$100M headed to Ruidoso after lone special session bill signed by Gov. Lujan Grisham - Leah Romero, Source New Mexico
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed House Bill 1 Tuesday, which will provide $100 million in monetary relief for the Ruidoso areas devastated by fires and floods in June.
The bill was the only legislation to come out of the five hour special session that Lujan Grisham convened on July 18. Lawmakers rejected all public safety proposals but used the time to get money for South Fork and Salt fire destruction, and the damage from subsequent floods.
Lujan Grisham took nearly two weeks to sign the piece of legislation, known as the Feed Bill, because it also covers costs for operations at the Roundhouse When questioned about the delay during a public safety town hall in Las Cruces last week, the governor said she did not want to “punish” victims of the natural disasters.
“The legislature’s failure to prioritize public safety for New Mexicans during the special session is deeply disappointing,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement announcing the bill signing. “However, I am relieved that we managed to secure aid for critical recovery efforts in communities damaged by fire and flooding.”
The $100 million will go to multiple entities including $30 million split $10 million each to the Mescalero Apache Tribe, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department and the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Local governments will also be eligible for loan payments from the remaining $70 million approved with the legislation.
The $70 million will go toward zero-interest loans for political subdivisions of the state, which could mean local governments like Ruidoso and its surrounding villages.That money is only available for those that qualify during the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, according to the text signed by the governor.
Political subdivisions must also qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency relief before getting any state loans. The goal here for lawmakers and the governor was to get money to local governments for repair faster than FEMA. It is modeled in part by a loan program for the 2022 Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon Fire.
House Bill 1 also appropriated $3 million to fund assisted outpatient treatment programs and competency diversion pilot programs in the state during the current fiscal year.
Lawmakers said this was a concession for a bill the governor wanted out of the special session that would have further expanded assisted outpatient treatment options statewide.
NM Gov’s latest stop on public safety tour is Española, where tensions rise about a homeless camp - By Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Tuesday made Española her third stop on an impromptu public safety tour, hearing from more than a dozen people who spoke up to say they are very concerned about crime, drug addiction and homelessness.
TJ Lopez, a resident of northern Rio Arriba County, said he thanked the governor, on behalf of his daughter, for expansion of early childhood education, but he was worried about the rest of her life. He asked for more sheriff’s deputies in his area.
“What is there for her to look forward to if she can’t be safe?” he asked.
The governor responded that the Legislature has spent heavily on police recruitment and retention in recent years.
The town hall in the city of around 11,000 people, also a rural hub in northern New Mexico, started as some people are up in arms about a homeless encampment along the Rio Grande. Previous visits were to Las Cruces and Albuquerque, the two biggest cities in the state. Lujan Grisham suggested at the town hall that her tour was not over.
The governor started the town hall tour after lawmakers refused to take up a slate of public safety measures during a special legislative session she called on July 18. At Northern New Mexico College on Tuesday, attendees passed by a table stacked with petitions from the governor’s office that asked the Legislature to “prioritize the well-being of New Mexicans.”
“We are right on the precipice,” Lujan Grishamsaid around 9 p.m. at the Nick Salazar Center for the Arts Theatre, which filled with more than 200 people and slowly emptied throughout the night. “We have to fix it.”
The governor’s special session agenda would have made it easier for police to involuntarily commit people with psychiatric diagnoses or for courts to hold them in jail. It would also ban loitering on certain medians across the state and raise penalties for having a gun if someone has a prior felony conviction.
Lujan Grisham took more than a dozen questions in Española for nearly five hours on a wide variety of topics related to mental illness, crime, homelessness and drug abuse. Several who spoke began their comments with mentioning how many loved ones they’d lost to drug overdoses, including one woman raising a young relative born with disabilities due to drug exposure in the womb.
“My cousin literally was dropped off at my home four years ago, and since then I’ve had to advocate on my own. I’ve got no guidance or no help. I’m tired. I’m tired of crying,” said the woman, who didn’t give her name.
Alongside Lujan Grisham were the mayor and police chief of Española, the governor of the Santa Clara Pueblo and several high-ranking staff members. Attendees applauded loudly when she called for stricter penalties on fentanyl dealing and on clearing out the homeless camp in town.
The governor did not directly address why she made Española the third of three announced stops for the tour. She did note that she would like to replicate the city’s panhandling ordinance that went into effect in November 2022.
“We want it statewide, and we want the enforcement tools to do it statewide,” she said.
The Española ordinance bans people from loitering on unpaved medians and medians that are less than 36 inches wide. The governor wants to ban loitering on medians that are less than 36 inches wide in areas where traffic speeds are 30 mph or higher.
