Bernalillo County Commission approves $4M budget reconciliation for MDC medical costs - Matthew Reisen, Albuquerque Journal
The Bernalillo County Commission on Tuesday approved $4 million in changes to its biennial budget to cover increasing medical costs at the Metropolitan Detention Center.
Commissioners voted 4-0 on the motion. Barbara Baca was absent for the vote.
The $4,012,583 in reconciliation funding for the medical contract with University of New Mexico Health System — which provides healthcare at MDC — was covered by $1.97 million from the general fund and $2 million in Healthcare Gross Receipts Tax money.
In a statement, Warden Kai Smith, said, “MDC works closely with UNM Hospital to ensure that inmates receive best practice healthcare, while continuing to be good stewards of the public’s tax dollars. Budget updates reflect MDC’s commitment to inmate and community well-being.”
During Tuesday’s commission meeting, Shirley Ragin, the deputy county manager for finance, said the county in 2025 budgeted just under $27.5 million “based on preliminary estimates” from UNMH. An additional $3 million in risk insurance brought the total healthcare budget at the time to more than $30 million.
It wasn’t enough.
Ragin said the roughly $4 million add-on primarily reflects increased staffing “such as the use of travel nurses” amid a nurse hiring shortage.
UNMH spokesperson Chris Ramirez said 38%, or 19 of 50, of the nurses working at MDC are contract/travel nurses, compared with 10% across all of UNMH. He said the increasing costs at MDC were driven by both contractual obligations with the county and clinical standards established by the McClendon settlement agreement.
“It’s worth noting that MDC’s census is higher today than it was when UNM Hospital began providing medical and behavioral care, meaning the Hospital is treating more patients in the facility,” Ramirez said. “UNM Hospital has also worked to increase staffing in the medical unit, increasing the cost of labor.”
Since 2020, 49 people have died at the jail or died after falling ill at the jail, seven of them in 2026. UNMH took over healthcare at MDC in July 2023 after two for-profit medical providers were contracted at the facility.
Amid the rising death toll, MDC has been beholden to a 2017 settlement agreement in the McClendon case, which mandates reforms at the jail. As part of that agreement medical experts conduct audits on healthcare in the facility.
In the most recent audit report, a doctor found MDC was continuing to provide unconstitutionally poor medical care — detailing long waits for detox, poor staffing and unreliable responses to medical emergencies, among a host of other issues.
Kate Loewe, an attorney representing those incarcerated at MDC under the McClendon settlement, said Bernalillo County “must spend money on good healthcare, more than it has in the past.” Referring to the findings of the latest audit, she said UNMH “needs to figure out” how to provide constitutional care.
“They 100% need more staff ... The facility relies too much on nurses, paramedics, and EMTs to provide direct care creating delays in patients getting the care they need,” she said. Loewe added that the lack of staff has led to less Suboxone distribution to treat withdrawal at MDC, where many of the deaths happened to those in detox.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Commissioner Eric Olivas said it was important to acknowledge — amid budget conversations — that those jailed at MDC “are by and large the sickest people in our community.”
“It is a very expensive situation to put a lot of people with health problems of all kinds together and then try to keep them alive and improve their health,” he said. “Ideally we want people to leave that facility better off than they came in.”
In addressing the budget mismatch, County Manager Cindy Chavez said part of the challenge has been “rightsizing this partnership” with UNMH. She added that UNMH’s reliance on contract/travel nurses is tied to a statewide crisis.
“But we are really anxious to get that traveling nurse number down,” Chavez said. Due to the budget snafu, Chavez said a staffing study was underway at MDC “so we would have an agreement about what the actual investment needs to be in the facility.”
Chavez said the study was expected to be completed in late fall.
Loewe said it’s important to have permanent nurses working at MDC who are well-trained to care for those in the facility and are invested in the community as a whole.
She said a staffing study — such as the one ordered in a Corrective Action Plan in the McClendon case — is necessary not only to reduce budget conflict but “to tell the County and UNMH what staffing is needed to provide care.” Although the court-ordered staffing study was supposed to be finalized by November 2025, Loewe said she was pleased to hear the county is undertaking one now.
