Supreme Court victory for Trump may not mean anything for Couy Griffin in NM - By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Monday morning allowing former President Donald Trump to run again for federal office despite having participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, but it did not give the final word on whether a former local New Mexico official can run for a county- or state-level office.
A federal judge convicted former Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin of trespass for his involvement in Jan. 6. Authorities had held him in jail for 20 days, and the judge did not send him back.
A New Mexico judge ordered Griffin removed from the commission and barred him for life from serving in elected federal and state positions. The ruling marked the first time a court unseated an elected official as a result of participating in or supporting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Griffin appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which threw out his appeal on procedural grounds and reaffirmed their dismissal in February 2023.
Griffin asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case in May 2023. The justices have yet to decide whether to hear his case, according to court records.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued to bar both Griffin and Trump from office.
“While the Supreme Court has yet to rule on Griffin’s appeal, today’s decision applies to federal officeholders, while state courts still may rule on state lawmakers,” said Jordan Libowitz, spokesperson for CREW, on Monday.
The 13-page unsigned opinion in Trump’s case quotes from previous cases saying state governments retain the power to set out their own qualifications for elected officials.
“Although the Fourteenth Amendment restricts state power, nothing in it plainly withdraws from the States this traditional authority,” the justices wrote. “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office.”
NMDOH complies with CDC’s new recommendations against COVID-19 - Mia Casas, KUNM News
Officials with the New Mexico Department of Health announced Monday they agree with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new recommendations for protection against COVID-19.
The CDC on Friday now said that you can return to your daily activities 24 hours after your symptoms have subsided without medication. You are advised to wear a mask and keep out of close contact with others for 5 days following that 24 hours.
In a press release, NMDOH says the CDC’s updated advice will simplify the precautions surrounding COVID-19 and that it can be handled similarly to flu, or other respiratory viruses.
As a preventative measure the CDC recommends staying up to date on your vaccines and to practice good hygiene.
NMDOH notes the importance of protecting high-risk folks from these respiratory viruses, including the elderly and immune-compromised. It states the threat of COVID-19 still remains even as the severity of it decreases.
Dr. Miranda Durham, chief medical officer for NMDOH, urges New Mexicans to get vaccinated and stay home when you are sick.
Vaccines are available from health care providers and pharmacies across the state.
New Mexico delegation says $2 million will go towards watershed restoration following Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire - KUNM News, Las Vegas Optic
New Mexico’s Congressional delegation announced $2 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund the development of a comprehensive Watershed Restoration Plan for areas directly impacted by the largest wildfire in state history.
Representative Melanie Stansbury said New Mexicans are deeply connected to their lands and waters, and this additional funding will help communities affected by the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire to restore and become prosperous in the future.
The plan will create a land and water resource inventory that will identify land use, climate patterns, and more. It will also create a hydrologic assessment of the 42 watersheds within areas impacted by the fire.
The data will be used to inform and guide future watershed management.
Senator Martin Heinrich said he was pleased by the additional funding, but will continue fighting to make sure that New Mexico families impacted by the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire make a full recovery. The 2022 fire began as two prescribed burns by the U.S. Forest Service.
The delegation pushed for the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Assistance Act and secured $3.95 billion dollars in funding to help New Mexicans recover and rebuild.
The Las Vegas Optic reports FEMA continues to face criticism for how much of that assistance has reached landowners affected by the fire.
Famous architect Antoine Predock dies – Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
The world-renowned architect Antoine Predock [PREE-dock] has died. He was 87.
The Albuquerque Journal reports a family friend confirmed his death over the weekend. He was born in Missouri, but often called himself an Albuquerque native.
His projects have spanned the globe, including high-end homes, resorts and public buildings like the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Petco Park in San Diego, and the National Palace Museum Southern Branch in Taiwan.
In New Mexico his projects included the Albuquerque Museum, the Rio Grande Nature Center and Mesa Public Library in Los Alamos. His La Luz del Oeste housing project on Albuquerque’s West Side was added to the National Register of History Places last fall.
He received the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Lifetime Achievement Award.
He got his bachelor’s degree in architecture form Columbia University, but studied at the University of New Mexico and was a faculty member at the UNM School of Architecture and Planning. He designed George Pearl Hall, where the school is located.
