New Mexico Announces 50% of 12-17-Year Olds Have Received At Least a First Dose Of COVID-19 Vaccine- New Mexico Department of Health
The New Mexico Department of Health announced on Thursday that more than 50% of 12-17 year-olds in the state have received at least a first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, and nearly 40% have completed their vaccination series.
The announcement comes amid a wave of new infections connected to the Delta variant, which is 2-4 times more contagious than previous strains. In the last two weeks, cases across the country are up 131%, and deaths are up 65%.
Getting vaccinated is key to protecting the vulnerable, according to DOH Deputy Secretary Dr. Laura Parajon, including people who are immunocompromised and children 11 years and younger who are not yet eligible for vaccine.
New Mexico state health officials on Thursday announced 671 additional COVID-19 cases, as well as three deaths from the virus. 230 people are currently hospitalized with the coronavirus.
Teacher Union President: Goal Is To Get Kids Back To School-- Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
The head of a national teachers union is visiting New Mexico as part of a nationwide campaign to encourage parents to send their kids back to public school. The effort comes as more parents are voicing concerns over mask mandates. Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers and says ahead of her visit Thursday she believes masks are among the precautions school districts can take to ensure students can safely return to in-person learning.
Former County Official Convicted Of Procurement Violation- Associated Press
A former Rio Arriba County commissioner faces up to 18 months in prison when he is sentenced on a conviction for violating the state's procurement code.
A state District Court judge ruled this week that ex-Commissioner Barney Trujillo of Chimayo violated the procurement code when he failed to disclose contributions he'd made to an Española school board member’s campaign.
Trujillo, who had a $50,000 annual marketing services contract with the Espanola school district, was required to disclose any campaign contributions he'd made to public officials.
Trujillo didn't disclose that he made an in-kind contribution of signs to the campaign of Yolanda Salazar, a successful candidate for the Espanola Public Schools board.
According to a court document, Trujillo said he did not disclose the contributions because he believed it wasn't required because Salazar was not a public official at the time.
Trujillo's lawyer, Kitren Fischer, said Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer's ruling was disappointing but said her client “is ready to put this matter behind him after so many years in court."
Salazar resigned from the board in June.
Navajo Nation: No COVID-19 Related Deaths For 4th Day In Row- Associated Press
The Navajo Nation on Wednesday reported 34 new COVID-19 cases, but no additional deaths for the fourth consecutive day.
The latest numbers released by tribal health officials pushed the total number of coronavirus cases to 31,486 since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
The known death toll remains at 1,377.
The Navajo Nation reservation is the country’s largest at 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) and it covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
“The data and reports from across the country indicate that the majority of new infections and deaths related to COVID-19 involve people who are not vaccinated,”according to tribal President Jonathan Nez said in a statement Wednesday. He went on to say that “You can still contract COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated, but the vaccines are highly effective in pushing back on the symptoms and chances of death.”
Rural School Board Suspended Over New Mexico's Mask Mandate - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
A rural New Mexico school board was suspended by the state Public Education Department on Wednesday for not going along with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's mask mandate for children as schools prepare for classes to resume this month and COVID-19 cases continue to rise again.
The five-member Floyd school board voted last week to make masks and social distancing optional and reaffirmed the decision in another vote Monday despite warnings from state officials that they could face suspension or other enforcement actions.
The district's superintendent has been ordered to report directly to state Education Secretary Ryan Stewart.
Stewart said in a memo to the board members that the state agency has a responsibility to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all staff and students.
"We cannot put students, staff and their families at unnecessary risk as we continue the fight against the Delta variant," he wrote in a memo to the board. "By ignoring these basic safety measures, the board impairs the ability of the district to offer safe and uninterrupted in-person learning opportunities."
There has been much debate across the state among parents, lawmakers and school boards about mask requirements when students return to school. Some of New Mexico's largest districts already have opted to impose the state's guidelines, but some critics have raised concerns about parents not being given a choice.