Ramirez said one way or another, the provider is seeing the costs of MDC healthcare continue to increase over time.
“However, UNM Hospital looks forward to continuing dialogue with Bernalillo County to appropriately and lawfully resource the medical unit to ensure patients receive safe, high-quality care,” he said.
Rematch set for Bernalillo County sheriff's race - Nakayla McClelland, Albuquerque Journal
This year’s Democratic primary election for Bernalillo County sheriff features an incumbent and a challenger who previously faced off in 2022.
Running to become the head of the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office are former Quay County Sheriff Philip Snedeker, who wants to prioritize restoring public trust in the department, and the incumbent, John Allen, who looks to technology as the future of law enforcement.
Allen previously beat Snedeker — along with five other challengers — in the 2022 Democratic primary with 41% of the vote. No independent or Republican candidates are vying for the position in the 2026 general election.
As of May 12, Snedeker had donated $6,612 to his campaign and spent $6,562.
Allen has raised $53,265, with his largest donations coming from heavy equipment and aggregate company PG Enterprises LLC and Jewelry Market Supply LLC, which contributed $6,200 each, according to a campaign finance report from the Secretary of State’s Office.
As for his expenditures, Allen has spent $6,915, with $1,000 going to former Santa Fe Police Chief Paul Joye, who is running for sheriff in Santa Fe County.
Allen said if reelected, he plans to continue to build on the use of technology to improve response times and data collection. He also plans to use drones as first responders.
“When I took over, we were stuck in the dark ages of about 2005, so I really want to continue (improving) with that,” Allen said in an interview.
Allen, 51, said improved data would help with transparency, which Snedeker said would be his top priority if elected. Snedeker, 70, said he wanted to restore the public’s trust in BCSO by addressing any misconduct allegations and focusing on hiring standards.
“There’s been a great deal of criminal misconduct that’s been ongoing and unaddressed for approximately four years,” Snedeker said, referring to the DWI racketeering case that reached into BCSO.
Allen addressed the scandal, saying he has been “working through” the DWI situation that he inherited by hiring an accountability agent, among other initiatives.
“I want to be more proactive and see a problem and issue before it even becomes an internal affairs investigation,” he said. “We want to be able to recognize patterns of what our deputies are doing or not doing.”
Snedeker brings with him nearly 50 years of law enforcement experience, first as an officer with the Silver City Police Department and then as a New Mexico State Police officer for 10 years.
He was elected sheriff in Quay County in 1987 and oversaw the county’s detention center operations. Later, Snedeker worked as a probation officer and administrator for the state’s Probation and Parole Division for 31 years.
Allen worked for New Mexico State Police for four years before joining BCSO in 2001. He also served as a lead instructor at the Central New Mexico Community College Law Enforcement Academy before becoming sheriff.
The two candidates have similar views on several topics, including strengthening collaboration with other law enforcement agencies, expanding behavioral and mental health services and resolving the “revolving door” of repeat offenders.
“If they’re having mental health issues, we need to be of service,” Snedeker said. “We need to link them with services… we need to be able to provide for the safety and protection of our community.”
Another goal the two share is bringing down response times.
While Snedeker said that meant having a stronger presence in unincorporated parts of the county, Allen said that he wanted to focus on proactive policing — preventing a crime before it occurs.
“I really want to cut down more on our response times and also give deputies more tools so they can answer higher-priority calls,” Allen said. “That includes targeting repeat offenders and being proactive no matter where we’re at in the county.”
Early voting is underway for the primary. Election Day is June 2.
Small medical plane crashes in New Mexico mountains, killing all 4 people aboard - By Savannah Peters, Associated Press
A small medical plane crashed in a mountain range outside Ruidoso, New Mexico, before dawn Thursday, killing all four people aboard and sparking a wildfire in the surrounding forest, officials said.
