FRI: Santa Fe planning 17-mile pipeline to deliver wastewater to Rio Grande, + More
By KUNM News
September 11, 2026 at 6:29 AM MDT
Plans for reclaimed water from Santa Fe to be discharged in Rio Grande
—Santa Fe New Mexican
The city of Santa Fe is planning to put treated water from the Paseo Real wastewater treatment plant into the Rio Grande via a proposed 17-mile pipe.
As the Santa Fe New Mexican reports, in return, Santa Fe would receive a credit for its San Juan-Chama water from the Colorado River basin. That means it wouldn’t have to release as much water from Abiquiú Lake.
That lake, a reservoir managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, was the source of the 650 million gallons of water released last week to replenish the Rio Grande.
Santa Fe’s Interim Public Utilities Director Jesse Roach told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the city is currently seeking an environmental permit, which he hopes to have a draft version available for public comment by the end of the year.
It’s a complicated process, though, because the proposed 17-mile pipeline requires permitting from three federal agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Reclamation.
Land grant appeals radio tower case to NM Supreme Court
—Taos News
In Taos, a local nonprofit radio station and the Cristobal De La Serna Land Grant continue to be engaged in a legal struggle.
KCEI-FM is branded as “Cultural Energy.” The station has a transmitter in Red River and a translator in El Prado. The Taos News reports that Robin Collier, president of Cultural Energy, wants to build a radio tower on U.S. Hill in the Sangre de Cristo mountains south of Taos. The land is within the Cristobal de la Serna Land Grant.
Building on the property would require what’s called a “quiet title” action, which resolves competing ownership claims to establish clear title. Last month, a New Mexico Court of Appeals opinion said that land grants are not immune from quiet title claims.
The Taos News reports that the Cristobal De La Serna Land Grant filed an appeal Tuesday in the New Mexico Supreme Court. The appeal asks the state’s high court to review the opinion published in August by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
New Mexico AG backs Forward Party’s legal battle for ballot access
—Joshua Bowling, Source NM
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez this week backed the state Forward Party’s pending case before a federal appeals court that seeks to get its candidates on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.
New Mexico Forward Party Chair Bob Perls, a former state lawmaker whose campaign to run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján didn’t collect enough signatures to make the ballot,sued New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver in federal court in July. He alleged that she was enforcing ballot-access laws that created unfair burdens to minor-party candidates.
Perls’ argument hinged in part on the number of signatures the state requires candidates to collect to make the ballot. Democrats and Republicans must gather about 2,500 and 2,350, respectively. He and another Forward Party candidate seeking statewide office, however, failed to collect the more than 14,000 signatures the state requires.
That disparity is discriminatory, Perls’ attorneysargued before U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Strickland in August. Strickland earlier this monthdenied the Forward Party’s motion to stop the secretary of state from enforcing those ballot laws, writing that aspects of the party’s case are likely moot as several of its local candidates qualified for the ballot. Perls subsequently appealed.
In an amicus brief filed Thursday, Torrez and other New Mexico Department of Justice officials backed the Forward Party’s argument before the appellate court.
“Major party candidates, minor party candidates, and independents should compete on a level playing field in New Mexico’s elections. Today, they do not,” they wrote in the filing. “New Mexico requires all candidates to earn their place on the ballot. But major party candidates can stroll onto the ballot while independent and minor party candidates must forge a more difficult path.”
The brief says that New Mexicans “deserve real competition at the polls” and requested that the federal appeals court order that the Forward Party candidates be placed on the ballot.
Lindsey Bachman, the secretary of state’s communications, legislative and executive affairs director, in a statement to Source NM noted that Toulouse Oliver, as the state’s chief election officer, “represents the interests of every voter in our state.”
“She maintains that the federal court made the correct determination and will continue to defend New Mexico’s election laws in this case,” Bachman said.
Perls has previously pointed tothe race for Luján’s seat in the U.S. Senate as a prime example. The Republican Party of New Mexico failed to field a candidate ahead of the June primary election, creating a relatively easy path for Larry Marker of Roswell, a write-in candidate whose name did not appear on the ballot, to become the party’s nominee.
Perls told Source NM on Friday that he did not know ahead of time that Torrez’s office was going to support his effort.