In 2017, UNM announced it would create the Predock Center for Design and Research in the architect’s former residence and a professional center in downtown Albuquerque. He also gave the UNM Libraries’ Center for Southwest Research his two- and three- dimensional archives for display at the Predock Center.
City faces new lawsuits from asbestos mishandling at Gateway - By Damon Scott, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ
The city’s ongoing headache brought on by asbestos issues at Albuquerque’s Gateway Center at Gibson Health Hub continued this week. Three new lawsuits were filed against the city in relation to its mishandling of the cancer-causing material during construction at the 572,000-square-foot center.
Located at 5400 Gibson Blvd. SE, the center offers overnight beds and a variety of services for the homeless population. The city bought the building in 2021. Asbestos mishandling that took place within a 4,000-square-foot construction zone starting in 2022 was first made public in the spring of 2023 and abated about a month later. The center opened in the summer of 2023 and has undergone additional phases of construction since.
KRQE News 13 investigative reporter Larry Barker first reported on the issue citing, among other documents, a report from the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau that concluded employees at the center were exposed to asbestos between April 11, 2022, and March 9, 2023.
The lawsuit alleges that the city knew the asbestos risks and ignored them, putting people at risk.
The third lawsuit, according to the report, was filed on behalf of three city workers claiming whistleblower status who say they were retaliated against because they cooperated with investigators. The workers said they were intimidated, harassed, and threatened.
There are almost two dozen plaintiffs in the three most recent lawsuits against the city regarding the Gateway Center.
“We cannot comment specifically on pending litigation, but the City has acknowledged several times that asbestos concerns were identified early in the process and that while not all protocols were correctly followed, abatement was carried out to remove all asbestos containing materials,” city spokesperson Ava Montoya, said in a statement to City Desk ABQ. “The Gateway Center is now open and serving members of our community to get them on a path toward stable housing, and we are focused on continuing to build out the next phases of the facility so that we can continue to provide hope and healing to even more people.”
In addition, the state of New Mexico previously deemed that the city “willfully violated” federal safety regulations and it was fined more than $760,000. City officials are still in negotiations with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) to determine how much the city will pay the state for the fine.
ECECD expects slightly smaller budget than requested - By Susan Dunlap, New Mexico Political Report
The budget passed by the legislature this year contained much, though not all, of what the Early Childhood Education and Care Department requested.
The ECECD asked for $800 million in funding and expects to receive nearly $785 million for Fiscal Year 2025. ECECD Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky said the key areas where their requests were unfulfilled were in access to pre-K and to increasing quality.
“We had hoped to increase access [to pre-K] to 2,700 more children. It will be about half of that, 1,300 additional children,” Groginsky said.
She said that that means that more families will rely on early childcare for their toddlers to allow the parents to work but early childcare requires eligibility requirements for cost waivers.
Groginsky said another way for the agency to try to meet the goal of enrolling more three year old children in New Mexico into pre-K is through Head Start, which is a federal program. She called it a “mixed delivery system.”
She said Head Start and ECECD use very similar standards using a researched-based curriculum. Teachers must have a bachelor’s degree in early childcare and assistants must have associate degrees. She said Head Start serves families that make up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level.
“It’s limited who it can reach,” she said.
In terms of increasing quality, Groginsky said the focus is on trying to improve pay for teachers for infants and toddler. She said the legislature provided $5 million a year for three years. The agency requested $10 million per year.
She said another area was in providing funds for low interest loans. The department asked for $3 million but were allocated $1.75 million for that.
The low interest loans are important because the state still needs to build out the early childhood education center supply.
Bill Jordan, interim director and governmental relations officer for New Mexico Voices for Children, told NM Political Report that ECECD “needed significant money and they got it.”
“We’re pleased with the continued investment in early childhood programs,” Jordan said.
He said the state needs increased availability to pre-K and early childcare but that work is challenging because the pay for those workers tends to be low.
“Building out that system has required an increase in reimbursement and wages so we have a sufficient workforce. Most of the effort in expanding early childhood scope of services has been in trying to improve quality by improving wages,” Jordan said.
Jordan said that while the state can’t dictate wages, it can tie additional funding to quality incentives “that will play out in a way that providers will be able to pay more to attract more qualified staff and improve the quality of pre-K and childcare.”