The fire had grown to 35 acres (14 hectares) by midday amid dry, windy conditions, according to Lincoln County Manager Jason Burns. Burns said county officials were "very concerned" about the blaze and local agencies were working with the U.S. Forest Service to contain it.
The cause of the crash was unknown, Burns said. The plane was located between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Thursday in steep, rocky terrain in the Capitan Mountains that was difficult to access, with crews hiking the last half-mile to reach the crash site, he said.
The victims were flight crew and medical personnel, Burns said. Their names have not yet been made public.
"Our hearts and prayers go out to the families, loved ones, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives in this tragic incident," Burns said at a news conference.
The flight departed from Roswell Air Center and was headed to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
The plane operated by Trans Aero MedEvac had been on a medical transportation mission and was reported overdue after communications and radar contact were lost, the company said in a statement.
Trans Aero MedEvac has operated in southeastern New Mexico and west Texas since 1966.
Ruidoso, a mountain town with a year-round population of less than 8,000, sits at the base of south-central New Mexico's Sierra Blanca range. The surrounding area, which includes Lincoln National Forest, is heavily forested and rural.
Five people were killed when a medical plane crashed in the Devil's Canyon area of Lincoln National Forest in 2007. That crash came almost immediately after the flight left Ruidoso Regional Airport bound for Albuquerque.
Prior to Thursday's crash, there were 25 fatal crashes of medical planes over the past 25 years that killed nearly 70 people, according to NTSB records.
Several occurred in the past 18 months, including when a jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood in January 2025, killing eight people, and four people were killed in August when a plane crashed on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. In December, a Mexican Navy plane carrying a young patient and seven others crashed off the coast of Texas in the Gulf.
Medical evacuation plane flights generally aren't more dangerous than other flights because they travel between airports just like any other plane, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said. Medical helicopter flights are more dangerous because they often involve landing on roads or other improvised landing sites such as near a vehicle crash to get injured people to a hospital quickly.
A study of air medical accidents over a 20-year period ending in 2020 found that more than 70% of fatalities occurred on helicopters.
"Typically when an air medical air plane accident occurs, the reasons are usually the same as any other airplane accident. There's not unique issues with the air medical mission," said Guzzetti, a former crash investigator for the NTSB and FAA.
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Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix, Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.
Feds award $77 million to rural New Mexico water pipeline project years in the making - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico A project to deliver drinking water to rural New Mexicans earned a multi million-dollar boost from the feds this week.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation awarded $77 million to the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority, a years-long infrastructure project meant to haul water from Ute Reservoir to some 73,000 people in Clovis, Portales, Texico, Elida and Cannon Air Force Base. Officials with the project say the money will go a long way toward finishing more than 16 miles of pipelines to deliver the water.
The state Legislature first formed the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority in 2010 as the region’s primary water source, the underground Ogallala Aquifer, showed signs of depletion. In 2018, the Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project published a white paper that said water levels here “have been in a long-term, serious decline for decades” as local development took out far more water than it put back underground.
The pipeline project to deliver what’s known as “surface water” — a term that refers to rainfall, rivers and other above-ground water surfaces that don’t make it into the aquifer — has been under construction for eight years, ENMWUA Board of Directors Chair Mike Morris said in a statement.
“We are very grateful to our federal delegation and the United States Bureau of Reclamation for their continued support of this critically important project,” Morris said, adding that the project is “on track” to begin water deliveries in the next five years.
The project has encountered its share of speed bumps over the years.
In 2023, project officials said they’d worked to bring these plans to life for more than 50 years and credited the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2021, with getting it the funding it needed to near completion.
Last year, though, officials from Quay County, Logan and a handful of local landowners sued to stop the pipeline’s construction. In court filings, the coalition argued that the ENMWUA inappropriately began construction and, in some cases, the eminent domain process along the pipeline’s path, without first securing all of the funding needed for the project.
A judge in August granted ENMWUA’s motion to dismiss portions of the lawsuit brought by government entities, such as Quay County and the Village of Logan.
The case is scheduled to go to trial this summer, court records show.