UNM's $636M medical school aims to double doctor training - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
Officials at the University of New Mexico say the college’s new $636 million School of Medicine, designed to double the size of its incoming class, will be completed in time to welcome the new class of students in 2030.
The plan would add a new 350,000-square-foot facility on the northeast corner of Lomas and University NE that will replace the School of Medicine’s main facility, Reginald Heber Fitz Hall, which was built in 1967.
The goal is to grow the medical school class from about 100 students a year to 200 students, UNM Executive Vice President of Health Sciences Dr. Mike Richards told the Legislative Finance Committee in Albuquerque on Wednesday.
UNM has the state’s largest medical school and the only program issuing M.D. degrees. Though almost all UNM School of Medicine students are originally from New Mexico, the majority will leave the state to practice medicine after completing their training, according to the LFC report.
New Mexico ranks 32nd in the country for physicians per capita, and every county in the state, except Los Alamos, has been federally designated a health professional shortage area, according to the Texas-based think tank Cicero Institute.
New Mexico has around 30% fewer medical students per capita than the national average, according to a university report.
State Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, vice chair of the LFC, said Wednesday that the new medical school — funded by a total of $576 million from the state and $60 million from UNM — is the Legislature’s “largest ever” investment in UNM.
“We’ve given you a ton of money,” Muñoz said Wednesday. “You guys are going to have to have cost containment. I don’t know if I’m going to be willing to look back and have spent $650 million and now you say, ‘Oh, I need another $200 million to complete the hospital.’”
Stewart Livsie, director of the UNM Health Sciences Center Capital Projects Office, told legislators that the university had a “robust” cost management program and that despite nationwide inflation, officials were running cost estimates about every six weeks, which showed the project was largely on track.
“If you’re within $5 million on this project, I need to hire you guys,” Muñoz said.
Construction is planned to start in the spring of 2027, Livsie said.
UNM currently trains 795 medical residents and fellows. After the new medical school is finished, Richards said the school hoped to have more than 1,000 residency and fellowship slots, which could put UNM among the top 10 graduate medical education programs in the country in terms of size.
“We know that individuals who train in these programs are really important for us to deliver clinical care,” Richards said. “This is at a time of life where they then make connections to the community and oftentimes will stay.”
The new medical school will create 565 new jobs at the university, Richards said, with thousands more indirect jobs projected as well. Officials said they hoped a hotel would go up near the construction for staff, student and patient use.
The UNM Hospital unveiled its new $842 million critical care tower in September — the largest and most expensive non-road construction project in New Mexico history — designed to increase patient capacity at the often-overcrowded hospital. UNMH is the state’s only Level 1 trauma center, equipped to provide 24-hour care for patients with the most serious injuries.
Dr. Steve Goldstein, a physician and health sciences administrator from the University of California, Irvine, will become UNM’s new president in the fall, succeeding President Garnett Stokes, who will retire this summer after eight years.
State Rep. Liz Thomson, D-Albuquerque, said she was “tickled beyond belief” that the new president had a health sciences background at a time when the school was undergoing a major medical facility expansion.
“This is going to be a game changer,” Thomson said of the new medical school. “I wish we could wave our magic wand and have it tomorrow, but I’ll try to be patient.”
VA hasn't budged on reduced veteran home health rates in New Mexico, rural Texas - Santa Fe New Mexican
Providers of home health care for New Mexico veterans are continuing to advocate against newly lowered federal compensation rates for providing care.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that between 2025 and 2026, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs slashed reimbursement rates for home health aide services in New Mexico by almost 20%.
State officials and care providers said the move reduces access to care for some of the state’s 150,000 veterans.
The VA said the decrease resulted from an agency mandate to ensure the rates align with prevailing rates in regional markets.
New Mexico Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has urged Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins to undo the rate reductions.
Heinrich also said he plans to introduce legislation to address the decreased rates.
In 2025, the VA paid New Mexico home health aides $16.75 for every 15 minutes of work.
Starting Jan. 1, the reimbursement rate for home health aides dropped to $13.50 in New Mexico. That’s a 19% decrease.
Homeless seniors in expiring Santa Fe motel program will move to Pallet village, officials say - Santa Fe New Mexican
A Santa Fe program that placed homeless senior citizens in motel rooms where case managers would work with them to find permanent housing is set to expire next month.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that city leaders said they will continue to house the current program participants for now.
They said participants will eventually be placed in a planned community of small, individual shelter units known as Pallet Village. “Pallet” is the name of the manufacturer of the tiny houses.
The program was launched in early 2025 as a partnership between Interfaith Community Shelter and the city of Santa Fe. So far, 21 people have found permanent housing after living in the motel program, which is currently operating out of the Motel 6 on Cerrillos Road.
But with the contract for the program set to expire at the end of June, Interfaith officials have been worried about what would happen to the 23 seniors currently living in the motel.
The issue is on the agenda for Wednesday’s City Council meeting.
Lovelace, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico reach new deal - KOB-TV
Lovelace Health System and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico have reached a deal to keep Lovelace patients insured by Blue Cross in-network.
KOB-TV reports the agreement covers the next four years.
The current contract between Lovelace and Blue Cross expires at the end of May.
Bugging out: New Mexico insects face significant declines - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
The chirrup of a cricket. The stark flash of orange and black wings fluttering around flowers. The drunken looping flight of grasshoppers. The familiar sights and sounds of New Mexico summer are less frequent as populations of insects dwindle due to hotter and drier weather, pesticide use and habitat loss.
New Mexico, like many other states, is experiencing what experts describe as a startling decline of bugs, a shift that poses critical threats to ecosystems.
While bugs are often seen as pests, entomologists told Source NM an estimated three-fourths of wild plants rely on them to help them reproduce, as do about one-third of food crops. Insects often serve as the main course for a host of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles; they act as nature’s cleanup crew and control other pests.
