Strategic Water Supply taps out as the governor insists she won’t ‘give up on it’ — Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
After its reprise, an effort to push through the governor’s plan to create a market of treated brackish water failed after committees did not meet in the final hours of the New Mexico Legislative session.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham expressed her disappointment in a press conference after the session adjourned Thursday afternoon, and said she’ll keep fighting for the measure.
“I don’t give up on it,” she said.
The “Strategic Water Supply” proposal originally asked for $500 million in severance tax bond sales to purchase treated oil and gas liquid waste and pump brackish water from deep underground. The plan wanted to create a commodity market to sell the treated water to replace freshwater in manufacturing solar and wind components and in hydrogen fuel. It was presented as a bill in the last days of the legislative session after being stripped from the capital outlay package of long-term construction projects.
The slimmed down version of the bill that asked for $100 million in bond sales and excluded oil and gas wastewater – often called produced water – for brackish water only. The effort faced long odds and was short on time. It stalled in the Senate Finance Committee.
Lujan Grisham said missteps came from messaging on the idea.
“Maybe I can change a bit about the messaging here, look, any water that is unsafe ought to be cleaned up,” she said, slapping her hands for emphasis. “How do you think we’re going to do better on the jet fuel spill? How do you think we’re going to take uranium out of the water? How do people think we’re going to treat polluted water? We want more companies with more innovation.”
She continued.
“I used the word commodity, maybe that was a poor choice,” she said. “It is an economic developer, people do buy water, I guess I didn’t talk about the purchase of water rights, we purchase water,” Lujan Grisham said.
Lujan Grisham concluded by saying that the development of the treatment technology would be important to cleaning up contaminated water sources.
“Maybe I need to make it more about consumer protection to the House and to the Senate, and less about economic development,” she said.
It isn’t over, she said.
“Expect that to be a priority throughout my remaining tenure,” Lujan Grisham concluded.
CRITICISM AND CONCERN
Environmental and Indigenous groups, who lobbied against the bill, said they were confused why the legislation was brought forward with little public input.
While pleased about the creative solution, the Strategic Water Supply came as a surprise, said Rachel Conn, deputy director of water conservation nonprofit Amigos Bravos.
The idea needs vetting, and more public participation, she said, because of the potential impacts of more shallow, drinkable aquifers and concerns that there were no plans laid out for brine disposal after the filtration process.
One concern that came from the bill was that the public right to protest did not apply to permits for drilling deep wells to access brackish water.
“It takes a critical component of public oversight water out of the process, or it’s not included in the process for this water, and that’s a concern,” Conn said.
Other water solutions are not getting as much attention, said Tricia Snyder, the rivers and water program director at New Mexico Wild. In 2022, a task force made up of various water experts issued a 90-page report with 17 recommendations and more than 100 actions.
“Many of those remain unfunded,” Snyder said. “I hope that as we move forward with thinking about these bigger and bolder ideas, we’re also thinking about how we’re moving forward on the things that we already know, there’s really broad consensus on.”
All the advocates said working on the next bill with the environmental agencies and the governor’s office is crucial.
THE BILL’S FINAL HOURS
Lujan Grisham said she was “working to get the bill” into the Senate Finance Committee, which failed to meet after floor sessions on Wednesday.
One lawmaker, Rep. Meredith Dixion (D-Albuquerque) expressed her disappointment that the Strategic Water Supply failed.
In some of the final debates on the House floor, Dixon asked Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia) if there was any funding for brackish water treatment development in capital outlay, since it was stripped in the last weekend before the session.
Lente, who sponsored the capital outlay package, said it was not part of the package, but that the governor sought $250 million in severance tax bond sales for the state to use to purchase treated brackish and oil and gas wastewater.
Dixion responded that she is concerned about the “impending reduction of revenue” from the oil and gas industry.
“I am disappointed that the governor’s initiative to support long-term water supply in this state and diversify the economy through water technologies is not something that this legislature was unable to suppor01,” Dixon said.
