives on the streets."
Benally was also a guitarist, and played with his sister and brother in the Native American punk rock band Blackfire.