Is MDC's policy banning paper books legal? Audit requested to question constitutionality - Gillian Barkhurst, Albuquerque Journal
Patrick Hibbard remembers sitting in solitary confinement at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center, a 22-year-old with only four walls for company.
When the book cart came by, he plucked a “crappy” romance novel from its shelves.
“I ate that thing up — because I needed some kind of stimulation,” Hibbard said at a Wednesday Detention Facility Advisory Board meeting.
Thirty years later, after several stints in jail and a doctorate degree, Hibbard is now a member of a civilian committee that oversees how MDC policies affect people incarcerated there, just as he once was.
After a 7-1 vote Wednesday, the board called for an independent audit of a new policy that removed almost all physical books and paper possessions from inmates earlier this year.
Hibbard called the policy unconstitutional and a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Sitting there with just the wall is torture,” Hibbard said. “It’s literally torture.”
MDC officials defended the policy and said it was necessary to stop the flow of drugs and other contraband, which they say inmates were hiding inside of literature and other paper belongings.
Instead of physical belongings, inmates were given tablet computers for every cell to look at scanned letters, photographs and access entertainment. According to past Journal reporting, some have said that there aren’t enough tablets, that access is limited to 30 minutes per day and that the free ebooks are dense volumes like the 600-plus page “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville.
After questions from the board, MDC Warden Kai Smith announced that the jail will be providing a tablet to each inmate by the first quarter of next year.
“We have the finances, it doesn’t cost the taxpayer anything,” Smith said. He said he hopes the tablets will be available by the new year, at the earliest.
Despite the announcement, the board moved forward with the audit to evaluate the policy’s constitutionality and effectiveness at preventing contraband.
The audit is a small win, Hibbard said and a step toward making conditions better for inmates, though Bernalillo County will still need to agree and follow through with it.
Hibbard said he couldn’t imagine serving time, days in and out, without the reprieve of books or any mental stimulation. He joined the board to advocate for incarcerated people and as proof that they too can put the steel bars behind them.
“I can never make up for what I did,” Hibbard said, talking about his crime. “But I can try to help other people.”
In 1997, Hibbard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder of Herman Sandoval, 50, whom he and two other teenagers had mugged and then killed outside of Bernalillo four years prior.
The man had only $1 in his pocket at the time of his death, according to past Journal reporting.
The trio dumped his body in a ditch, leading authorities to initially believe Sandoval had frozen to death before an autopsy was performed. Years later, someone talked, which led authorities to Hibbard in Florida. Hibbard was extradited back to New Mexico.
Sandoval would be 83-years-old if he was alive today. Sandoval’s obituary and living family members couldn’t be located in archives.
“It was devastating,” Hibbard said. “A big part of the devastation was that my actions helped kill a person. It was one solid reason I continued to use substances — to mask that guilt. Here at the same time, Herman was a father, someone’s husband.”
At the time of the killing, Hibbard could only think far enough ahead as his next drink, by the age of 18 he would start shaking if he didn’t.
After Hibbard got out, his substance abuse worsened until it landed him back in jail several times before treatment finally stuck. After that he went to Central New Mexico Community College and years later graduated with a doctorate and became a public health researcher.
“My whole professional goal,” Hibbard said, “is to make things easier for people who are like me.”
Anticipating more fires and floods, state disaster response agency seeks more staff - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The small state agency that coordinates responses to natural disasters and other emergencies across New Mexico is seeking a significant funding boost next year, a reflection both of an expected increase in fires and floods and also a potential exodus of contractors if federal funds stop flowing through the agency.
Miguel Aguilar, the adjutant general of the New Mexico National Guard and secretary of the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told the Legislative Finance Committee on Thursday that the agency is seeking a nearly $7 million budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2026. That’s a roughly $2.5 million increase over the agency’s current budget.
