Backlash continues over proposed low-altitude military flights in the Gila region - Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
A proposal that would lead to lower altitude military training flights over the Gila National Forest, including the wilderness area, has led to backlash due to concerns that it would lead to more pollution and noise.
The U.S. Air Force released a draft environmental impact statement in early August for the regional special use airspace optimization to support Air Force missions in Arizona and New Mexico.
This document outlines the possibility that the Air Force could be training at lower altitudes in areas above the Gila National Forest.
The public comment period closes Oct. 9, but some U.S. lawmakers say that the public has not had adequate opportunities to learn about the plans and to provide comments.
U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, both New Mexico Democrats, and U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez, who represents New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District and serves as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, penned a letter asking that the public comment period be extended for 60 days.
“While these public hearings were announced on the EIS Air Force website, we are concerned the Air Force did not effectively nor actively publicize the draft EIS nor the dates and locations of the public hearings in Reserve, Lordsburg, Animas, and Silver City, New Mexico, and surrounding areas that could be impacted by the proposed changes as well,” the letter states.
Groups like Peaceful Gila Skies started petitions in an attempt to stop the proposed changes to the military training exercises from being implemented. They say these training exercises should be restricted to the Barry M. Goldwater Range, where they are already occurring.
In May, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force alleging that it had failed to release public records as required under the Freedom of Information Act about the proposed expansion of military flights over the Gila Wilderness and other public lands in both New Mexico and Arizona.
Opponents of the proposed modifications to Military Operations Areas say that the plan could lead to thousands of low-elevation fighter jet maneuvers and supersonic flights causing sonic booms. These exercises, they say, could impact rural communities as well as 30 tribes and Pueblos. The Tohono O’odham Nation, White Mountain Apache Tribe, and San Carlos Apache Tribe would particularly be impacted. In addition to the Gila Wilderness, the changes could lead to more flights over other public lands including the Continental Divide Trail, wildlife refuges and national monuments. Those national monuments include Chiricahua National Monument, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Saguaro National Park. Opponents say these lands could be impacted by increased noise, pollution and fire risks.
RISK OF FIRES
The concerns about increased fire risks stem from lowering the altitude at which flares can be used in the training exercises. If a flare strikes the ground while it is still burning, it could spark a wildfire. In remote areas like the Gila Wilderness and parts of the national forest, these fires can spread quickly and are harder for crews to reach. They can also have devastating impacts for wildlife, including the Gila trout, and water quality.
The draft EIS calls these risks “unlikely” and states that the flares burn for 3.5 to 5 seconds, during which time they tend to fall between 200 and 400 feet. During the training exercises, these flares will be released thousands of feet above the ground.
However, the EIS acknowledges that the 2021 Telegraph Fire near Superior, Arizona, may have been sparked by flares from the Morris Air National Guard Base, though the Air Force says that it is unlikely that the exercises being performed the day that the fire started caused the blaze that ultimately burned more than 180,000 acres.
The draft EIS also states that dud flares, or flares that don’t properly ignite, could fall to the ground and, in a rare incident, may strike someone and cause injuries.
“There is a minor risk of a fire being caused by a dud flare striking a hard rock surface upon landing, causing a spark and igniting,” the draft EIS further states.
THE SUNZIA TRANSMISSION LINE
The proposed training flights would also occur near an area of Arizona that the SunZia transmission line will likely eventually cross. The SunZia line is already under construction and will take renewable energy generated by wind turbines in eastern New Mexico and move that electricity to utilities in Arizona. But the draft EIS does not anticipate there will be any impacts to the transmission project.
“The ultimate construction and operation of the transmission line itself would not contribute cumulatively since it would be located between the MOAs and would not be at an altitude that would penetrate the airspace,” the document states.
THE NEED FOR THE CHANGES
The Air Force says these changes are needed to “alleviate training shortfalls and address evolving training needs” for crews stationed at three bases in Arizona.
The plan includes allowing for low-altitude training and more supersonic speed at lower altitude. It would also allow for training exercises to release flares at lower altitudes.
Military Operations Areas, or MOAs, are places where there are increased active military flying exercises. These are areas the Federal Aviation Administration designates for air combat maneuvers, air intercepts and low-altitude exercises. MOAs also need to be separated from non-military flights.
