Alert for missing Native people launches, but key detail is unclear — Bella Davis, New Mexico in Depth
A new alert system meant to help find Native people who go missing in New Mexico went into effect last Tuesday, but a key detail remains unsettled: How will police determine who’s eligible for an alert?
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the Turquoise Alert system into law in April. At least five other states — Arizona, California, Colorado, North Dakota and Washington — have created similar notifications as part of an effort to address a crisis of Native people going missing and being killed at disproportionate rates. According to an FBI list, 199 Native people are missing from New Mexico and the Navajo Nation.
“Too many Native American families have faced crisis and the heartbreak of a loved one disappearing without the swift response they deserve,” Indian Affairs Secretary Josett Monette (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians), whose agency crafted the bill, said in a statement after the Legislature passed it.
Turquoise Alerts, according to the statute, can be issued for a missing person who is enrolled or eligible for enrollment in a federally or state-recognized tribe. The intent of the enrollment provision is to “acknowledge and protect tribal sovereignty and political status,” former Indian Affairs Deputy Secretary Seth Damon (Navajo) told New Mexico In Depth earlier this year.
But how enrollment status will be verified is unclear.
The law requires the Department of Public Safety to develop the system. A spokesperson for the New Mexico State Police, which will distribute the alerts, said individual law enforcement agencies will decide how to verify eligibility. New Mexico had around 100 police departments and sheriff’s offices as of 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, meaning there could be a patchwork of different protocols.
“Whether or not they’re going to verify with a family member, whether or not they’re going to verify with the tribe, I have no idea how they would go about doing that,” said Lt. Philip Vargas, a public information officer for the state police. “It could be both of those things, could be one of those things.”
New Mexico In Depth asked three police departments whether they have developed verification protocols.
As of Tuesday, Farmington police were “still in the process of determining what our protocol is going to be so we can most efficiently and accurately determine” whether a person is eligible for an alert, according to a spokesperson.
Spokespeople for Albuquerque and Gallup did not respond.
Police trying to confirm enrollment with tribes could cause delays in getting alerts out, especially for missing Native people who are from tribes outside of New Mexico, said Abigail Echo-Hawk (Pawnee). She’s the director of the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle, which published a landmark report on the crisis in 2018.
“So I’m Pawnee and I’m missing in New Mexico. How are they going to verify my tribal enrollment?” Echo-Hawk said.
Asked to respond to that concern about the timeliness of alerts, Monette wrote in an email that her agency is “proud of our administration and lawmakers for taking this critical step.” But she acknowledged “there will be some things to work through as we figure out this new alert system.”
California, North Dakota and Washington’s laws don’t include any language about enrollment. Colorado’s law defines Indigenous as “having descended from people who were living in North America prior to the time people from Europe began settling in North America, being an enrolled member of a federally recognized Indian tribe, or being a lineal descendent of a tribally enrolled parent or guardian.”
Arizona’s law, which is not exclusive to Indigenous people, calls for triggering an alert when a person who is under 65 is reported missing and a local law enforcement agency believes they’re in danger, as well as other conditions.
“In Washington state and in California, it was, is there a self-identification by the community and by their families of being Indigenous? And to my knowledge, we have never had the instance—people don’t claim to be Indian when they’re missing,” Echo-Hawk said.
Rather than try to get in touch with a tribal enrollment office that could be closed when a person goes missing, police should trust information families give them as they give them as they file a report, said bill co-sponsor Rep. Michelle Paulene Abeyta (Navajo), D-To’hajiilee.
“I don’t think it should be too much of an issue, but if it is, I’d be willing to look at better solutions, to amend the language or create policy that makes it a lot easier for people to do so,” she said.
State police will eventually be able to send certain alerts as cell phone notifications. For now, they’ll target local news outlets and post on the agency’s Facebook page, along with the Department of Public Safety’s website.
Child welfare experts 'frustrated' over stalled reforms in New Mexico — Colleen Heild, Albuquerque Journal
It’s been some six months since an outside arbitrator stepped in to require more accountability from the state Children, Youth and Families Department in its protection of abused and neglected children.