House Republican Leader Jim Townsend of Artesia called the state's move unfortunate given that New Mexico is just days away from schools reopening.
"Instead of politicizing and headline grabbing, I sure wish that the governor and PED would have implemented a serious plan to address the learning gap and the myriad of other issues that have been exacerbated during COVID," he said Wednesday, adding that school districts are being used as pawns by Santa Fe bureaucrats.
Republican Sen. David Gallegos of Eunice, who serves on another local school board, said the Floyd board did what they were elected to do.
"They represented the best interests of the children in their district," he said. "This gross violation of local authority is disrespectful to the students and families of Floyd and may even be a violation of New Mexico law."
Before issuing the suspension, the education department said Stewart called the Floyd school board president and offered assistance to establish an outdoor learning program and to facilitate conversations with public health experts.
The district serves about 225 students and has about 20 teachers.
State health officials on Wednesday also announced another 609 confirmed infections, marking the highest number since March.
While New Mexico's infection rates are still lower than the peak in mid-November, the recent increase comes amid a nationwide spread of the highly contagious delta variant. The uptick also follows the state's July 1 reopening, when the governor lifted statewide business restrictions.
Lujan Grisham has mandated that all state workers be vaccinated or undergo regular testing, and the state has started its second round of vaccine incentives in hopes of getting more people to take the shots.
About 65% of residents 18 and older have been fully vaccinated, according to state data.
Albuquerque Mayor Faces Ethics Complaint In Reelection Bid - Associated Press
Critics of Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller have filed a new ethics complaint alleging that the Democrat violated the city's election laws by using a city employee for campaign purposes.
The complaint filed Tuesday by supporters of Sheriff Manuel Gonzales' bid for mayor also alleges Keller's reelection campaign illegally accepted campaign seed money from six non-city residents in violation of Albuquerque's Open and Ethical Elections Code.
Much of the complaint centers on the actions of Justin Cheney, president of the city firefighters' union, who allegedly visited city-owned properties and asked firefighters to sign $5 donation cards on Keller's behalf, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
Pat Rogers, an attorney who represents those who filed the complaint, said it was improper for Cheney, a city employee, to go on city time to city properties in support of Keller.
Cheney did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Keller's campaign called the complaint "theatrics" and denied responsibility for Cheney's actions.
The complaint asks city officials to revoke Keller's successful bid to obtain more than $600,000 in public campaign funding.
Keller and Gonzales' campaigns have sparred publicly over attempts to obtain public financing.
New Mexico Taps Federal Relief To Help Harvest Chile - Associated Press
New Mexico Lt. Gov. Howie Morales has said the state is stepping in to ensure a timely chile harvest after growers and producers raised concerns about an inadequate supply of labor.
Morales said Wednesday that the state will funnel up to $5 million in federal pandemic relief toward enhanced wages for laborers who harvest New Mexico's renowned green and red chile crop in the late summer and early fall, along with cabbage and onions.
Some Republican state legislators this week urged the state to cut off a $300 weekly federal supplement to unemployment benefits, asserting that the income is keeping workers at home rather than in the fields. The supplement expires in early September.
Morales said the local farm-labor shortage predates the pandemic and that many agricultural laborers aren't eligible for unemployment benefits because of their immigration status. He said minimum wage is no longer enough to attract workers to pick chile pods and that as much as $17 an hour may be necessary to attract workers.
The harvest of New Mexico's most famous crop got started a few weeks early this year amid a shift in planting techniques.
Instead of starting from seed, more farmers are planting seedlings that have sprouted in a greenhouse to get their fields going faster. For some it's a hedge against increasing labor costs, while others see the method as a way to save water.
Lawmakers: Labor Shortage Could Wreak Havoc On Chile Harvest - By Daniel J. Chacón Santa Fe New Mexican
New Mexico prides itself on having the best chile in the world, but a shortage of farmhands could leave a big portion of this year's bumper crop rotting on the vine.