WHAT’S NEXT
Advocacy groups said their plans are to work on educating the public and lawmakers over the interim session, anticipating the idea will be brought forward in the next session.
“I felt during the legislative committee hearings, there was a lot of uncertainty about New Mexico water law, about the ideas of commodification, the financialization of brackish and produced water,” said Julia Bernal (Sandia), executive director with Pueblo Action Alliance.
Bernal said the next steps mean more planning from environmental groups.
“I imagine that in the interim, this will only try to strengthen itself, I’m so we’re gonna have to do the same,” Bernal said.
They aren’t the only ones planning on trying to connect.
In the halls of the Roundhouse Thursday, New Mexico State Engineer Mike Hamman told Source New Mexico there needed to be a more “comprehensive strategy around water,” during the interim meetings before the 2025 session. He linked that effort to redoubling the work done by a previous task force that contributed to the 50-year water plan.
“There’s a lot of disjointed water efforts on the legislative side, and maybe even on the advocate side,” Hamman said. “I’d like to start to pull it all together in a real, concerted multifaceted water strategy.”
Lujan Grisham enthusiastically said she would commit to meeting with groups who opposed the Strategic Water Supply.
“I’ll meet with anyone,” Lujan Grisham said
Santa Fe mayor weighs in on Meow Wolf canceling Matisyahu show - KUNM News, Santa Fe Reporter
Meow Wolf canceled a concert by Jewish American reggae artist Matisyahu Tuesday following a campaign by local pro-Palestinian activists and a shortage of staff willing to work the show. Now, the mayor of Santa Fe is weighing in, criticizing the venue’s decision.
Members of the local pro-Palestinian groups New Mexico Jews for a Free Palestine, the Santa Fe Democratic Socialists of America, Santa Feans for Justice in Palestine, Northern New Mexico SURJ and Santa Fe Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine said in a press release that the cancellation came out of advocacy efforts from their groups and members of Meow Wolf’s labor union. They said they opposed the artist’s outspoken support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, calling it genocidal, and characterized some of Matisyahu’s social media posts as "Islamophobic and transphobic.”
Meow Wolf spokesperson Kati Murphy told the Santa Fe Reporter in a statement that the cancellation was due to the venue finding itself “without adequate staff to safely manage the sold out crowd.”
Mayor Allen Webber issued a statement Thursday also calling out Islamophobia and bigotry, along with antisemitism — but for Meow Wolf’s cancellation.
“There is a significant difference between protesting against the policies of the Netanyahu government in Gaza and shutting down the performance of a Jewish-American artist in Santa Fe,” he said.
According to the Santa Fe Reporter, Webber received a letter from the Jewish Community Relations Coalition of New Mexico ahead of his statement, which argued Matisyahu “became a target only because of his identity as a Jew with an affinity toward Israel.”
Over 28,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis have been killed since the war began on October 7, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
CORRECTION, 2/16/24, 7:45 p.m.: This story has been updated to reflect that members of the Meow Wolf Workers Collective, not the organization itself, advocated for the show to be cancelled.
Protestors seek cease-fire resolution from UNM Regents – Albuquerque Journal, Associated Press, KUNM News
More than 100 protestors attended the University of New Mexico Board of Regents meeting Thursday to demand the university call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
The Albuquerque Journal reports most of the protestors were students but there were also some faculty members and people from the wider community.
Law student Hakim Bellamy invoked the widespread movement in the 1980s when students called for divestment from apartheid South Africa. UNM divested itself of more than $1 million from companies doing business in the country in 1986. Bellamy and others urged the regents to follow that example, calling a cease-fire resolution “the barest of minimums.”
The Regents expressed support for the students’ rights to express their views, but were reticent to make public comments about the issue. Chairwoman Kim Sanchez Rael told them the board would discuss “an appropriate next step” with UNM administrators.