And in that time, CYFD convinced state lawmakers to spend $100 million more over last year’s budget to shore up protective services staff, increase training, implement ways to decrease caseloads and cut office stays for children in custody.
But in that same period, three children in state custody have died, progress has been delayed by bureaucratic snags, and on Thursday, independent arbitrator and lawyer Charles R. Peifer ended a three-hour compliance hearing with a sobering assessment.
“I am not yet seeing any measurable progress from six months ago,” Peifer said, “which means to me, the state must do more.”
Peifer is overseeing the state’s compliance with the Kevin S. settlement agreement created five years ago by CYFD and attorneys representing 14 foster youth who contended their constitutional rights were being violated by conditions created in state custody.
As part of the agreement, two national experts, called co-neutrals, are being paid by the state to collect data, conduct interviews, assess compliance, advise the state and make recommendations for reform.
The experts, Kevin Ryan and Judith Meltzer, appeared via Zoom at Thursday’s hearing, with Meltzer telling Peifer, “For us, this has been a frustrating five years. We would have hoped by this point that the system would be in a better place than it is right now.”
Ryan, with Public Catalyst Group of Iselin, New Jersey, said he and Meltzer, of the New York-based Center for the Study of Social Policy, have made “numerous, numerous recommendations” over the past five years as to what CYFD’s priorities should be. CYFD has supported those in many instances, he said.
“The challenge has been the implementation,” he said.
During repeated interactions with “hundreds and hundreds of (CYFD) workers and in field visits,” Ryan said, “one of the challenges we confronted is workers increasingly saying, ‘Why are we still talking to you and nothing’s changed? Why are caseloads so high? Why are children still being housed in offices?’”
“The credibility of this effort is so seriously undermined by the number of years that have passed without meaningful change in the offices that we really need to integrate a sense of profound urgency into the implementation of stabilizing a well-trained workforce,” Ryan said.
CYFD Secretary Teresa Casados told Peifer that her agency is making strides, such as reducing the average number of children staying in agency offices from about 17 to 18 statewide to 12. The Legislature this year approved funding an extra 25 positions to work in offices, requiring specialized training of the employees to deal with crisis response and suicide risk assessments.
Ryan said none of the states that have substantially improved their systems for children and families have done so without creating a well-trained, stable workforce with reasonable caseloads.
The two experts have worked as federal court monitors and advised states such as Oklahoma, New Jersey, Michigan and Texas.
“Three things were always key (to success),” Ryan said.
“First,” he said, “there was an ‘accountability agent,’” such as a federal judge, who engaged with the parties, holding hearings and receiving expert reports to ensure compliance.
That hasn’t happened in the Kevin S. case because there is no federal judge overseeing the progress.
As part of the out-of-court settlement, the parties first tried negotiations and dispute resolution. Peifer was selected last year after attorneys for the foster children asked for binding arbitration, contending CYFD’s continuing failure to meet its goals was unacceptable.
The second element, Ryan said, “is there was a very committed governor in all these instances ... who was very focused on implementation and made sure that the executive branch was working full throttle; then thirdly, there was leadership at the agency, focused on the commitment and driving that forward with a master plan that was designed to essentially achieve compliance.”
“We do think there needs to be ongoing outside accountability through you, Mr. Peifer,” Meltzer said.
Tara Ford, an attorney and child welfare specialist with Public Counsel of Los Angeles, urged Peifer to continue holding CYFD accountable by instituting remedial orders like he did in January. At the time, he directed CYFD to request adequate funding from the Legislature for caseworker hiring and retention. He also implemented deadlines in areas of staffing for foster family recruitment and reporting of well-child checks for children coming into state custody.
“Plaintiffs understand that three children have died in foster care (so far this year) and so many others have been living in unsafe congregate care settings and not getting the care they deserve,” Ford said. “The result of CYFD’s broken promises is tragic and absolutely intolerable.”
She was referring to the suicide in April of a 16-year-old boy living at a group home licensed by CYFD in Albuquerque; the suicide on May 16 of a 17-year-old girl in state custody; and last month’s death of a 10-month-old child in foster care, which is still under investigation by CYFD.
“This is very hard work,” said Ryan, who urged New Mexico to look at what can be accomplished in the final 18 months of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s term in office. Casados is the third Cabinet secretary to head the agency since Lujan Grisham took office in January 2019. The governor was re-elected in 2022.