Lujan Grisham said New Mexico was becoming known as a state that is less strict about public camping, encampments and other aspects of homelessness, which she said is drawing people from other states to come and live on the streets here.
“When you have this environment, it’s permissive. So other states are saying, ‘You should go to New Mexico. Nothing will happen. You won’t get arrested, and if you do, you’re out in 12 hours.’”
The day of the governor’s town hall, the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness released its point-in-time count, an estimate of homelessness trends in the state. It found homelessness is continuing to rise throughout the state, both in Albuquerque and towns like Española, to its highest points since at least 2008.
The survey included responses from about 1,000 people living unsheltered in New Mexico outside of Albuquerque. Of them, about 280 told surveyors they were from out of state, including 56 people from Texas, 24 people from Colorado and 39 people from Arizona. The survey did not specify how many people in Española were surveyed.
Four questions from residents related to the homeless encampment that has caused tension in the area. On Monday, city staff arrived at the encampment but did not clean it, as they’d threatened to do, according to Española City Councilor Sam Ledoux . The lack of action frustrated Ryan Martinez, an Española and employee for the state Health Care Authority.
Martinez listed off all of his frustrations with the encampment and the crime he said was associated with it. He called on the city to clear people out.
“We have this encampment here in town next to the river, like I say, in the middle of our community, and it seems like our city is enabling these people,” he said.
Española Mayor John Vigil apologized to Martinez for what he said was his mistake in trusting “city staff” recommendations on how to handle the encampment. He promised that the city would take action soon to clear people out and said the City Council would be taking the lead on next steps.
Lujan Grisham said the state’s approach to encampments should be to reach out to those who are living there and connect them with services.
“But also you make it clear there’s accountability, that services doesn’t mean that you can steal and you can be a felon and you can do open drug use, which is a crime,” she said. “So I really want New Mexico cleaned up.”
The governor’s team wrapped up the town hall around 10:15 p.m., nearly five hours after it started.
“Be safe as you get home,” she said to the roughly dozen people who’d sat through the entire meeting.
Navajo Nation plans to test limit of tribal law preventing transportation of uranium on its land - By Felicia Fonseca, Associated Press
The Navajo Nation planned Tuesday to test a tribal law that bans uranium from being transported on its land by ordering tribal police to stop trucks carrying the mineral and return to the mine where it was extracted in northern Arizona.
But before tribal police could catch up with two semi-trucks on federal highways, they learned the vehicles under contract with Energy Fuels Inc. no longer were on the reservation.
Navajo President Buu Nygren vowed to carry out the plan to enact roadblocks while the tribe develops regulations over the first major shipments of uranium ore through the reservation in years.
"Obviously the higher courts are going to have to tell us who is right and who is wrong," he told The Associated Press. "But in the meantime, you're in the boundaries of the Navajo Nation."
The tribe passed a law in 2012 to ban the transportation of uranium on the vast reservation that extends into Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But the law exempts state and federal highways that Energy Fuels has designated as hauling routes between the Pinyon Plain Mine south of Grand Canyon National Park for processing in Blanding, Utah.
Still, Nygren and Navajo Attorney General Ethel Branch believe the tribe is on solid legal footing with a plan for police to block federal highways, pull over drivers and prevent them from traveling farther onto the reservation.
Energy Fuels said it began hauling the ore as planned Tuesday and had informed federal, state, county and tribal officials more than 10 days ago about the legal requirements, safety, emergency response and the imminent shipping of uranium ore, though it didn't give a specific date. Spokesman Curtis Moore said no one said that wasn't sufficient.
"Tens of thousands of thousands of trucks have safely transported uranium ore across northern Arizona since the 1980s with no adverse health or environmental effects," the company's president and chief executive, Mark Chalmers, said in a statement. "Materials with far greater danger are transported every day on every road in the county. Ore is simply natural rock. It won't explode, ignite, burn or glow, contrary to what opponents claim."
The Arizona Department of Transportation and the Arizona Department of Public Safety, which have jurisdiction on state and federal highways through the reservation, didn't immediately return email messages seeking comment.
The Kaibab National Forest where the mine is permitted said it was notified after hauling began Tuesday morning, then contacted tribes, local officials and others, spokeswoman Brienne Pettit said. The forest also requested advanced notification, she said.
Officials with Coconino County and the Navajo Nation said Energy Fuels verbally agreed — but is not required to — give communities along the route at least a week's notice before any truck hauled uranium through them. Nygren said the tribe got a notification Tuesday that trucks had left the mine site and were driving north through Flagstaff.