Protests over the war have roiled campuses across the U.S. and reignited a debate over free speech. College presidents and other leaders have struggled to articulate when political speech crosses into harassment and discrimination, with both Jewish and Arab students raising concerns that their schools are doing too little to protect them.
Legislature calls on attorney general to create new missing and murdered Indigenous people task force - By Bella Davis, New Mexico In Depth
The New Mexico Legislature has asked Attorney General Raúl Torrez to create a new task force focused on a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people after a memorial containing the request passed in the final hour of the legislative session, which concluded at noon today.
Senate Joint Memorial 2 cleared the House on Thursday morning after passing in the Senate last week.
A spokeswoman for Torrez didn’t respond to a question from New Mexico In Depth about whether he plans to act on lawmakers’ request. Unlike a bill, the memorial isn’t enforceable.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham quietly dissolved a task force dedicated to finding solutions to the crisis in mid-2023.
Her staff said the group achieved its objectives and the state is carrying forward its recommendations. But some task force members believed their work was just beginning, and a handful of impacted families protested the governor’s decision in October.
Lawmakers agreed, and the House and Senate both passed the memorial unanimously.
A new task force should, according to the memorial, be made up of no more than 40 members, including tribal representatives, survivors and families, and law enforcement, who should offer legislative proposals and update a 115-page plan the defunct task force delivered in 2022.
The attorney general’s office, recently renamed the New Mexico Department of Justice, is a logical home for a couple reasons, memorial sponsor Sen. Shannon Pinto, D-Tohatchi, said in an interview in January.
Other states have created similar groups overseen by their attorneys general, who work with many law enforcement agencies, Pinto said. A lack of coordination between jurisdictions often stands in the way of getting justice for missing or murdered Indigenous people.
“I think it’s a grand idea that it is put under the attorney general’s office, where it will get the importance, the high priority that it needs,” Sen. Brenda McKenna, D-Corrales, another sponsor, said during debate in the Senate last week. “We know we need to fix the gaps between the database systems and having this task force under the attorney general’s office gives me a bit more solace.”
But the Department of Justice already has a few legislative mandates meant to address the crisis that, as of November, hadn’t entirely been met.
Two years ago, lawmakers created a missing Indigenous persons specialist position in the attorney general’s office and required the office to set up an online portal to track cases. Under the legislation, which contained a $1 million appropriation, the department could also give tribes grants to help in that search.
Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, also a memorial sponsor, questioned what progress had been made in implementing the bill at an Indian Affairs Committee meeting in November.
Chief Deputy Attorney General James Grayson said a specialist was working on cases but the portal hadn’t been created and no grants had gone out. The FBI and the Department of Public Safety already have similar databases, Grayson said, and his department was working with a vendor “to establish better communication and better connection to those databases for other law enforcement agencies in the state and for tribal nations.”
Asked in January if she had any concerns about the attorney general overseeing a new task force, Lopez said she was hopeful there will be more focus on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Torrez’s second year in office. He became attorney general in January 2023.
“It takes a while for you to come up to speed,” Lopez said. “I think the task force will also give some more guidance and help. I think it can work together.”
The 72 bills that reached the governor’s desk and those that didn’t – Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
New Mexico lawmakers introduced a total of 658 bills this session, nearly 10 times more than they ended up actually voting to pass onto the governor.
By the time the Legislature finished the budget-focused 30-day session on Thursday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham had signed three bills: House Bill 1, House Bill 141 and House Bill 171.
House Speaker Rep. Javier Martinez (D-Albuquerque) said in the 20 years he has been advocating at the Legislature and then serving in it, he has never been more proud of a state budget than the one sitting on the governor’s desk.
“It is a budget that has put the people of New Mexico first,” Martinez said. “It is a budget that values the people of New Mexico, that truly incorporates the needs of rural New Mexico and balances those with the needs of urban New Mexico.”
