Bomb threats to New Mexico lawmakers sent via email, police say - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
All three bomb threats made against New Mexico top Democratic lawmakers on Sept. 11 were sent as emails, police confirmed Friday.
The threats, which targeted the home and office of Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe) and the home of Majority Floor Leader Reena Szczepanski (D-Santa Fe), also prompted one school evacuation and a lockdown at City Hall. No explosives were found at any of the three locations, according to Santa Fe and state police departments.
The bomb threats followed Wednesday’s fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, and came amid similar threats across the country, including at numerous Historically Black Colleges and University campuses, leading to lockdowns and canceled classes.
One of the emails was sent to the Santa Fe Mayor’s office, and is under investigation by Santa Fe Police.
Mayor Alan Webber told Source NM in a phone call that he could not provide a copy of the threat emailed to his office Thursday, but said the email’s tone was “very matter of fact,” and contained no expletives.
“In broad strokes, the email was describing what the sender was alleged to have put into the mailbox, and that it resembled a pipe bomb, how it had been constructed and essentially what the timetable was for doing harm,” Webber said.
He told Source NM this kind of email was not common.
“This is a fairly rare occurrence for people to make a threat like that in the first place, thankfully, or would think that the way to get it to the public or to the intended target is by sending an email to the mayor’s office,” he said.
Webber said the day was already emotional, noting the anniversary of 9/11 and Kirk’s death – and said that he thought the timing of the threat was related to one or either of those events.
“We’re all in this together and disagreeing is fine, but violence is never the solution,” he said.
Webber said Santa Fe Police decided not to issue emergency alerts about the threats to prevent further threats to evacuated children, and noted that the affected streets were not “busy thoroughfares.”
Santa Fe Police Deputy Chief Ben Valdez told Source NM the department acted out of caution, and to prevent the locations of school evacuations and pick-ups.
“We don’t know if it is a legitimate threat or if it is a threat that is trying to solicit a response where now they expose students or faculty to danger,” he said.
New Mexico State Police declined to make anyone available for an interview, but said in an email that the threats were emailed, and directed only at the specific lawmakers. Source NM has pending public records requests for the emails and police reports with both agencies.
State Police alerted Santa Fe police to the emailed threats, and was also in contact with the Legislative Council Service Director Shawna Casebier.
Casebier, who is also the chief staff for the interim Capitol Security Subcommittee, told Source NM in a phone call that members met in closed session in June, Casebier said — following the assasination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband — and may meet again before the 2026 January session.
“Regardless of what happens in other states or in the national landscape, capital security, security of legislators, staff, public, in the building is of the highest priority and concern,” Casebier said. “We are constantly evaluating to ensure that the security protocols and infrastructure are appropriate to address concerns.”
Cannabis grower sues New Mexico, alleging state employee flooded farm with E. coli-laced acequia water - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
A cannabis grower is accusing a state of New Mexico employee of destroying its plants by accidentally flooding them with E. coli-tainted water via a centuries-old irrigation canal in a lawsuit filed last month.
Albuquerque Cannabis Corp. is requesting $442,000 in damages from the state after a supervisor at Los Luceros Historic Site in Rio Arriba County allegedly left the gate open to an acequia during irrigation in August 2023, allowing more than 650,000 gallons of water to flood the company’s adjacent property, destroying 850 cannabis plants and four greenhouses’ worth of equipment.
The company leased a four-acre property next door to Los Luceros, a 19th-century hacienda with a historic irrigated pasture on the Rio Grande, open to the public for visits and managed by the state. The alleged flooding culprit was an acequia, a waterway used for irrigation built in the 18th century by Spanish colonists.
In the lawsuit, filed at the end of August, ACC claimed the flooding, which lasted for “several hours,” drenched its cultivation site, destroying greenhouse machinery and an estimated 400 pounds of cannabis flower and additional trim. The company alleges the plants were scheduled to enter the flowering stage — when they become fruitful — on the day of the flood.
“I think he just forgot and went home for lunch or whatever, and left it open for hours,” said Derek Watts, one of ACC’s four co-owners.
Watts said the company dissolved in the aftermath of the flood.
“Since this happened, the whole project — basically, just the wheels kind of fell off. We didn’t have any dollars to keep going. Everybody sort of pulled the plug,” he said.
In the lawsuit, ACC said it did not become aware of the full extent of the damage until lab testing confirmed the plants had been “inundated with fecal bacteria,” rendering them unsafe for sale.
“Because it’s a high input crop, all the investment goes into the plants, and then you get it all back at the end of the year, when you harvest,” Watts said. “And when the flood hit, it basically just wiped out all those resources, all the investment in the company as a whole.”
The property is located near a dirt road in Alcalde, about a third of a mile from Los Luceros and less than 500 feet away from the acequia, the oldest one east of the Rio Grande, according to a 2017 story in El Palacio Magazine.
“It definitely adds some humidity to the area and some lushness,” Watts said of the irrigation ditch. “I’m sort of a history buff, so it was cool to learn a little bit about the history of that network.”
Though the state and its staff are generally immune from civil suits under the New Mexico Tort Claims Act, the law makes an exception for damage caused by the negligence of public employees working in operations or maintenance at state facilities.
A spokesperson for the state’s Risk Management Division declined to comment on the pending litigation.