Groginsky said the “big takeaway” about the FY2025 budget, which begins July 1, is that “the gains the state made during the COVID-19 pandemic of building a high quality universal early care education system to support families and children to enter kindergarten and take up the K through 12 experience will be maintained.”
“We wanted to go a little further but we have the vision and it will still become a reality for New Mexico,” Groginsky said.
Groginsky said one of the interesting things about the ECECD budget is that it will use funding from the Early Childhood Trust Fund to cover doulas and lactation specialists through Medicaid funds. Groginsky said the ECECD will transfer the funds necessary to the new Health Care Authority, which is the new name for the New Mexico Human Services Department.
Groginsky said providing these funds to help support doulas and lactation specialists is important to ECECD because of the department’s focus on prenatal to age three.
“We know those services are very connected to positive outcomes for children and mothers. Many home visiting programs hire lactation consultants or doulas to connect moms. Building a prenatal to five [years old] system that is comprehensive using the Childhood Trust Fund makes sense to be comprehensive in approach,” Groginsky said.
Groginsky said another area where the agency would have liked to have received more money in the FY 2025 budget was for providing more home visiting incentives. She said the legislature gave the department some money to support incentives through the Medicaid home visiting program.
She said receiving less money than the department asked for won’t hurt because there is still home visiting which can be utilized under Medicaid.
“We’ve put together a step-by-step manual and learned a lot about the process to become a Medicaid provider. We’re building the work intentionally around referrals and members who are eligible and private sector funding,” she said.
Groginsky said the department is hitting its target of 1,500 Medicaid home visiting and relying on Medicaid makes the state’s dollars go further.
An interim legislative committee hearing last year led to a discussion of the problems with the ECECD’s home visiting program. A report found that when families take advantage of the service, they often fail to continue it for the entire length of time required. Groginsky said the department wants to work on workforce issues so the home visitors don’t leave the field. She said the problem is that when a home visitor leaves the profession, the family that established a rapport with the home visitor doesn’t want to start over again with someone new.
Groginsky said the legislature gave the agency $2 million in nonrecurring funds to build out that system. She said that when Medicaid is the payer, the state only has to pay the state match.
Film director who was shot by Alec Baldwin says it felt like being hit by a baseball bat - By Morgan Lee, Associated Press
A movie director who was shot by Alec Baldwin during a movie rehearsal — and survived — testified Friday at trial that he was approaching the cinematographer when he heard a loud bang and felt the bullet's impact.
"It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my shoulder," said Joel Souza, who was wounded by the same bullet that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set for the upcoming Western movie "Rust" on Oct. 21, 2021.
Souza never filed a complaint but was called to testify as prosecutors pursue charges of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence against movie weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who maintains her innocence. Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on "Rust," was separately indicted by a grand jury last month. He has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is scheduled for July.
Prosecutors are reconstructing a complex chain of events that culminated in gunfire on a film set where live ammunition is expressly prohibited.
Souza said his workday began before dawn with the realization that six camera-crew members had walked off set. Hutchins put out urgent calls for replacements, and filming was back underway by late-morning in an outdoor scene involving horses and wagons.
Work after lunch started with positioning a camera in preparation for an extreme close-up take of Baldwin drawing a gun from a holster inside a makeshift church. Souza said he moved in behind Hutchins for a closer look at the camera angle but never saw the gun that shot him.
"I got up behind her just to try to see on the monitor, and there was an incredibly loud bang," Souza said. "This was deafening."
Baldwin and his handling of firearms on set are coming under special scrutiny in questioning by prosecutor and defense attorneys.
On Thursday, prosecutors played video footage of Baldwin pressuring the movie armorer to hurry up as she reloads guns between scenes.
"One more, let's reload right away," Baldwin says at the close of a scene. "Here we go, come on. We should have had two guns and both were reloading."
Gutierrez-Reed can be seen quickly loading a revolver.
Expert witness Bryan Carpenter, a Mississippi-based specialist in firearms safety on film sets, said Baldwin's commands infringed on basic industry safety protocols and responsibilities of the armorer.
"He's basically instructing the armorer on how to do their job ... 'Hurry up, give it to me fast,'" Carpenter said. "Rushing with firearms and telling someone to rush with firearms is not — not normal or accepted."