In and outside the state budget, those included bills on community safety, education, health care, affordable housing, workforce, the economy and climate change, said outgoing House Majority Leader Gail Chasey (D-Albuquerque).
“These investments prioritize our state’s most pressing, immediate needs while also investing in the future, laying foundations that will have lasting, positive impacts for decades to come,” Chasey said.
Out of 658 bills introduced, 72 of them were passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, shown below.
Lujan Grisham still has until March 6 to sign or veto bills. After that, any legislation she leaves untouched will be “pocket vetoed,” and would not become law.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Martinez said “unfinished business” this session included the tribal education trust fund which died on the Senate floor, a proposal that would have brought more accountability and transparency to government that died in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and a statewide paid family and medical leave initiative that failed in the House.
“These are bills that are going to come back, because this caucus believes in government transparency and accountability,” Martinez said. “We’re going to keep fighting. That bill is going to happen, because it is something that the people expect us to do.”
Martinez said paid family and medical leave is a big proposal that “deserves to be vetted and debated.”
“I’m proud of the fact that this floor gave it a robust hearing for three hours yesterday,” Martinez said. “(The Paid Family and Medical Leave Act) is not going away. The people need it, the people deserve it. We’re going to come back next year, we’re going to make the tweaks that we need to make, and we’re going to move forward.”
Asked whether there are any public safety proposals he expects to return next year, Martinez said it’s “too early to tell.”
“Public safety is a big subject and as a Legislature, we must address issues as they come up, understanding they didn’t come up overnight,” he said. “For now, I think what we passed is targeted. It will be impactful. As the months go by and all of us go meet with our local law enforcement, local (District Attorneys), local (Public Defenders), with people on the ground, to see what is working and what needs to be tweaked.”
Minutes later on Thursday upstairs in the governor’s cabinet room, Lujan Grisham told reporters she’s seriously considering calling for a special session focused on public safety and crime.
“It’s not off the table that we have a public safety special session,” Lujan Grisham said. “Special sessions don’t always give you the results that you intend.”
There have been some “historically bad” regular sessions and special sessions, she said.
“My job is to make sure that we’re focused and deliberate,” she said. “I don’t think it’s safe out there, and I don’t think that (New Mexicans) think it’s safe out there, because it plays out horrifically every single day.”
NO SIGNATURE NEEDED
Lawmakers passed another 37 pieces of legislation which were either memorials or resolutions, which do not have the force of law and do not need the governor’s signature.
Resolutions are formal declarations and can be used to place constitutional amendments on the ballot. Memorials are often used to express formal legislative intent. Lawmakers introduced 119 of them.
Lawmakers for second year kick ethics fixes down the road — By Marjorie Childress, New Mexico In Depth
An effort to fix the state’s anti-corruption statute after the New Mexico Supreme Court barred prosecutors from bringing criminal charges under several of its provisions died in the state Senate. The legislation languished in a committee after clearing the House 66-0 with two weeks to go in the legislative session, which ended at noon today.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham greenlighted the effort to fix the ethics law as the session kicked off in January. House Bill 8, sponsored by Rep. Kathleen Cates, D-Rio Rancho, would have fixed the Governmental Conduct Act, which provides standards for ethical conduct on the part of public officials, employees for state or local agencies, and lawmakers.
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that three of the statute’s four provisions used by prosecutors were too vaguely written to result in criminal charges.
Justices considered the statute in a consolidated case involving a county treasurer who offered money to an employee for sex; a district attorney used her position to intimidate officers investigating her use of a public vehicle for personal reasons; a judge who illegally recorded private conversations in a courthouse; and a state cabinet secretary who used her position to access the tax records of a previous employer. In the latter case, prosecutors alleged she was trying to prevent an audit of that employer because she had embezzled money from them. (Her embezzlement conviction was later overturned on appeal with the court saying the statute of limitations had run out.)
After the Supreme Court ruling, prosecutors couldn’t criminally charge these public officials for state ethics violations.