Energy Fuels, the largest uranium producer in the United States, recently started mining at the Pinyon Plain Mine for the first time since the 1980s, driven by higher uranium prices and global instability. The industry says uranium production is different now than decades ago when the country was racing to build up its nuclear arsenal.
No other sites are actively mining uranium in Arizona.
Chalmers said uranium ore mined from Pinyon Plain is transported in tightly covered vehicles that have placards indicating the contents are radioactive. The shipments, driven by licensed and trained operators, comply with regulations and law, he said. Mining during World War II and the Cold War left a legacy of death, disease and contamination on the Navajo Nation and in other communities across the country, making any new development of the ore a hard pill to swallow. The Havasupai tribe is among the tribes and environmentalists that have raised concerns about potential water contamination.
Republicans have touted the economic benefits the jobs would bring to the region known for high-grade uranium ore.
In 2013, the Navajo Nation told another uranium producer that it would deny access to a ranch that surrounded a parcel of Arizona state trust land where the company planned to mine. At the time, the tribe cited a 2005 law that banned uranium mining on its lands and another 2006 law that addressed transport. The mining never occurred, although it also needed other things like a mineral lease and environmental permits.
Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, said the tribe had been meeting with Energy Fuels since March to coordinate emergency preparedness plans and enact courtesy notifications.
Based on those meetings, Etsitty said the tribe didn't expect Energy Fuels to transport uranium through the Navajo reservation for at least another month or until the fall.
On Tuesday, he said the tribe found out indirectly about the trucks, leaving officials frustrated on what is primary election day in Arizona. Moore, the company spokesman, said Energy Fuels is required to notify the tribe of any spills or accidents.
Etsitty said accidents involving trucks carrying hazardous or radioactive material occur on average once every three to five years on the reservation. But the possibility requires the tribe to notify emergency responders along the route. Because the material being transported from the mine is uranium ore, rather than processed ore, the risk of radiation exposure is lower, Etsitty said.
"It is a danger, but it would take a longer period of time for somebody to get acute exposure at a spill site," he said. "Precautions still need to be taken."
Vasquez introduces legislation aimed to help with patient debt - By Nicole Maxwell, New Mexico Political Report
No one expects to need to go to the emergency room or get a life-changing diagnosis, both of which usually come with bills of varying amounts depending on the patient’s insurance situation.
U.S. Representative Gabe Vasquez introduced the Patient Relief Act to help those who may not be able to pay those medical bills.
The Democrat, who represents New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, introduced the bill Tuesday. The bill seeks to provide relief and protections to Americans with medical debt by setting up a grant program that allows non-profit organizations to buy debt from hospitals while codifying patient protections from debt collectors.
“Suffering from a medical emergency should not mean putting your home or family’s future at risk – but too often, New Mexicans are faced with significant medical debt that threatens their financial stability. My bill will protect patients and ensure that debt collectors cannot foreclosure on homes simply because of medical debt,” Vasquez said in a press release Tuesday. The Patient Debt Relief Act will provide relief to those suffering from medical debt while ensuring long-term protection for patients all over the country.”
Medical debt affects more than 20 million Americans which affects Black and Hispanic populations disproportionately, the press release said.
“The Patient Debt Relief Act prevents creditors from foreclosing on a home or seizing wages due to unpaid medical bills. By cracking down on predatory debt collection practices and allowing non-profits to provide debt relief, Vasquez is ensuring that people are able to focus on their recovery, instead of their debt,” the press release states.
According to Vasquez’s office, the Patient Relief Act seeks to require hospitals to establish minimum standards for federal financial eligibility programs and require patients to appeal eligibility decision concerning those programs, prohibit medical bill interest charges for people who are living at or below 250 percent of the poverty level and prohibit hospitals from sending those people’s debt to collection agencies and authorize a grant program through the Department of Health and Human Services for outside organizations to identify eligible individuals with medical debt and work with hospitals to forgive the debt. Only one group may be appointed to do this each year.
“We know that thousands of patients across New Mexico, and more across the country, are being sued for unpaid medical bills — having their wages garnished, liens placed on their homes and their credit ruined — all while hospitals benefit from public funds,” Healthcare Attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty Arika E. Sánchez said in the press release. “We commend and support Rep. Vasquez’s effort to prohibit hospitals from sending low-income patients to collections, placing liens or foreclosing on their homes to recover unpaid medical bills and garnishing much-needed wages.”