Insects are the “backbone of ecosystems,” said David Lightfoot, a research associate professor in the biology department at the University of New Mexico. Lightfoot has spent over three decades studying grasshopper populations in the state, and helped author policies to protect insects and other arthropods.
Globally, insects are becoming less abundant, he said, due to a variety of factors amounting to death by a thousand cuts.
He said the recent conservation survey results in New Mexico are similarly grim.
“More than half of the species we’re evaluating are threatened with extinction, endangered or critically endangered based on declines recently,” Lightfoot said. “What people are reporting globally is, in fact, happening right here in New Mexico. That surprised us because we don’t have the land development and human population seen in other parts of the country.”
The losses are not limited to rare bugs, said Kevin Burls, an endangered species conservation biologist with nonprofit research group Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. He pointed to the cratering of the once-widespread Monarch butterfly population, which is 99% smaller now than populations in the 1980s.
“We’re losing common things in large numbers where they’re having cascading effects in other animal communities,” Burl said, noting it’s occurring across many states. “If you talk to any songbird person in the West, they’ll tell you the decline in insects is responsible for fewer birds.”
And while the scope of the problem has unfolded in the last few years, concerns for an extremely hot and dry summer, and continued uses of pesticides and herbicides could worsen the problems.
Bye bye butterflies?
Butterflies are some of the best-studied insects around the world, with data on their populations extending back decades.
In 2025, researchers conducted a review of more than 76,000 butterfly studies and found between 2000 and 2020, butterfly abundance fell by 22% and that 13 times more butterfly populations shrunk than grew over that time period.
The fastest decline occurred in the southwestern states of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma, which showed an overall drop in abundance by 36%. More than half of the species documented had shrinking populations.
The impacts of herbicides and pesticides, along with climate change, are harming the insects at all stages of their life cycle, said Simon Doneski, a PhD candidate at the University of New Mexico studying butterflies. Too high of heat can harm eggs or dry out vegetation for caterpillars to eat.
He said New Mexico’s recent heat wave and dry winter caused an unprecedented surge in butterflies. He’s recorded nearly two dozen species that emerged from their chrysalises a month earlier than they’ve ever been seen before in New Mexico. He said it’s concerning, because the flowering plants the butterflies feed on may not be blooming, or caterpillars born early could experience the summer’s most intense heat.
“We’re in an uncharted territory,” he said. “This hasn’t happened in at least 100 years, maybe further back than that.”
From planting to policy changes
State lawmakers’ 2025 overhaul of the New Mexico Department of Wildlife has moved the needle on conservation, Lightfoot said, but additional funding and attention to insect protections remain sorely needed.
“Before we protect them, we have to learn about them,” Lightfoot said.
Individuals can take action such as planting native pollinating species and lowering their reliance on herbicides and pesticides, said Kaitlin Haase, a pollinator conservation specialist based in Santa Fe for the Xerces Society.
Political pressure to change herbicide and pesticide policies or advocate for insects in local politics is another way to get involved, said Burls, also with the Xerces society.
“Involvement with local politics and state legislatures is hugely important and speaking on behalf of and advocating for insects is something everybody can do,” he said. “It really does matter because other interests have really good lobby support, lots of advocates, but insects don’t always have that — so every voice counts.”
National energy super PAC faces ethics complaint over spending in NM land commissioner race - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
American Energy Action Fund, a super political action committee that has thrown its weight behind a New Mexico Democratic land commissioner candidate, is facing a state ethics complaint over its alleged failure to disclose spending details.
The Virginia-based fund, which says it boosts candidates who advocate for renewable energy, has purchased mailers and text message campaigns in support of Juan de Jesus Sanchez III, who is running in the three-person Democratic primary for state land commissioner.
Source NM recently reported that, according to the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office, the fund has not complied with state law that requires out-of-state super PACs to submit certain spending records to the state.
Federal filings show the company in February spent nearly $700,000 on a “non-federal” campaign that includes digital advertising, text messages and mail, but the filings do not specify which race or races the campaign supported, or where those elections are taking place.
Dede Feldman, a good-government advocate, who served as a Democratic state senator representing Albuquerque for more than a decade, filed a complaint Friday with the New Mexico State Ethics Commission, citing Source NM’s reporting.
Feldman recently endorsed state Rep. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo), who is running against Sanchez in the primary, as is Jonas Moya.
She told Source NM on Friday that an out-of-state organization seeking to influence a New Mexico election should have been able to meet the “easy, but critical” requirement of filing records in New Mexico, a state already plagued with a weak campaign finance reporting system.
“There are a lot of loopholes whereby nonprofits can escape reporting who their donors are or who their expenditures are right now in our state law,” she said.
Sanchez previously told Source NM he had no information about the fund or why it had purchased text messages and mailers on his behalf.
Feldman’s complaint says the organization violated a state law that requires out-of-state super PACs to send the Secretary of State’s Office either a copy of their federal campaign finance filings or excerpts that detail how much the organizations spend on New Mexico candidates.
By failing to file the proper paperwork, she said the Super PAC deprived voters information during a race for a “critically important” elected position in the state, one that oversees energy production and transmission for data centers, among other projects.
“Out-of-state corporations with deep pockets should not be allowed to influence our elections without even a minimal level of transparency,” her complaint said..
Without additional financial disclosures, Feldman said voters don’t know how much money the super PAC spent here and how widespread their campaign has been, among other issues.
The American Energy Action Fund did not respond to Source NM’s request for comment Friday about the complaint.
SEC Director Jeremy Farris told Feldman in an email Friday that he would “look into” the matter and that the commission will meet next June 15, which is nearly two weeks after the June 2 primary concludes, to authorize investigations or remedial actions.