The proposed fixes to the current ethics law included barring partisan political activity while on duty or undertaking it in a way that uses public resources. And the legislation sought to clarify when actions amount to abuse of office, misuse of public property, seeking financial gain from official acts, or quid pro quo corruption.
The rewrite of the law moved through the House of Representatives fairly quickly, but stalled for almost two weeks in the Senate after being assigned to that chamber’s Judiciary committee. It finally received a short hearing Wednesday, with lawmakers questioning measures in the bill but not taking it to a vote.
One committee member, Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, didn’t think the bill was clear on how the bill protects lawmakers from unwarranted charges of corruption.
Ivey-Soto asked how lawmakers who recuse themselves because of conflict of interest are protected under a proposed provision seeking to prevent them from voting or omitting to vote on a matter in exchange for financial benefit.
He described a scenario where a lawmaker might recuse themselves from voting because of a conflict of interest, and the vote on the matter then goes one way or the other by just one vote. Could that lawmaker be charged with corruption because they didn’t vote, he asked?
Cates and her expert witness, attorney Mark Baker, sought to assuage Ivey-Soto that a lawmaker recusing themselves due to a conflict of interest would not be the same thing, and that any such charges would be “refereed within the Legislature itself.”
But Ivey-Soto was unconvinced. He said he didn’t disagree with the direction of the bill, but that the way it was written was important to make sure lawmakers trying to be transparent about conflicts of interest aren’t caught up in a felony investigation.
The lack of action in the Senate comes at a time when a former state lawmaker, Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton, a Democrat from Albuquerque who served as the second-highest-ranking lawmaker in that chamber before she resigned, is reportedly negotiating a plea deal with authorities after being indicted in 2021 on numerous criminal counts, including racketeering, money laundering and fraud.
New Mexicans are long familiar with public corruption at the highest level. There’s the cabinet secretary whose case the Supreme Court considered – Demesia Padilla, tax and revenue secretary for former Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. She resigned in 2017 one day after state Attorney General investigators raided the state agency’s offices.
In 2018, former Democratic Sen. Phil Griego was sent to prison for 18 months after ushering the sale of a state building through the Senate, and later pocketing a $50,000 real estate fee for the sale. Later that year, he got an extra year tacked on for using money in his campaign account for personal reasons.
In 2015, Republican secretary of state Dianna Duran resigned after using campaign funds for gambling. She later pleaded guilty to embezzlement and campaign finance violations, and was given a 30-day jail sentence.
Legislature and New Mexico governor meet halfway on gun control and housing, but paid leave falters — Associated Press
New Mexico's Democrat-led Legislature delivered on a handful of the governor's major priorities in her calls for public safety reforms, gun control, housing construction and the use of incentives to forge new solutions to climate change as lawmakers adjourned their 30-day annual session Thursday.
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham praised a trio of public safety bills that ban some guns at voting locations, extend a waiting period on gun purchases to seven days and give judges an extra opportunity to deny bail to defendants who are charged with new crimes while already awaiting trial on a felony.
But she also delivered a grim assessment of violent crime across the state, invoking the Feb. 11 stabbing death of a Las Cruces patrol officer at the hands of a man with a record of crime and mental illness.
"I just want to just say to New Mexicans, I don't think it's safe out there," said Lujan Grisham at a news conference, warning she might call legislators back to the Capitol to debate public safety initiatives. "And I don't think they think it's safe out there because it plays out horrifically every single day."
The Legislature delivered enhanced penalties for second-degree murder, but a long list of gun control and public safety bills languished.
The entire Legislature is up for election in November, and House Republican Leader T. Ryan Lane of Aztec said GOP lawmakers are aggressively defending gun rights as they also pursue public safety initiatives.
"Guns are not the issue," he said. "Our issues in New Mexico are more foundational."
Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency over gun violence last year, suspending the right to carry guns in some parks and playgrounds in the greater Albuquerque area, in response to a spate of shootings there that killed children.