On Friday, defense attorney Jason Bowles pressed Souza to remember whether the script explicitly called for Baldwin to point the gun toward the camera, where he and Hutchins were standing.
"And do you know whether, from the script, whether that firearm was supposed to be pointed towards the camera?" Bowles inquired.
"It's not a matter of the script, really. For that specific shot, it was literally supposed to be the gun being pulled out sideways," Souza said.
Prosecutors say Gutierrez-Reed is to blame for unwittingly bringing live ammunition on set and that she flouted basic safety protocols for weapons — partly by leaving the church rehearsal while a gun still was in use. Defense attorneys say it wasn't Gutierrez-Reed's decision to leave.
Souza said he only recalled seeing Gutierrez-Reed inside the church after he was shot.
"I remember at one point looking up and her standing there ... distraught," Souza said. "I remember her saying, 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Joel.' And I remember somebody just screaming at her, and they just ushered her out.'"
Prominent attorney says he took DWI corruption allegations to FBI - By Elise Kaplan, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ in collaboration with New Mexico PBS. Watch the New Mexico in Focus interview with Daymon Ely here.
He won’t say exactly when, but at some point a “young person” came to attorney Daymon Ely with a story about possible corruption involving the Albuquerque Police Department’s DWI officers and a local attorney.
That same day, Ely says, he went to the FBI.
“I would not have contacted APD, because at that point they’re the ones that the allegations are being made about,” he adds. “So I would have contacted federal authorities — which I did.”
The alleged scheme appears to involve a handful of police officers and at least one well-known local criminal defense attorney and his paralegal working together to make DWI cases go away.
Ely’s office would have been a natural choice for someone with this kind of story.
As a legal malpractice attorney, the Democratic former state representative sues others in his profession for a living, but in this case he’s guarding most of the details of what he was told. That’s because, after consulting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico, he’s concerned that saying too much could compromise the ongoing federal criminal investigation.
However, Ely is definitive that his peripheral involvement began a while ago. And at this point, he’s been contacted by more than one potential victim.
“They did not read about it in the paper and come into my office,” Ely said.
He said he doesn’t know if he was first to go to the FBI with these allegations.
The investigation has reverberated around the criminal justice system. DWI cases have continued to move through the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court but attorneys who practice there report that everyone on every side is on edge.
In a state with high rates of fatal DWIs — New Mexico ranks in the top 10 states for drunk driving — Ely, and other insiders of the legal field, stress the importance of credibility throughout the whole criminal justice system.
“When I was a legislator we wanted to be able to look at the public and say, ‘we are working towards deterring crime by having a system with integrity where when people get caught, they know justice is coming and it’s coming quickly,’” he said. “And I think, to be frank with you, we’re still working on that. But sometimes out of these bad situations come surprisingly good things.”
THE INTEGRITY OF THE SYSTEM
On Jan. 18, FBI agents raided the homes of some DWI officers and the office of attorney Thomas Clear III, who is known for representing defendants accused of driving while intoxicated. That same day, the Second Judicial District Attorney’s Office dismissed 144 cases involving officers Honorio Alba, Joshua Montaño, Harvey Johnson and Nelson Ortiz because District Attorney Sam Bregman — citing his responsibility under Giglio v. United States — said he will not put witnesses on the stand with integrity issues. Bregman has since tossed another 56 cases, bringing the total to 200.
APD launched its own internal affairs investigations, putting the four officers — and Lt. Justin Hunt, who was in the DWI unit from 2011 to 2014 — on administrative leave. Hunt and Alba have since resigned and the internal investigation has expanded to include two members of the Internal Affairs Division — Cmdr. Mark Landavazo, who is now on leave, and a lieutenant who was transferred to another division. APD has not identified the Internal Affairs lieutenant because he has not been put on administrative leave.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment for this story.
No charges have been filed but reports have surfaced about interactions people have had with some of the officers and Clear’s paralegal, Ricardo “Rick” Mendez.
In one case, a former court employee reported that after Alba detained him on suspicion of drunken driving he told him to contact an attorney named “Rick” who “if hired, would ensure that no court case would be filed in court by APD.” In another case, a man who is now being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico reported that Officer Montaño took his bracelet and had him go get it back from Clear’s office. That’s where, he said, Mendez told him, “If you need to get off of this, you’re at the right place” — if he paid $8,500. The man said he didn’t hire Clear.