The ten MOAs that the proposed plan would impact include two in New Mexico: the Reserve MOA and the Morenci MOA. These are places where the crews at Arizona bases may be able to practice. Currently, the areas where the Arizona bases practice have limited ability to support the low-altitude and supersonic training exercises.
“Because of this, certain aspects of training are either curtailed, delayed, or restructured to occur over several training events which requires more time, a greater cost, and results in reduced quality of training. Restructuring training to occur over multiple events removes the realism from an individual training scenario reducing the quality of training the pilot receives,” the draft EIS states.
The bases included in the plan are Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and Morris Air National Guard Base, both located in Tucson, as well as Luke Air Force Base, located west of Phoenix.
The draft EIS states that training exercises are also limited by the presence of protected bird nesting sites, including Mexican spotted owls, golden eagles and bald eagles. These nesting sites create what is known as a defined avoidance area to prevent impacts to the sensitive species.
“These avoidances create ‘bubbles’ in the airspace hindering the use. Other projects, such as wind farms and transmission line corridors, also contribute to restrictions of training airspace. These environmental constraints mean less of the charted airspace is actually available for military use,” the document states.
City says it will break ground soon on pallet home project —Damon Scott, City Desk ABQ
City officials said this week that a 50-unit pallet home project announced in the spring — a transitional recovery housing campus — would break ground in the next couple weeks and be completed in early 2025. The project site is located near Candelaria Road and Pan American Freeway NE.
The campus is intended to serve a growing population that’s in urgent need of help — those experiencing homelessness who also have significant addiction issues. About $5 million in city opioid settlement funds have been dedicated to the project so far. Bernalillo County officials have pledged an additional $800,000.
Health, Housing & Homelessness spokesperson Connor Woods said the funding was sufficient to cover infrastructure costs and two years of operations. He said the site is being prepped and that the pallet homes — 8-by-8-foot prefabricated units — have been purchased. It’s not yet known who will operate the campus.
“The process is still ongoing. Once an operator is selected and finalized, more details will be shared,” Woods said.
The project is a first for the city, and one that would work in tandem with a forthcoming $5.3 million, 50-bed medical sobering center at the Gateway Center. Those experiencing homelessness who are also intoxicated often end up at strained city shelters, emergency rooms and jails that don’t offer adequate addiction treatments. The Gateway Center beds would provide a space for clients to sober up, get treatment, and be offered access to recovery services, case management, and referrals to recovery housing like the pallet home campus.
The pallet home project was approved by the City Council in a 5-4 vote in April. Some of the dissension was due to the use of opioid settlement money before a city and county joint agreement on how to spend the funds was completed. The city and county had entered into a contract with global health organization Vital Strategies in February for its recommendations on the best use of the funds, which included a series of community meetings to get suggestions and feedback.
The city has received about $25 million in settlement money so far, while the county has received about $22.5 million.
Vital Strategies recently completed its community meetings and is scheduled to present a proposal to the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Government Commission on Oct. 24, Kathy Korte, chief of government affairs at Bernalillo County, said.
Meanwhile, officials said a formal contract that’s required to be in place for opioid treatment services at the pallet home campus before clients can move is in progress.
“We have been working diligently to identify a provider,” Woods said.
Taxpayers in 24 states will be able to file their returns directly with the IRS in 2025 — Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
The IRS is expanding its program that allows people to file their taxes directly with the agency for free.
The federal tax collector's Direct File program, which allows taxpayers to calculate and submit their returns to the government directly without using commercial tax preparation software, will be open to more than 30 million people in 24 states in the 2025 filing season.
The program was rolled out as a pilot during the 2024 tax season in 12 states.
Now IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel says the program will be permanent and the IRS will expand eligibility opportunities for taxpayers.
"We're announcing significant expansions of Direct File that will make the service available to millions more taxpayers in 2025," Werfel said on a call Thursday with reporters. He said it is possible that additional states could still choose to join the program in 2025.
The pilot program in 2024 allowed people in certain states with very simple W-2s to calculate and submit their returns directly to the IRS. Those using the program claimed more than $90 million in refunds, the IRS said.
It was originally available to certain taxpayers in California, New York, Arizona, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming and Massachusetts.
States to be added in 2025 include: Alaska, Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In addition, new eligibility standards will allow participation by taxpayers with 1099 income and credits including the Child and Dependent Care Credit, Retirement Savings Contributions Credit, and the deduction for Health Savings Accounts, among others.