Casados told Peifer she wants to concentrate for the next 18 months on workforce training and stabilization. “I think that is really key to all of the other areas that need to be addressed,” she said.
One-third of NM water systems miss federal lead pipe survey deadline — Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
Just over one-third of water systems failed to submit surveys to the State of New Mexico regarding the status of lead pipes in their water systems, despite a federal October 2024 deadline.
In 2023, the federal government tightened the limits on lead in drinking water and passed a new rule mandating that states replace all lead service lines in drinking water systems within a decade. The rule is fully in effect in 2027, at which point states will be required to submit replacement plans to address all lead pipes by 2037.
The rule required cities and smaller water systems to start inventories of their water lines, and to submit them to state regulators by October 2024. The state currently does not have enforcement power, which lies with the federal government. Between April and June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is in charge of the rule, issued warning letters to the water systems.
The letters contained boilerplate notice of the failure to comply with the rule and requested water systems contact the EPA for further assistance.
Further enforcement may come down the line from federal officials, according to Muna Habib, a spokesperson at the New Mexico Environment Department, in the form of administrative orders, which will not include fines, but are more “like formal instructions to take corrective action,” she said in an email.
A 2023 EPA report estimated New Mexico has about 15,400 lead service lines — less than 1% of the state’s pipes — projecting the replacement costs to be about $1.6 billion.
So far, of the 462 water systems that submitted surveys, none reported any lead pipes to the New Mexican Environment Department, officials said.
But there’s a catch, said Martin Torrez, who directs the Public Water Supervision System at NMED: The survey allowed water systems to identify all of their pipes as made from “unknown” materials.
“Now [the systems] have to do their due diligence to investigate and to identify that material by 2027,” Torrez said. “So I would say we’re still in that phase; the majority of the water systems in New Mexico have identified their lines as unknowns.”
About 37% of the lines in New Mexico’s surveys were confirmed not to have lead, according to the surveys.
Lead and copper were common materials in household plumbing, but corrosion of the pipes or joinings could expose people to lead in their water— which is unsafe in any amount, especially for children, pregnant people, and the elderly.
The federal government banned the use of lead for plumbing in 1986, but many older homes and water systems still use lead pipes. In 2023, the EPA identified about 9 million lead service lines used for drinking water in the U.S. with a$625 billion price tag— conservatively — to address the issue.
Officials at the state’s largest water systems, Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, said they don’t anticipate finding many lead pipes across the water system.
“Many lines owned by the Water Authority have already been replaced,” said ABCWUA Compliance Manager Danielle Shuryn. “Evidence so far indicates that lead pipes were not prevalent in any parts of the service area.
About half of the system’s 200,000 water lines were installed before 1988, and about 10% have already been inspected by staff, she said, but noted the actual survey will possibly take all 10 years to complete.
DOH warns residents of West Nile threat from mosquito bites — Daniel Montaño
The monsoons are bringing welcome relief from the heat and much needed rain to parched high desert lands, but along with those rains comes an unwelcome annoyance that can prove to be dangerous as well — Mosquitos, which can spread disease.
The New Mexico Department of Health is warning residents to take precautions against mosquito bites, particularly to prevent the spread of the West Nile Virus.
In a news release last week, the DOH said no cases of West Nile have yet been reported in human this year, but warn that peak West Nile season is July and August and recent rains have likely left standing water across the state, providing suitable habitats for mosquitoes to reproduce.
City of Albuquerque Environmental Health Department has detected West Nile virus positive mosquitoes through routine mosquito monitoring, and the department’s director, Paul Rogers, says mosquitos with the disease “will be around until there is a good hard frost in the area, and (the City) urges people to continue to take precautions against mosquito bites throughout the rest of the season.”
The DOH says the hours around dusk and dawn are peak biting times and encourage people to wear lose clothing with long sleeves and full pants, and to use insect repellent on any exposed skin. Also be sure to eliminate any standing water and keep windows and doors closed if they are not screened.