"We have one of the best chile crops the state has ever seen because the weather just set up perfectly in most areas," Joram Robbs, executive director of the New Mexico Chile Association, told the Santa Fe New Mexican on Tuesday.
"There are some farmers that got hit by monsoons in a negative way, but there's tons of chile on these plants, so we're going to see a huge loss if we don't get it picked," he said.
Some Republican lawmakers and farmers in the Hatch Valley are blaming the labor shortage on the extra unemployment insurance benefit payments they believe are keeping workers at home instead of in the field, and they're urging Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to "immediately" cut them off.
In a letter to the governor, Sen. Crystal Diamond of Elephant Butte and Reps. Rebecca Dow of Truth or Consequences and Luis Terrazas of Silver City contend the supplemental unemployment benefits are responsible for a lack of workers "in virtually every area of our state's economy."
"Red and green chile are the iconic crop of our state and your
administration's lackluster response to this problem may cost our state a valuable crop season for these family farms and may drive some out of business altogether," they wrote. "People in southern New Mexico are witnessing firsthand how the chile industry is becoming a casualty of our flawed supplemental unemployment insurance program. Though the chile farmers of our state may bear the early burden of this labor shortage, it is not long before other agricultural industries feel the effects of this policy."
It's already happening, said Joe Paul Lack, who grows chile in addition to onions and pecans. He said he'll probably only be able to harvest half of the 80 acres of onions he grew this year because he doesn't have enough workers to do the job.
"We were probably 20% short last year, but we're more than 50% short this year on our help," he said. "You go around in Hatch and just look up and down the streets, there's plenty of people; there's just nobody working."
Lack said he asks past employees why they aren't working for him now and that they tell him they don't need the money because they're collecting unemployment, including an extra $300-a-week payment set to expire in September.
Nora Meyers Sackett, the governor's spokeswoman, wrote in an email that there is no evidence that the federal unemployment supplement is somehow singlehandedly driving or solely responsible for workforce re-entry issues in New Mexico or elsewhere.
She pointed to a working paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that found the $300 weekly supplement "has been making a small but likely noticeable contribution to job-finding rates and employers' perceptions of worker availability."
Still, Sackett said the Lujan Grisham administration is considering a variety of ideas to help chile farmers, including the possibility of assigning federal stimulus funds to support temporary wage supplements for farm workers.
Lt. Gov. Howie Morales and Agriculture Secretary Jeff Witte met with farmers and the New Mexico Chile Association this week to discuss industry concerns and identify possible solutions.
"Those conversations about the issue have been productive and are ongoing," she wrote. "As anyone in the industry will tell you, labor has been an issue in agriculture for a long time; the pandemic has only exacerbated the problem."
But the Republican lawmakers believe the extra unemployment insurance benefit payments are keeping people at home instead of going to work.
In an action some consider an incentive to get the unemployed to return to work, other states, primarily those led by Republican governors, stopped paying the $300-a-week federal supplemental benefit. New Mexico will keep it in place until it expires in September.
Lujan Grisham said in June that ending the benefit early was "punitive."
"But we do want to incentivize workers to go to work," she said at the time.
Gary Shiflett, who has been farming for 43 years, said "nobody's gonna get out and work as long as the government keeps giving everybody money."
He said what could end up happening is New Mexico chile farmers could go out of business, ending the state's reputation for having the best chile in the world.
"Our governor, I'm sorry, but she's horrible," he said. "She don't understand."
Robbs, the head of the chile association, said farmers usually start harvesting crops the first or second week of August.
"We're a little bit too late on this problem; it took everybody by surprise," he added. "I guess we should have seen it coming. But we were hopeful that there would be workers once the state opened back up. But there's not. They're staying at home."
Robbs said the association "has gotten a lot of pushback on social media" from people asking why employers in the chile industry don't offer higher wages.
"There's only so much that these farmers and processors can pay until they're making negative income," he said. "Businesses can't just pass on costs like that when they're in the produce industry. Where does it stop? Where's the threshold when people stop buying chile?"