"Other countries have been providing their citizens with the ability to do this type of thing for years," Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on the call with reporters. Several nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including Germany and Japan, have similar systems with prepopulated tax forms.
The direct file idea is not viewed favorably by the commercial tax prep software firms that have made billions of dollars from charging people to use their software.
Additionally, an IRS inspector general report released this week notes that the IRS has not maintained sufficient safeguards over data protection related to the IRS Free File Alliance. The alliance is a longstanding agreement between the IRS and some commercial tax preparation companies to provide free tax prep services to low and middle-income taxpayers.
The Free File Alliance is separate from the Direct File program.
The IRS was tasked with looking into how to create a "direct file" system as part of the money it received from the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. It gave the IRS nine months and $15 million to report on how such a program would work.
New Mexico residents with felony convictions are wrongly being denied ballot access, lawsuit says - Associated Press
Some New Mexico residents with felony convictions have been wrongly denied ballot access despite state lawmakers restoring their voting rights last year, a lawsuit alleges.
A law that took effect in July 2023 restored voting rights to about 11,000 people in New Mexico who previously served prison time for felony convictions. It allows people to vote after they are released from custody, including those who are on probation or who have been granted parole.
But a lawsuit filed last week in Santa Fe by Millions For Prisoners, a group that advocates for people who are incarcerated or used to be, claims that some applicants seeking to have their voting rights restored have received rejection letters from county clerks relying on inaccurate or outdated information from the secretary of state's office and the New Mexico Corrections Department, the Albuquerque Journal reported. It names as defendants Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and the corrections department.
Alex Curtas, a spokesperson for Toulouse Oliver, said in a statement to the newspaper that the secretary of state's office is committed to ensuring ballot access to every eligible voter, and that as of last month, hundreds of people had successfully registered to vote since leaving prison.
A corrections department spokesperson declined to comment on the pending litigation.
The lawsuit also accuses Toulouse Oliver and at least one county clerk of creating an additional barrier to voting access by requiring in-person registration for those who were denied.
"Certainly, if a person is no longer incarcerated and appears in-person at a County Clerk's Office, polling location, certain state agencies, or the motor vehicle division, that person is now legally presumed to meet the requirement of not being incarcerated and can register to vote," Curtas said in a statement to the newspaper.
The lawsuit is seeking a court order that would bar election officials from enforcing the in-person registration requirement for voters with felony convictions. It also wants Toulouse Oliver to instruct all county clerks in the state to process the voter registration forms that have been rejected since July 1, 2023, when the law took effect.
ACLU lawsuit details DWI scheme rocking Albuquerque police - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
A civil rights group is suing the city of Albuquerque, its police department and top officials on behalf of a man who was among those arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and allegedly forced to pay bribes to get the charges dropped.
The DWI scandal already has mired the police department in New Mexico's largest city in a federal investigation as well as an internal inquiry. One commander has been fired, several others have resigned and dozens of cases have been dismissed.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico filed the lawsuit late Monday in state district court. It alleges that Police Chief Harold Medina was aware of an agreement between some officers assigned to the DWI Unit and a local attorney's office to work together to get cases dismissed in exchange for payment.
The police department took issue with the allegations in the lawsuit, saying it contained false information and that the chief worked closely with federal authorities to uncover the scheme. The department said Medina opened the internal investigation to ensure a complete inquiry that will hold all those involved accountable.
"APD leadership continues to cooperate and work with federal partners as they complete their investigation," the department said, adding the more details would be made public when appropriate.
The ACLU filed the complaint on behalf of Carlos Sandoval-Smith, saying he was one of dozens of people who were "victimized" as part of the scheme for five years.
"This lawsuit isn't just about getting justice for me, it's about stopping this abuse so no one else has to suffer the way I did," Sandoval-Smith said in a statement Monday. "I lost my business, my home, and my dignity because of APD corruption. It even caused a deep rift in my family that we may never heal from."
Aside from the internal investigation launched in February by the police department, the FBI is conducting its own inquiry into allegations of illegal conduct. No charges have been filed, and it will be up to the U.S. Attorney's Office to determine whether any federal laws were violated.
According to the lawsuit, the officers named in the complaint would refer drunken driving cases to a certain attorney and the officers would agree not to attend pre-trial interviews or testify so the charges would be dismissed.