ACC was issued a commercial license to grow marijuana by the state Cannabis Control Division in 2022, though the license is no longer valid, according to New Mexico Regulation and Licensing spokesperson Andrea Brown.
“I guess it makes the headlines because it’s a cannabis thing, but it could have just as easily been any other kind of thing,” Watts said. “It’s just a neighbor flooding a neighbor, ruining what they had going.
Creamland Dairy reaches tentative agreement with union, ending weeklong strike - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
Union workers at the Creamland Dairy plants in Albuquerque and Farmington reached a tentative agreement with the company after a weeklong strike and months of negotiations.
Teamsters Local 492, the union representing the employees, announced the news Friday afternoon. The strike began the evening of Sept. 3, after union officials alleged that the management of Dairy Farmers of America, Creamland’s parent company, had been deliberately stalling negotiations for a new contract since March.
“We are happy to have a tentative agreement and look forward to our members continuing to serve the public by making the products our community has grown to love,” Teamsters Local 492 Secretary-Treasurer Andrew Palmer said in a statement.
Palmer declined to share specifics of the agreement with the Journal because the new contract has yet to be distributed to workers, but said the deal addressed all of the union members’ concerns. During the strike, workers said they wanted better pay and improvements to health care and retirement benefits.
The contract will last for three years, Palmer said.
Seventy-seven employees, including pasteurizers, warehouse staff and truck drivers, participated in the strike, which affected production of all of Creamland’s cultured dairy products, including milk, sour cream, cottage cheese and the company’s line of dips, union officials told the Journal.
In a statement, Dairy Farmers of America spokesperson Kim O’Brien said the company had “remained steadfast in our commitment to find a solution that best supports our employees, their well-being, and the long-term success of our farmer-owners and their cooperative.”
Though workers said this was the first strike at the Albuquerque plant, it’s not the first time Creamland has been accused by the union of unfair labor practices.
In January 2021, Local 492 filed a charge against Creamland, contending that the company had engaged in bad-faith bargaining and had illegally retaliated against employees, according to filings with the National Labor Relations Board.
The strike came on the heels of grocery workers at Smith’s and Albertsons stores across New Mexico narrowly avoiding one of their own in July, when the two companies reached an agreement to finalize new union contracts with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1564. The contracts between the grocers and UFCW Local 1564 span four years.
New CYFD secretary says she's committed to bringing stability amid choppy waters – Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
Just four days into her new job leading New Mexico’s troubled child welfare agency, Valerie Sandoval said she’s committed to stabilizing the Children, Youth and Families Department in the coming months.
Sandoval, a former CYFD deputy secretary who was named acting secretary last week, said she plans to accelerate agency efforts to improve staffing levels and reduce social worker case loads.
“I think that’s always been my goal, to make CYFD stable and consistent and to build a workforce that will thrive whether I’m here or the next person,” Sandoval told reporters Thursday.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appointed Sandoval as acting CYFD secretary last week upon the abrupt retirement of former secretary Teresa Casados. Sandoval is a high school volleyball coach in Santa Fe who has worked for the agency since 2016.
With the official start of her new job duties on Monday, Sandoval became the fourth long-term CYFD secretary since Lujan Grisham took office in 2019.
She said she plans to lean on a new CYFD leadership team that includes Kathy Kunkel, a former state health secretary, and Brenda Donald, a consultant who previously worked as Washington, D.C.’s deputy mayor for health and human services.
Donald will fill the newly created post of CYFD chief operating officer under a contract that will pay her more than $115 per hour. For her part, Kunkel will return to New Mexico from her home in Vermont to work as a deputy secretary tasked with overseeing the agency’s efforts to comply with a 2020 settlement agreement. She will be paid a salary of roughly $171,000 per year, according to the Governor’s Office.
The agreement, known as the Kevin S. settlement, obligated the state to follow a series of standards intended to help abused and neglected children. An arbitrator assigned to oversee the settlement recently ordered CYFD to approve and license 244 new treatment foster care placements by the end of this year, among other directives.
Kunkel said CYFD will soon be implementing steps ordered by the settlement agreement, including hiring and retaining more staffers. The agency currently has a 24% vacancy rate, even after recent rapid hiring events.
“People are applying,” Kunkel said. “We need to streamline our process for getting them in and then we need to make sure we give them the support to stay.”
Lujan Grisham has expressed dissatisfaction with CYFD’s performance in recent years, while publicly defending her appointed Cabinet secretaries. She said this week that Casados had previously agreed to delay her retirement, even while juggling family responsibilities that include taking care of her aging parents.
The Democratic governor, who will leave office at the end of 2026, has also largely rebuffed lawmakers’ efforts to mandate more outside oversight of the agency, saying such proposals could lead to conflict and would negatively impact CYFD’s ability to hire more workers.
But some lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — have grown increasingly impatient with CYFD officials in recent years, citing stubbornly high child mistreatment rates and a string of high-profile child abuse cases.
Sandoval said Thursday she understands the public outrage about cases like that of the 4-month-old boy who was born addicted to fentanyl and died in his parents’ Albuquerque home in June.
“These cases are tragic for us too,” Sandoval said. “They hit me hard every single time.”
But she said the new CYFD leadership team would be as transparent as possible, while relying on its expertise and the steps outlined under the settlement agreement.
“We’re going to make a better child welfare system,” said Sandoval, “using those tools that we have.”