The increase is necessary, Aguilar said, to keep up with increasing natural disasters, including ones the department is responding to now and that it expects in the future. So far this year, he reported, the department has activated its State Emergency Operations Center 11 times for storms, flooding and landslides.
“We’ve had a rough couple years,” Aguilar told the LFC on Thursday at the beginning of his remarks. He went on to say that prolonged drought means perpetual risk of wildfire, while burn scars across the state will often be the site of dangerous floods and debris flows.
“Even moderate monsoon storms can produce dangerous runoff” in burn scars, he said.
The funding increase would allow the department to hire 13 new full-time employees, including engineers, analysts and program managers. The department currently has eight employees tasked with emergency response, according to the presentation.
That small crew manages millions of dollars in federal grants, including for federally declared disasters like the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire in 2022 and the South Fork and Salt fires in 2024.
Aguilar said the department relies heavily on private contractors to handle much of the work, a longstanding practice at the department since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. That’s when the state first began receiving a large share of its operating revenue in federal funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other federal agencies.
He expects federal funding to slowly go away, Aguilar said. That will mean a loss of the contractors, and, with them, institutional knowledge.
“As the burn scars heal, assuming there’s not another long fire,” the department will need to build its own capacity with new state employees, he said, as contractors leave alongside federal funding.
“We don’t have the [staff] to really do the things that the state needs us to do over the coming years,” he said.
Displaced Santa Fe elementary school could end up part of a middle school under district plan to parents ire – Daniel Montaño, KUNM News
The fate of a displaced elementary school in Santa Fe is up in the air as the district weighs several options for the school's final location, balancing student needs with parent concerns and feasibility.
The Santa Fe New Mexican’s André Salcan reports E.J. Martinez lost its original location when the building was deemed unsafe because of severe roof damage, and is currently housed in a wing of another school, Chaparral Elementary.
Parents and staff of the wayward school have urged the district to demolish and rebuild at the original location, but the district has put forward plans integrating the elementary into other schools much to the parents ire.
If merged with Milagro Middle School, which is one of several schools the district suggested, a K-8 campus would emerge, but the elementary school would retain a separate staff and principal. The district would have to update the campus with new restrooms and a playground to accommodate the younger children.
Superintendent Christine Griffin says she understands parents and staff are trying to preserve the school's unique identity and community spirit, but says there isn’t a “perfect solution.”
Taos schools forensic audit referred to New Mexico Department of Justice - Santa Fe New Mexican
The New Mexico State Auditor’s Office has referred a forensic audit report revealing alleged financial wrongdoing in Taos Municipal Schools to three oversight agencies: the New Mexico State Ethics Commission, New Mexico State Police and the New Mexico Department of Justice.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that the 417-page audit report, released Nov. 7, alleges the district’s former facilities and maintenance director, Robert Valencia, and outside contractors engaged in a yearslong procurement scheme that enriched Valencia’s family business, All Around Fence.
The report alleges that from 2017 through most of 2022, Valencia regularly negotiated with vendors and subcontractors on school time and property. The report says of the roughly $244,000 his company received, about $188,000 came through subcontracts. The remainder was paid directly to the business by the district and its charter schools.
The report also alleges Valencia’s wife, Christine Valencia, the district’s former assistant finance director and chief procurement officer, submitted forms, responded to private business inquiries and exchanged quotes with customers from her district workstation.
It states their actions resulted in “numerous transactions with conflicted vendors” that were never disclosed to the school board.
Bob Draper, the former owner of Phoenix Mechanical Co., one of the district’s vendors, pushed back against portions of the report involving the company, asserting it was transparent in its dealings with the district.
Federal Court rules in favor of advocacy groups shielding donors in runoff - Gillian Barkhurst, Albuquerque Journal
Certain political groups no longer have to disclose their donors in Albuquerque’s municipal races thanks to a Wednesday court ruling that comes as runoff candidates sprint to the finish of election season.