Injunction shields New Mexico from Trump's order ending birthright citizenship - Olivier Uyttebrouck, Albuquerque Journal
A federal lawsuit filed earlier this year by New Mexico and other states provides New Mexicans with at least temporary protection from President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship, state officials said this week.
The U.S. Supreme Court last week limited the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, including those blocking an executive order that would end a decades-old guarantee of citizenship for all children born in the United States.
But the court’s June 27 ruling leaves in place an injunction granted by a federal judge in February that blocks implementation of the executive order in New Mexico and 27 other states that have challenged Trump’s action in court. The Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship itself.
Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he was disappointed by the court’s ruling but noted that the injunction remains in force for New Mexico and other states challenging the order in the courts.
“New Mexicans should take comfort in the fact that this decision will not impact our communities because of our steadfast commitment to upholding the rule of law and our willingness to fight to uphold our constitutional order,” Torrez said in a statement.
New Mexico and 17 other states sued the Trump administration in January just days after the president issued Executive Order 14160, which argues that the Constitution does not automatically confer citizenship to all children born in the U.S. Several other states and individuals have filed separate lawsuits challenging the order.
Birthright citizenship, enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, confers citizenship on “all persons born” and “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The amendment was adopted in 1868 to guarantee citizenship for African Americans.
“We remain confident that this Executive Order — clearly unlawful and deeply harmful to millions of Americans — will ultimately be struck down,” Torrez said.
On Feb. 13, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin of Boston issued a nationwide injunction blocking the government from implementing the executive order anywhere in the U.S.
Sorokin joined federal judges in Maryland, Washington and New Hampshire who also issued preliminary injunctions blocking the order. The court’s ruling last week upended those injunctions.
Trump said after the ruling that his administration would move ahead with plans to end birthright citizenship. But he and Attorney General Pam Bondi have offered few details about how they would carry out the policy.
New Mexico Solicitor General Alethia Allen said this week that the 18 states that filed the suit against the administration believe they will win their arguments on the merits, but the timeline of the case is unclear.
The Supreme Court sent the case to the First Circuit Court of Appeals to settle additional issues about the injunction, Allen said. Ultimately, the case likely will return to Sorokin’s court in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, she said.
“Obviously, depending on how the injunction is ultimately fully applied will impact how much either side will push the court to move quickly,” Allen said. “Because we have differing views on the impact of the injunction, my guess is if it’s not us, it’s going to be the federal government pushing for quick resolution in this case.”
Bernalillo County jail will no longer allow physical mail and is taking some items from cells - Matthew Reisen and Nakayla McClelland, Albuquerque Journal
The Bernalillo County jail will no longer allow inmates to keep personal items like photos and books — outside of religious texts and legal material — in their cells or receive physical mail from family and friends.
Metropolitan Detention Center officials said the new policy was being put in place in an attempt to keep contraband and drugs out of the facility. MDC identifies contraband as any material prohibited by law or material that can cause physical injury or affect facility security.
Starting July 18, MDC will not accept physical copies of any written documents including books, magazines and other literature for inmates, according to a news release. The facility will also no longer accept packages sent to inmates and any sent will be returned to the sender.
“Items such as books and personal effects can be used to conceal contraband within the facility, and so to fulfill MDC’s commitment to the safety and security of staff, inmates and visitors, these items will be removed,” said MDC spokesperson Daniel Trujillo.
He said inmates will only be allowed to keep religious texts and legal material and they will be able to mail other personal items to family and friends for safekeeping.
Under the new policy, any mailed items are to be sent to Maryland, where they will be scanned by a third-party service, Trujillo said. The scanned copies will then be reviewed by MDC staff for “any violations of the inmate mail policy” and, if approved, made accessible to inmates through a tablet computer.
“Inmates will now access this material through a digital library available on tablets,” he said. MDC has approximately 1,000 tablets, a ratio of one tablet for every two inmates, and inmates have access to the tablets during out-of-cell times from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Trujillo said “legal mail, internal education materials and other approved documents” will continue to be delivered physically.
From October 2022 to July 2023, drugs like fentanyl, methamphetamine and cannabis were seized from inmates at the facility more than 180 times, in quantities large and small, according to MDC reports obtained through an Inspection of Public Records Act request.