Legislators forged an annual budget plan that slows down a spending spree linked to an oil production bonanza in the Permian Basin that overlaps southeastern New Mexico and portions of Texas.
The budget bill, finalized Tuesday, funnels the lion's share of a multibillion-dollar general fund surplus into a series of trust accounts designed to sustain future spending if the world's thirst for oil falters, as well as debt-free spending on roadways.
One new $960 million trust consolidates the governor's yearslong campaign to guarantee tuition-free college for residents.
Another new $75 million trust would help state and local governments compete for more federal infrastructure spending from the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration's signature climate, health care and tax package.
"A lot of credit needs to go to President Biden for the infrastructure projects, and then our Legislature stepped up to provide matching funds," Democratic House Floor Leader Gail Chasey said.
But lawmakers also downsized the governor's spending requests to finance housing construction and narrowly rejected a proposal for paid family and medical leave.
Lane called the defeat of the paid leave bill a "resounding wakeup call." House Republicans joined with 11 Democrats to defeat the bill on a 34-36 vote Wednesday.
"The fact that that bill came to a screeching halt on the House floor, I think sends a huge message," Lane said. "It's not flexible for business owners, for employees who don't want to participate in that system."
New Mexico lawmakers waded into whether to regulate artificial intelligence in the creation of political ads, sending a bill to the governor that would require disclaimers on campaign ads that feature "deepfake" images, audio or video. The bill doesn't prohibit those ads.
Legislators balked at a proposal to make it a crime to pose as a fake presidential elector, never bringing the bill to a floor vote. New Mexico is one of the few states where Republicans signed certificates in 2020 falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner.
In the arena of climate change and energy, legislators passed a bill aimed at reducing climate-warming pollution from cars and trucks through financial incentives that reward businesses that produce cleaner fuels. Similar low-carbon fuel standards already are in effect in California, Oregon and Washington. Lujan Grisham indicated she'll sign the bill.
Climate-friendly provisions are threaded into a tax relief package negotiated by Democratic state Rep. Derrick Lente of Sandia Pueblo that also reduces personal income taxes rates across the earnings spectrum and boosts taxes on income from investments. The bill provides refundable credits toward the purchase of new or used plug-in electric vehicles and household car-charging equipment.
"We have decreased taxes for all New Mexicans today, providing the greatest cuts to our lowest and middle-income earners, reducing capital gains tax breaks to ensure our highest earners pay their fair share," Lente said at a news conference.
Lujan Grisham praised the tax relief bill that would reduce annual state government income by about $220 million. Last year, she vetoed most of a $1 billion tax relief package on worries it might undermine state finances.
The new budget proposal increases general fund spending by $653 million, or 6.8%, to $10.2 billion for the fiscal year that begins in July. That spending increase is a fraction of the anticipated $3.5 billion surplus in general fund income for the same period.
Roads, rural hospitals, public school, housing initiatives and Medicaid figure prominently in the spending plan, along with a 3% pay increase across state government, K-12 schools and public colleges and universities.
The bill includes funding from a settlement with opioid manufacturers and pharmacies to better coordinate services to infants exposed to illicit drugs before birth.
Most New Mexico families with infants exposed to illicit drugs, marijuana and alcohol in the womb have been forgoing subsidized addiction treatment and other voluntary support services since the state's shift in 2020 that halted automatic referrals to protective services.
Lujan Grisham can veto any and all provisions of the budget bill but can't add appropriations. The governor has until March 6 to sign bills into law. Unsigned bills are "pocket vetoed."
Lujan Grisham applauded passage of $125 million to a loan fund to spur housing construction and a companion bill that expands the mission of the New Mexico Finance Authority into residential building.
The governor failed to find sure footing for her proposal to develop a strategic new source of water for industrial purposes by buying and selling water that is harvested from ancient, salty underground aquifers or recycled from oilfield waste.