As for Ely, after he contacted the FBI, he said he served as a guide to make sure those who came to him felt comfortable talking to federal agents. He is not representing them and has not been paid for his part nor is he pursuing any kind of lawsuit regarding the allegations.
“These are brave people that saw something wrong and didn’t know what to do about it and wanted to do what was right,” he said. “That’s impressive to me. When you’re talking about law enforcement and powerful people and they’re willing to stand up to it: That’s, in my judgment, something to be applauded.”
Ely said the contours of the alleged scheme probably led potential victims to his door.
“Obviously there was a lawyer involved in this…,” he said. “I wasn’t shocked when I got the call because I go after lawyers that have committed negligent or wrongful conduct. And in this case, that was part of the allegations that were being made.”
He said he was “pissed off” by the allegations, which cast a shadow over a complex criminal justice system where everyone has a role to play.
“It’s outrageous. You have a criminal justice system that depends on everybody in that system acting in a way that can be relied on…,” Ely said. “When there are a couple of people within that system that aren’t doing their job, it impacts the integrity of the entire system.”
TWO NAMES IN DWI DEFENSE
For years when someone got charged with driving while intoxicated, if they could afford to hire a private attorney there were two names that would quickly surface: Thomas Clear III and Ousama Rasheed.
Now Rasheed is getting calls from people who Clear — a man he once considered a friend as well as a competitor — represented asking if he can take their cases instead. He’s turning them down.
“I will not directly profit off of Tom Clear’s problems, I will not take any of his cases, I will not take any of his clients…,” he said. “I don’t want to be associated with anything that deals with corruption and as upset as I am with Tom, I will not financially benefit from his problems.”
Rasheed first went up against Clear as a law school student in a clinical program. After he graduated in 1990, their careers intersected many times as they both built names for themselves as criminal defense attorneys representing people charged with DWI.
It’s a small world in which a limited number of police officers, a handful of prosecutors and a few defense attorneys encounter each other again and again in the courts system.
“Most lawyers do DWI early in their career and then they consider them too small of cases to handle and they move on to felonies or federal work and all that kind of stuff,” Rasheed said. “I liked it. I was good at it. I was making a good living at it … So it was a good area of law for me. I liked not having these two- and three- and four-week trials and making a decent living knowing that I was never going to get rich.”
He said over the years he’s won cases because an officer didn’t show up but “there ain’t a stack of cash waiting for anybody at my office, that’s for sure.”
“Some of us are sitting there and meeting with people and putting in the time and putting in the work and the research and the writing and the fighting and the trial and all of that — and some of us are just having 80 and 90% success with no-shows,” Rasheed said. “Come on, man, it’s frustrating.”
TENSE MOOD IN THE COURTHOUSE
It’s been more than a month since news of the federal investigation became public.
And Rasheed said the mood in the courthouse has been tense.
“Everybody hates it, the judges freaking hate it — they’re all leery about every single thing — the cops are all in a tizzy, like, every department is hyper-evaluating whether their officers appear in court or for interviews or for whatever,” he said. “Right now, everybody else in the system is walking on eggshells because of probably whatever the seven or eight people involved.”
For him it comes down to a small number of people crossing the line that is drawn between the two sides of the justice system.
“DWI is not a good thing in society — it’s dangerous, it can hurt people — and my job has been to defend people that are charged with that charge,” Rasheed said. “That being said, you’ve got to know that when people are on one side of the line that they stay on that side of the line. Once you raise your right hand and swear what you swear to and stick a badge on your chest you’ve picked a side — and you have to stay on that side.”
Northern NM fire victims will be spared additional taxes under provision approved by Legislature - By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Those who hired lawyers to help them get compensation for losses to the biggest wildfire in state history won’t have to worry about additional taxes on legal services if Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signs the tax package sent to her by lawmakers last month.
But at least one elected official in the burn scar and a municipal advocacy group oppose the measure, saying it will deprive local governments that are also struggling after the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire of sorely-needed tax dollars. And the legislation’s sponsor ultimately withdrew his support in fear of how the measure could harm those small governments.