The lawsuit states that federal authorities first informed the police department in June of 2022 of an alleged attempt by one of the officers to extort $10,000 from a defendant. It goes on to say that in December 2022, the police department's Criminal Intelligence Unit received a tip that officers in the DWI Unit were being paid to get cases dismissed and were working in collaboration with a local attorney.
The city and the police chief "did not adequately investigate these allegations, if at all, prior to the involvement of federal authorities," the ACLU alleges in the complaint.
In Sandoval-Smith's case, he was initially pulled over for speeding in June 2023. The lawsuit alleges an officer unlawfully expanded the scope of the traffic stop by initiating a DUI investigation without reasonable suspicion. Sandoval-Smith was arrested despite performing well on several sobriety tests.
According to the complaint, Sandoval-Smith was directed to a certain attorney, whose legal assistant demanded $7,500 up front as part of the scheme.
Attorney Tom Clear and assistant Rick Mendez also are named as a defendants. A telephone number for the office is no longer in service. An email seeking comment was sent to Clear.
The ACLU's complaint also points to what it describes as negligent hiring, training and supervision by the police department.
Maria Martinez Sanchez, legal director of the civil rights group, said she hopes the lawsuit results in reforms to dismantle what she described as "systemic corruption" within the law enforcement agency.
Trial nears in APS sex-harassment case — Rodd Cayton, City Desk ABQ
As the trial date approaches in a lawsuit against Albuquerque Public Schools, the district’s Board of Education will hold a closed session at Wednesday’s regular meeting to discuss the matter.
The lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleges an English teacher at Valley High School engaged in inappropriate behavior with a 17-year-old student during the 2019-2020 school year.
APS, in a motion for summary judgment, argued that the plaintiffs failed to show they suffered any physical harm.
A jury trial is scheduled for Oct. 21, with a pretrial conference set for Oct. 7.
A complaint filed on the student’s behalf says the teacher first asked about her sexual orientation, what actors she found attractive and later made unwanted physical contact with her and other female students, including rubbing their shoulders, grabbing one student’s hand under the pretense of looking at her nails and regularly commenting on what the student was wearing and how her clothes fit her body.
“He even stated, at the beginning of the school year when the air conditioning was not working, that the female students could go ahead and take off their bras if it would make them more comfortable,” the complaint states.
The complaint also says he took a student’s mobile phone and programmed his personal phone number into it, offering her a chance to call and “discuss her insecurities,” and mentioned a sexual act in warning her to not tell anyone she had his number.
The complaint says the student informed her father of the teacher’s actions in January 2020, and that her father reported what she told him to school officials, who promised an investigation. It’s alleged that the teen wasn’t contacted by an investigator from the district’s Office of Equal Opportunity Services until May 2020.
APS, the teacher and Valley’s principal are listed as defendants in the suit, along with 10 other school staff members not mentioned by name.
Attorneys for the parties did not respond to requests for comment. APS spokesperson Martin Salazar said the district does not comment on pending litigation.
By law, the board can take no action in the executive session.
ABQ transit announces new app aimed at bus safety — Rodd Cayton, City Desk ABQ
City leaders Tuesday rolled out details of their latest effort to keep Albuquerque bus riders safe.
The tiered strategy includes a new smartphone app riders can use to anonymously report incidents or issues on city buses or at bus stops.
Mayor Tim Keller said the new campaign started along the Central Avenue corridor and will spread from there.
“We’re continuing to step up when it comes to keeping transit safe for families by using tech, holding violators accountable, and doubling down on police presence,” Keller said. “Criminal behavior will not be tolerated, and we won’t back down until riding the bus in Albuquerque is a frictionless experience for all; hop on, hop off, and be safe the whole time.”
The changes were discussed at an Alvarado Transportation Center press conference that included a demonstration of the See Say app, where officials simulated a situation with an intoxicated man who was harassing a female passenger and another rider surreptitiously submitted a report to transit staff. The report instantly relayed the time and location of the incident to ABQ RIDE — along with a photo of the problem passenger.
Albuquerque Community Safety (ACS) and ABQ RIDE transit safety officers are part of the effort, Transit Department Deputy Director Bobby Sisneros said. He added they will try to assist riders and remind them of the rules for riders, with Albuquerque Police Department officers able to assist if arrests or citations are necessary.
Those who don’t have smartphones can report issues by texting or calling 505-391-2600.