Diamond, the state senator, said she's been hearing from concerned farmers not just in the Hatch Valley but across Doña Ana County, as well as Luna and Sierra counties.
"All of them are echoing the same concern that this labor shortage is threatening the entire chile harvest this year as a whole," she said. "We're going into chile season within days, and we do not have a workforce, and so they're afraid that that window is going to come just too late. So, we have two problems: Either there just won't be chile available, or what little chile is available, the cost will be passed on to consumers, which is a concern for all New Mexicans."
House Republicans attacked the governor on Twitter, saying the state's chile crop "is being left to rot by (Lujan Grisham's) economic failures."
Diamond said the issue isn't political.
"This isn't a D or an R issue," she said. "This is a red or green issue."
Fire Destroys Small Set At Netflix Studios In Albuquerque - Associated Press
A fire Wednesday destroyed a small set at the Netflix film studios in Albuquerque, the fire department said.
Chief Tom Ruiz of Albuquerque Fire Rescue said crews responding to the pre-dawn blaze found the set "fully involved" in flames and smoke. He said the fire was extinguished quickly but that the set was a "total loss."
No injuries were reported and no information was immediately available on a possible cause.
Former Journalist, Official Remembered For Public Service - Associated Press
Known as a journalist who asked tough questions and an all-around stand-up guy, former Associated Press correspondent and public servant Ed Moreno has died. He was 67.
His family said Moreno died July 27 of a brain tumor at his home in Santa Fe. A memorial service has been scheduled for Sept. 18.
Moreno was born in Mexico City and moved with his family to the United States as a child when his father accepted a job at the first Spanish language radio station in Denver. He gained citizenship at age 18 and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Northern Colorado.
He began working for small newspapers before being hired by the Santa Fe New Mexican. After several years of reporting on crime, courts and politics, he went to work for the AP as its capitol correspondent. Moreno earned a number of awards for his coverage of state government, and his investigative reporting led to changes in state liquor laws and adult guardianship.
After nearly a decade with the AP, he was recruited by the top official at the State Land Office.
"He was a great reporter and asked tough and insightful questions. That is why I asked him to join our team at the Land Office," said Ray Powell, who served three terms as New Mexico land commissioner. "He was funny and kind and got along with all kinds of people. He will be missed."
Moreno's family described his life as "a continuous course of public service carried out with the highest integrity and ethics." With sparkling wit, he could carry on a conversation with anyone on any topic — from politics and history to the environment.
He also was a legislative analyst, a mediator with a national science and public policy company and a Santa Fe County commissioner.
Moreno had said last year that his term on the county commission was among his most rewarding jobs over his lifetime. He was most proud of taking part in the Aamodt settlements that expanded water service in rural areas and of his role in expanding Santa Fe County's trail system.
Moreno is survived by his wife, Janet Wise, three daughters, two sisters, grandchildren and other relatives.
Marathon Mom: Tuliamuk On Track After Having Baby In January - By Pat Graham AP Sports Writer
Sometimes, her workouts on an exercise machine were cut short when Zoe started crying.
Baby steps, U.S. marathoner Aliphine Tuliamuk reminded herself.
Sometimes, she stayed up late when Zoe was fussy, even though she had an early morning run.
Baby steps, she told herself.
By taking it slow and steady — advice from other long-distance running moms — Tuliamuk worked her way back after giving birth in January. All the way back to where she will be Saturday — the starting line for the women's marathon in Sapporo for the Tokyo Games.
She was cleared to have a cheerleader, too — nearly 7-month-old Zoe Cherotich Gannon (she has a visa). This after helping push organizers to allow breastfeeding mothers to be allowed to take their babies to the Olympics.
Baby steps, indeed.
"It worked out," Tuliamuk said, "perfectly."