Kate Loewe, an attorney representing those incarcerated at MDC under a class-action settlement agreement, said her clients are reporting “confusion, anxiety and anguish” over the forthcoming policy change.
“It’s not that they are just stopping incoming mail in the future. They are confiscating what people have now,” she said. “Taking pictures of their kids, books they bought from approved retailers, letters from loved ones — that they have in their cells now.”
Loewe said for many of her clients behind bars at MDC, particularly those battling mental health issues, books, art and photos of loved ones bring them “peace in a not peaceful place.”
Trujillo said MDC will continue to allow their care package program. Care packages — typically containing food and hygiene items — are managed by a third-party vendor and are not sent directly by members of the public.
“Because care packages follow a different vetting process and originate from controlled sources, they are exempt from the restrictions outlined in the new mail policy,” he said.
Trujillo said switching to a digital system will not only reduce the amount of contraband going into the detention center but also streamline the process of getting mail to inmates.
The current system requires officers to collect the mail from a remote location and inspect every item before delivery, MDC said.
‘It’s not over’: New Mexico doctor discusses the lasting effects of COVID-19 — Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
One of the biggest misconceptions about COVID-19 is that the pandemic is over, said Dr. Michelle Harkins, a physician and clinical researcher at the University of New Mexico.
“Well, it’s not over,” Harkins told Source NM in an interview this week. “The pandemic is smoldering. There are still people that are getting sick. You can still get COVID. There’s still a significant burden of Long COVID that we’re going to have to address.”
The most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention national early indicators, updated on July 30, show that 3% of tests for COVID are coming back positive, and 0.4% of patients in emergency rooms have the infection.
Harkins works as co-medical director of the Post-COVID Primary Care TeleECHO program, which is meant to help primary care providers recognize and diagnose Long COVID, a chronic condition defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an illness that follows a SARS-CoV-2 infection and is present for at least three months. Long COVID includes a variety of symptoms, including respiratory, neurological and digestive ones.
Harkins also is the division chief at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center’s Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine. UNM on June 24 promoted Harkins and four others to distinguished professors, after UNM HSC Internal Medicine Department Chair Mark Unruh nominated her.
“I’ve just been afforded a lot of opportunity here and a lot of great support from my colleagues and my mentors, and I just love my job,” Harkins said. “It is an incredible honor.”
Harkins said there’s a lot of misinformation that claims people no longer need to receive vaccines or wear masks. In fact, vaccination is protective against severe sickness and Long COVID, she said.
“I personally still wear a mask when I’m on a plane and in the airports, because I don’t want to get sick, and I don’t want to bring it home to a family member, or ruin a trip that I’m supposed to go on because I have COVID,” Harkins said.
While no therapies currently exist for Long COVID, Harkins told Source NM that she advises doctors to talk to their patients, believe them and work with them to figure out their goals as we wait to understand what treatments will help.
“Long COVID is not one-size-fits-all,” she said. “We know it’s a huge burden to patients, and patients need answers. No one was listening to them. People were gaslighting them, and it’s real.”
Her co-director Dr. Alisha Parada runs the only Long COVID clinic in New Mexico, where Harkins follows up with patients in her research.
What’s needed are multidisciplinary clinics to address the myriad of symptom complexes that Long COVID patients face, Harkins testified before Congress in January 2024.
“A Long COVID patient might come to a multidisciplinary clinic and need to see a neurologist, a cardiologist, and an internist, all for the same diagnosis of Long Covid,” Harkins told the U.S. Senate HELP Committee.
Earlier in the pandemic, Harkins started a different Project ECHO training program for doctors to treat patients hospitalized with acute COVID-19. She turned her focus to a Long COVID clinic for primary care providers when she received new funding.
She led clinical trials for acute COVID treatments, including those that established the effectiveness of antiviral remdesivir and anti-inflammatory baricitinib.
Those led Harkins and her team to become involved in the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER study, which is due to end in October. She and her colleagues have been observing 148 adult patients as part of that study.
Harkins said her team has finished a clinical trial for the oral antiviral Paxlovid, and are currently running two other trials, RECOVER-ENERGIZE Post-Exertional Malaise and RECOVER-SLEEP Complex Sleep Disturbances.