The tax measure approved by the Legislature gives tax credits to law firms for gross receipts taxes, which are basically sales taxes, on services they provide to victims of the fire. Law firms can only get the tax credit if they don’t pass the taxes onto fire survivors in their bill for services.
Lujan Grisham has until March 6 to sign the tax bill into law.
After the U.S. Forest Service accidentally ignited the 530-square-mile wildfire in spring of 2022, destroying hundreds of homes, local and national law firms arrived and began soliciting clients. Congress in late 2022 approved nearly $4 billion to compensate victims of the fire. In the same law, Congress capped payments to law firms at 20% of compensation they secure on behalf of clients.
Those legal services, like all goods and services in the state, are taxed by states and localities. The gross receipts taxes on legal services for Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon survivors are estimated to be about 7%, split among the state, counties and towns.
A $100,000 payment to a fire victim who hired a lawyer, for example, would mean $20,000 would go to lawyers, and then there would be an additional $1,400 in taxes on that payment levied on the fire victim without the legislation.
State senator Leo Jaramillo (D-Española) sponsored the legislation this session and said getting rid of the tax on survivors would let them keep more of the money they’re owed. Local law firms and advocates for fire victims spoke in favor of the proposal.
But as the bill wound through committee and ended up in the overall tax package, Jaramillo grew increasingly concerned about the impact it would have on local governments, he told fellow lawmakers. He mentioned there could be a substitute bill that would have “held harmless” local governments like the City of Las Vegas and Mora County, but it was never introduced.
Administratively, it would be “extremely difficult” for the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department to apply the tax credit for law firms only on the state’s portion of the credit, while still sending the revenue to local governments, department spokesperson Charlie Moore told Source New Mexico.
When the New Mexico Senate deliberated an 88-page tax package that included the provision, Jaramillo ultimately voted against it, saying that he was withdrawing support because local governments would be harmed.
Still, the Senate approved the tax reforms Feb. 12 by a vote of 26-13, and the legislation was sent to the governor for her signature. Jaramillo has not responded to repeated requests for comment since that vote.
While the 30-day session was ongoing, the three-member Mora County Commission voted 2-1 on a resolution supporting the bill, saying that the Commission believes landowners and residents “should not be penalized, through the imposition of gross receipts tax, for having elected to be represented by legal counsel.”
The Feb. 9 resolution also said “it is understood” that a substitute bill would allow local governments like Mora County to continue to collect their portion of the taxes, although that ended up not being the case.
Mora County Commissioner Veronica Serna was the lone vote against the resolution. She noted that the gross receipts tax is imposed on law firms, not their clients, and so Mora County could still collect the taxes it needs if law firms simply paid the tax instead of passing it on.
“So the vendor should be paying that tax if they really want to help the claimant, not expect the state of New Mexico or any of the counties to take it,” Serna said in an interview. “Because the State of New Mexico and Mora and San Miguel Counties, we’re victims as well.”
In response, Brian Colón, a lawyer with law firm Singleton Schreiber and former state auditor, told Source NM that the law Congress passed means law firms like his are already receiving less than their usual 33% cut, and that the legislation is an effective way to prevent fire victims from having to pay additional taxes on the funds they deserve.
“I’m very pleased that the legislature decided that those individuals who opted to hire attorneys will not have a gross receipts tax implication on that transaction,” he said. “And that makes me very happy. It’s the right outcome.”
It’s not clear how much of an impact the wildfire and subsequent floods had on Mora County’s tax revenues, according to online records. In the fiscal year leading up to the fires, the county received $317,000 in gross receipts tax revenues, comprising 11% of its $2.9 million budget.
It’s also hard to estimate how much in taxes the county could make from legal services provided to fire victims, Serna said.
A legislative analysis on the tax bill, while noting how difficult making a calculation would be, guessed that the state could give up between $7 million and $12.5 million in tax revenues in the upcoming fiscal year if the provision becomes law. The bill limits the amount in credits given to law firms to $5 million every year, a cap Colón said firms were very unlikely to hit.
The New Mexico Municipal League also weighed in against the provision, saying that “revenue loss could be especially detrimental to municipalities in fire affected areas, which may need to provide additional services to residents impacted by the fires.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is overseeing the compensation fund. As of Feb. 14, it had paid $391 million to individuals, government bodies and nonprofits, or about 10% of the total allocated by Congress. FEMA officials have said they hope to pay out $1 billion by Jan. 1, 2025.