The original plan was to start a family after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. But when the Summer Games were postponed by the pandemic, the 32-year-old Tuliamuk and her fiancé, Tim Gannon, decided not to wait. She had a spot on the team thanks to her win at the U.S. marathon trials on Feb. 29, 2020, just days before the coronavirus shut things down.
She knows now just how fortunate she was to make it back in such a short time. Everything went according to plan with the pregnancy and the delivery on Jan. 13. The recovery as well. The only adjustment? Workouts are on Zoe time.
"I look back now and I realize how naive I was," Tuliamuk said. "I was very naive to think I would just get pregnant right away, I'd be able to run through my pregnancy, then I'd be able to come back really fast. Those are things that I didn't know, but I also got very lucky."
Following her daughter's birth, she didn't start running until around eight weeks later. From there, she eased back into it. That was on the advice of her doctor, her physical therapist and by drawing inspiration from runners/moms such as Kara Goucher and Alysia Montano.
Tuliamuk got creative with her workouts, putting Zoe next to her as she got in a few minutes on an elliptical machine before stopping to feed her.
Anything to start Tuliamuk on the path back.
"When she goes to sleep, I'd put her back to bed and go back and finish a workout — even if I'm really tired and don't feel like training anymore," said Tuliamuk, who divides her time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Flagstaff, Arizona. "I'm like, 'I have to do this.' At night, sleep's not guaranteed. I have to wake up and go run, feeling like a zombie."
Her first race back was July 4 in Atlanta. A 10K that produced a time of 32 minutes, 41 seconds and a sixth-place finish.
It just affirmed something she knew — she was on the right path. Because that time was actually faster — by about eight seconds — than her winning time in 2017.
"So far, so good," said Tuliamuk, one of 32 siblings, all of whom shared a father. "It's harder than usual but I'm not injured, so that's a good thing. It's just having the sense that I'm coming back from being out of shape. But I'm really loving it. I'm loving the pain."
Tuliamuk did her last big buildup session a few weeks ago — 15 miles at 5:41 pace.
"I don't know what this means for my race but I am very optimistic," she said in a post on social media.
This certainly lifted her spirits: Zoe recently received her visa to travel to Japan, where the Olympic marathons will be held in Sapporo because of heat concerns in Tokyo.
In late June, the International Olympic Committee announced that nursing mothers were allowed to bring their babies to Tokyo.
"What a relief it feels not to have to imagine my breastfeeding daughter being miles away from me," she posted. "Thank you to IOC and the host country of Japan for making sure that nursing moms didn't have to choose between their babies and their careers."
Born in Kenya, Tuliamuk used to run around eight miles a day in her remote village. In grade school, she began to take it serious. Her talent was obvious, winning races even if she didn't have running shoes.
On one occasion, she met Kenyan marathoner Tegla Loroupe, who happened to be giving a talk at Tuliamuk's school and was told of her talent. She gave Tuliamuk a pair of racing shoes.
Only, Tuliamuk didn't wear them all that often — they looked too nice.
She was recruited to run at Iowa State before transferring to Wichita State, where she set numerous school records.
One of her proudest moments was in April 2016, when she became an American citizen.
"The national anthem was sung and I remember crying," she said.
She's hoping to hear the song again — in Sapporo.
"If that was to happen that would be the highlight of my entire career so far," Tuliamuk said. "It would mean the world to me."
Navajo Nation: No COVID-19 related deaths for 4th day in row
The Navajo Nation on Wednesday reported 34 new COVID-19 cases, but no additional deaths for the fourth consecutive day.
The latest numbers released by tribal health officials pushed the total number of coronavirus cases to 31,486 since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
The known death toll remains at 1,377.
The Navajo Nation reservation is the country's largest at 27,000 square miles and it covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
"The data and reports from across the country indicate that the majority of new infections and deaths related to COVID-19 involve people who are not vaccinated," tribal President Jonathan Nez said in a statement Wednesday. "You can still contract COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated, but the vaccines are highly effective in pushing back on the symptoms and chances of death."