In August, Harkins, Parada and UNM nurse practitioner Debora Bear will join leading Long COVID and other infection-associated chronic condition researchers at a conference in Santa Fe, where they will meet others who manage the disease.
“I’m very excited to go,” she said. “We will learn from others and share our experiences, and see what we can bring home.”
New State Fair board meets, mulling International District revival and $500m investment — Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
A board the New Mexico Legislature created earlier this year took its first steps Thursday toward what could be a $500 million investment in a long-struggling neighborhood in the heart of Albuquerque, a process that could also result in the relocation of the New Mexico State Fair.
At the New Mexico State Fair Tax District Board’s first meeting, members committed to statewide standards around open meetings and procurement; announced the hiring of a design firm tasked with creating a master plan for the fairgrounds; and outlined how the New Mexico State Fair Commission will employ eminent domain to buy out business owners in one corner of the fairgrounds.
Members include New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller and New Mexico Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque), along with other state, county and city leaders.
The board is empowered to raise property taxes and issue up to $500 million in bonds to fund the development. The bonds are backed primarily by future gaming revenue taxes generated at the Downs casino and racino, which holds a multi-decade lease on property within the fairgrounds perimeter.
Based on expected taxes and current interest rates, the board could quickly raise up to $170 million in bonds to finance the project, according to a report from the Legislative Finance Committee.
Lawmakers early this year passed Senate Bill 481, which established the new special tax district and board membership. The board also announced Thursday that Stantec, an international design firm, had won a competitive bid awarding it $850,000 to come up with a master plan for the fairgrounds.
Stantec also developed the master plan for Netflix’s Mesa del Sol campus south of Albuquerque, along with mixed-use developments in Denver and El Paso.
Lujan Grisham, Stewart and others have touted the potential dramatic change at the fairgrounds as a way to rescue the adjacent International District, which has long been plagued with high poverty and crime rates. Some neighborhood advocates have raised concerns about who will benefit from the investment and whether it will gentrify a working-class neighborhood.
While no decisions have been made about whether the re-envisioning of the Expo New Mexico property will mean the relocation of the fairgrounds, Lujan Grisham said Thursday that Stantec will be giving serious consideration to that possibility as it completes options for the master plan.
The fair has been held at Expo New Mexico since 1938.
Redeveloping the area could also allow the state to build more housing units in a state and city with a severe housing shortage, advocates have said. “This state land in the heart of New Mexico’s largest city presents a unique opportunity to create badly needed new housing for the workforce, while spurring massive private investment,” Lujan Grisham said in a December news release touting the plan.
Martin Chavez, the former Albuquerque mayor, is spearheading the project as the governor’s senior adviser. He told Source New Mexico after the meeting that while the project has never been intended as an affordable housing development, that new mixed-income housing is a key component of the new master plan Stantec is working on.
That said, there is no minimum number of housing units that the firm is required to develop a plan around, he said.
The board has much else to iron out for the development to occur, including Expo New Mexico’s forced acquisition of a handful of businesses, including restaurants and a tire shop, on the southwest corner of the property near Central Avenue and San Pedro Avenue.
Ricky Serna, the state Transportation Department secretary, said his agency will support Expo New Mexico as it handles the eminent domain process and outlined next steps at the Thursday meeting.
State officials said they will soon approach business owners in the area with offers to buy their properties, offers that contemplate the value of the businesses, costs to relocate and the property themselves.
Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa raised concerns about whether the business owners would be fairly compensated and whether buying them out would just result in more vacant buildings in a neighborhood with a lot of them. She pointed out that the nearby Wal-mart and two national pharmacy chains across the street have left.
Lujan Grisham responded the state would own the buildings and would manage them as productively as possible during the “parallel planning” regarding the redevelopment that is occurring at the same time the state is acquiring the buildings.
Keller, attending the meeting remotely, said he’s seen repeated state efforts to redevelop the fairgrounds and invest in the International District that have dissipated without action. The passage of Senate Bill 481 and the meeting Thursday were already more action than he’s seen in years, he said.
“This is real, and that’s good,” he said. “So I just want to appreciate a little bit of bias towards action, so that’s what we need, and I’m confident that we’ll do it in a fair and appropriate way.”