Co-sponsors of the legislation include Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán, D-California, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford, D-Nevada, and Representatives Raul Ruiz, M.D., D-California, Kim Schrier, M.D., D-Washington, Shri Thanedar, D-Michigan, Melanie Stansbury, D-New Mexico, and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Florida.
Advisory board alleges city ‘violates the autonomy, dignity, and rights’ of those experiencing homelessness - Damon Scott, City Desk ABQ
This story was originally published by City Desk ABQ
As Albuquerque grapples with stubbornly high housing costs and an increase in people living on the streets, a city board says there’s more reason for concern. The city’s unhoused population also faces widespread discrimination, stigma and exclusion — often from city employees or city contractors.
The Albuquerque Human Rights Board published its preliminary findings last week, partly informed by a public hearing held this summer at the International District Library. It wants to see a “holistic review” of the city’s impact on homelessness and those who are unhoused.
The all-volunteer advisory board is charged by city ordinance to investigate issues and propose findings, but has no legal jurisdiction. The board hopes its intent to focus on homelessness this year will grab the attention of policymakers and the general public. It expects to issue a final report by the end of the year.
“People have been receptive to a lot of what we have to say and I’m hoping that continues,” board chair Anami Dass said.
FINDINGS SO FAR
The board said the city is often too aggressive in its handling of illegal encampments — citing cases of personal belongings being disposed of without notice. Current policy is to give a 72-hour notice and offer storage, but the board found the policy isn’t always followed. It wants the city to stop no-notice encampment closures, which it found “indistinguishable from theft, and violates the autonomy, dignity, and rights of people experiencing homelessness.”
The board also found some city contracts for shelter and other services had little-to-no oversight and were inadequately distributed. It recommends that contracts be reassessed with attention to quality and consistency.
In the preliminary report, Dass included the transcript from the public hearing, often containing emotional testimony.
“We hope people read it and have a better understanding of what it’s like to be homeless and to navigate the system and all the complications that surround it,” she said. “I’m hoping it influences folks. I’m hoping city leaders are receptive to it.”
Further, vice chair Jack Champagne reported in the findings that several International District Library employees had concerns about “intimidation and harassment” by the city’s Metro Security Division toward those experiencing homelessness. The library has one of the only public restrooms in the area and is frequented by those experiencing homelessness.
CITY RESPONDS
Sometimes there is a disconnect between what city officials say and what homelessness advocates and those experiencing homelessness contend.
Metro Security Division Chief Scott Blackledge said his department’s job is to help “everyone feel safe — whether a visitor to a city facility or an employee.”
“The International District Library has requested a more significant Metro Security presence so that the library remains a safe place for all who use it,” Blackledge said in an email to City Desk ABQ. “Our officers are trained to de-escalate and get voluntary compliance from folks so that police resources are not always required.
He said his officers regularly partner with the Albuquerque Police Department, Albuquerque Fire Rescue and Albuquerque Community Safety to connect people to services.
“We take these concerns seriously and will continue to work to support our community and make sure that our city facilities are safe,” Blackledge said.
City Attorney Lauen Keefe said officials were caught off-guard by some of the board’s preliminary findings. She said there hasn’t been a sufficient opportunity to respond to allegations.
“They’re broaching into fact-finding and report writing with a very questionable process,” Keefe said. “They have now generated a report with some very, very severe allegations.”
Dass said along with the public, city officials and department heads have been invited to meetings, including the recent public hearing.
“I heard a lot of ‘no thank yous,’ a couple ‘maybes,’” Dass said.
Keefe said that many of the assertions made at the public hearing were generalities and hearsay.
“They said, ‘Well, someone told me that they saw something happen,’” she said. “The board took those statements and made some very high-level, very severe accusations against the city without any opportunity for response. I don’t think that was appropriate.”
Keefe said city officials take allegations about the treatment of those who are unhoused seriously.
“These city workers have very difficult jobs. They do the best they can under very dire circumstances, and are often confronted with harassment,” she said. “We really are working on homelessness. We’re sensitive to these issues, but it’s challenging. We meet constantly to discuss it.”
Dass said she meets regularly with Health, Housing & Homelessness director Gilbert Ramírez and others in his department.
“I want the city to respond and show the work that’s being done. I’ve tried to offer a platform,” Dass said. “There are a lot of folks at the city that are really trying.”
UP NEXT
The board is considering future recommendations — including the establishment of an independent oversight board to monitor local social services, and the creation of a city ombudsman position to address citizen concerns. Other potential recommendations include the addition of housing status to the city’s hate crime ordinance and adoption of a homeless rights ordinance.
To read the board’s preliminary draft report, click here. Its next public meeting is scheduled for Aug. 15.