Tribal members discuss the impacts of uranium industry – By Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights heard about the contamination of Native American lands by uranium extraction and milling during a thematic hearing on Wednesday in Washington D.C.
The commission streamed the hearing on its website as well as YouTube.
Eric Jantz with New Mexico Environmental Law Center told the commission at the start of the hearing that the testimony from others would “bring to light a long overlooked issue how the US government has jeopardized the inherent rights to life, health, culture, environment and water of hundreds of Indigenous communities across the country in pursuit of a single mineral: uranium.”
“For decades, federal agencies have understood that unmediated and inadequately remediated uranium mines and mills pose a public health danger to those living nearby,” he said. “For even longer federal agencies have known that mine and mill waste have contaminated vast areas of land and huge amounts of water. Federal agencies have ignored or suppressed information about the dangers of uranium development.”
He argued that the federal government rarely sought or obtained consent from tribes for uranium production both on and near tribal lands.
Jantz called for the United States to phase out ongoing uranium mining operations and institute a moratorium on future uranium extraction and processing on or near Indigenous lands.
“Growing up in the community, I remember riding horses and grazing the livestock,” Edith Hood, Diné, said. “When the mines came, our community was forever changed.”
Hood is part of the Red Water Pond Community Association, which has been fighting for clean up and remediation of contaminated sites.
“People began to leave after we discovered contamination in the community because we were afraid for the health of our children and our own,” she said, adding that only two of the original 11 families remain.
Hood said safe and secure environments are a human right.
Additionally, she argued that the government chose isolated areas where people spoke limited English as places where uranium extraction and processing would occur.
“The government was aware of the risk and the dangers, but failed and neglected to inform our people,” she said. “As it is, the federal government puts Indigenous people at risk, never returning to check on the people and the land.”
Teracita Keyanna, Diné, is also a member of the Red Water Pond Community Association.
She said her family has been exposed to uranium in their home and that exposure has caused significant health problems including cancer, autoimmune disease, skin issues, liver and kidney diseases and learning delays in children.
Eventually, Keyanna left the reservation, or, as she puts it, was displaced.
She moved to Gallup where she knew her children would be safe from uranium exposure.
“But when you move off of your tribal lands, your ability to practice your language in your culture becomes more and more challenging,” she said.
Keyanna said her community and people deserve justice both from the extractive industries and from the government that put them in harm’s way.
“Our children’s rights to a clean environment have already been affected. Our children’s freedom to practice their culture had been impacted before they were born,” she said.
Anferny Badback, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe from the White Mesa community in southeast Utah, told about how ancestral remains were destroyed so that a uranium mill could be built.
The White Mesa mill is the only remaining conventional uranium mill operating in the United States.
Badback said few people feel safe drinking the tap water and instead buy bottled water.
“The water underneath the mill is becoming more and more polluted and is moving towards our community,” he said.
This has impacted the Ute ceremonies. Badback said they no longer drink spring water for ceremonial purposes. Additionally, they no longer hunt animals or gather plants near their homes.
And, Badback said, the White Mesa mill is no longer just a mill. Activists say the mill is being used as an unregulated disposal site for low-level radioactive waste.
Bryan Newland, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, spoke about efforts to increase tribal consultation.
“Tribal nations have played an instrumental role in advancing the national security of the United States as well as global safety,” Newland, Ojibwe, said.
Those contributions, he said, include mining and processing of uranium ore for nuclear weapons. He said that is especially true for the Navajo Nation, the Western Shoshone and the Pueblos of New Mexico.
“Today, the process that we use to engage with tribal nations looks much different than the process the federal government used in the past,” Newland said.
Clifford Villa with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spoke about some of the efforts to cleanup the legacy contamination on tribal lands.
He said the U.S. EPA, in coordination with the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, has identified 523 abandoned uranium mines and early cleanup actions have occurred at dozens of those sites.
Villa said that this year the EPA expects to select remedies for cleanup of sites in eastern Navajo Nation, including two places near Red Water Pond Road Community as well as the Northeast Church Rock Mine site and the Quivira Mine site. He said each of those sites will involve removal of more than a million cubic yards of material.