The ruling could have “significant impacts” on the future of municipal races, said Brian Sanderoff, a longtime New Mexico political observer and president of Albuquerque-based Research & Polling Inc.
“These safeguards give voters clear information in elections where spending by candidates and outside groups can easily exceed $1 million,” City Clerk Ethan Watson said in a statement Thursday. “Albuquerque’s rules have helped bring that activity into the open for years, giving residents a clearer view of who is trying to influence local races. This temporary ruling opens the door for more dark-money spending and large outside donors to operate with less visibility, and we remain committed to protecting transparency for Albuquerque voters.”
Advocacy nonprofits, classified as 501(c)(4)s, no longer have to abide by the City’s Election Code requirement of disclosing their top five donors, some of those donors’ contributors and registering as measure finance committees — defined as any group that donates more than $250 to a candidate’s campaign, according to an opinion by U.S. District Judge James Browning.
The Election Code has been in place since 2012, but language was changed in February to “enhance clarity and transparency,” according to the City Clerk’s Office.
The rule change may open up municipal races to more anonymous donations, which Sanderoff said are often already seen in national and state races when multimillion-dollar organizations donate to a chain of smaller groups until it ends up in a campaign’s pocket with little public paper trail linking the two.
“There are 501(c)(4)s on both sides of the ideological fence,” Sanderoff said. “For sure, in future elections, other organizations will get involved on both sides of the ideological spectrum.”
The lawsuit was filed last week by three progressive advocacy groups, Center for Civic Action, ProgressNow New Mexico and Semilla Action, who have a collective annual budget of more than $2.5 million, according to court documents.
CEO of Center for Civic Action Oriana Sandoval said in a statement Thursday that the city’s Election Code’s disclosure requirements were “intrusive.”
“We support free, fair and transparent elections, provided transparency measures do not restrict our First Amendment right to inform voters about key issues and candidates,” Sandoval said.
Sara Berger, a lawyer representing CCA, called the city’s Election Code “archaic” and “unconstitutional.”
“That’s not transparency, that’s overreach,” Berger said of the code.
Judge Browning agreed, citing previous court precedent.
Browning ruled that the city’s election code violated the groups’ “right to free speech and free expression.”
In the lawsuit, the groups argued that listing their top donors may expose people whose funds were used for other aspects of the nonprofits’ operations, not electioneering. That requirement could discourage donations from people who prefer to keep their names out of the public eye, they said.
There are a lot of reasons political donors want to remain anonymous, Sanderoff said, and not making enemies with the opposing side is just one.
CCA’s lawyer, Berger, said that revealing the group’s donors and compelling those donors to share some of their contributors would make fundraising much more difficult.
“Imagine how chilling that would be to try to raise funds,” Berger said.
Local impacts
The groups planned to collectively spend $60,000 on a mix of advertising and campaign activities for the runoff election, such as canvassing, distributing literature and buying social media ads, according to court documents. The groups argued those funds were an “insubstantial” part of their budgets.
Now, those groups, and other 501(c)(4)s, are under no obligation to share where that money came from.
So far, CCA has spent $6,000 in the City Council runoff, supporting progressive political newcomers, Teresa Garcia running in District 3 and Stephanie Telles running in District 1, according to the latest finance disclosure statements.
If the pair successfully flip the seats — beating out a conservative challenger and incumbent Klarissa Peña, a moderate Democrat — the majority conservative City Council will be more progressive, balancing the council between the left and right.
Those donations amount to 33% of Garcia’s campaign contributions and 16% of Telles’.
CCA also supported mayoral candidate Alex Uballez’s campaign during the general election. None of the three groups have contributed to the mayoral runoff thus far.
Other groups, such as political action committees, will still have to register with the city clerk and disclose their donors under the City’s Election Code.
With little under two weeks before the start of early voting, it’s uncertain if there is enough time for other advocacy groups to get in on the action and sway the election with more funds and less requirements, Sanderoff said.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” Sanderoff said.