“Good for the attorney general for standing up for the voters and not taking a partisan approach,” he said. “Any person on the street would say that the signature requirements are unfair. You don’t have to be a lawyer to figure that out.”
Transportation officials urge state lawmakers to fund deteriorating roads as federal funding expires
–Matthew Mindschein, Source New Mexico
National transportation analysts, joined by a state transportation department official and contractors, told lawmakers this week that while they have identified improvements for the state’s substandard roads, they lack sufficient funding to make the repairs.
According to a 2026 report by TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit, 56% of all major locally and state-maintained roads in New Mexico are in “poor or mediocre condition.” Driving on rough roads costs the average New Mexico driver $1,043 annually in additional vehicle operating costs — a total of $1.6 billion statewide, according to the report.
National analysts told state lawmakers during the Legislature’s interim Transportation Infrastructure Revenue Subcommittee on Thursday that the New Mexico Department of Transportation identified $7.5 billion in needed projects to address the problem.
“These are projects that have been scoped out. There has been some planning undertaken, but quite simply, the funding is not there,” TRIP Director of Policy and Research Rocky Moretti said.
In June, NMDOT officials dished out hundreds of millions of dollars through bond sales for state transportation infrastructure repair, as part of a bill signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in February.
But the current funding gap remains nearly six times higher than in 2017, when NMDOT identified $1.3 billion in needed but unfunded projects, according to the report.
Sen. Larry Scott (R-Hobbs) asked the transportation panel if the failures listed in the report were “sudden, catastrophic and unanticipated,” or if they were due to lawmakers not “anticipating the need for repair” as New Mexico’s roads continued to get worse.
“It was definitely the latter,” Jim Garcia, the executive director of Associated Contractors of New Mexico, answered.
While lack of funding for New Mexico’s road infrastructure has been ongoing, costs are projected to increase while some key funding already in place is set to expire. The Infrastructure and Jobs Act, signed into law in 2021, provided $2.5 billion in federal dollars to New Mexico over five years for road and bridge investments. The funding expires Sep. 30.
And due to inflation, more funding covers less work. From 2022 to 2025, the Federal Highway Administration’s highway construction cost index increased by 45%.
Transportation officials noted that long-term transportation funding modelled after Texas and Arizona would also help. Arizona passed a five-year plan in 2026 that set aside $11 billion for road, bridge and airport investment.
Garcia told lawmakers that the “ideal path” would be for New Mexico to make a similar long-term funding plan, indexed to the Consumer Price Index to account for inflation.
Another benefit of long-term funding plans, Garcia noted, is that NMDOT and the contractor community are able to anticipate and accommodate projects years in advance.
“We need the money to do this. We have the capacity and money to build it. We just need the path to make it happen,” Garcia said.
New Mexico Department of Justice presents Mark Zuckerberg deposition in state’s Facebook case – Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Department of Justice attorneys led the second day of the state’s trial against Facebook by showing the jury a video deposition of founder Mark Zuckerberg regarding allegations that his company’s leaders publicly misrepresented how they stored and shared users’ data.
In the video deposition, attorney Randi McGinn, who’s representing the NMDOJ in the case, asked Zuckerberg a series of questions about the company’s data privacy policies. Although the case is largely focused on allegations that Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — exposed personal information in data breaches such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, McGinn spent much of the deposition questioning Zuckerberg about the company’s practices regarding content moderation and combatting misinformation.
“Despite your promise to treat politicians the same as ordinary users, Facebook created something known as a ‘whitelist,’ which shielded politicians from being fact-checked, didn’t it?” she asked Zuckerberg, who answered that he wasn’t familiar with such a list.
After nearly an hour, their conversation turned to the case’s central themes: whether, and how, third-party apps on the website improperly obtained millions of users’ personal data.
In the Cambridge Analytica data breach, an academic posted a personality quiz on the website. When people clicked on it, they surrendered their data, as well as their Facebook friends’ data, which the creator then sold to a consulting firm that aided President Donald Trump and Ted Cruz’s political campaigns.
Attorneys for the state have alleged that the pattern of exposing the data of everyone on a Facebook user’s friends list was common for years.
Zuckerberg disputed that characterization in his deposition.
“You’re missing the most important part, which is that the person had to grant the app developer permission” to access their data, he told McGinn.
His statements echoed an argument Facebook’s attorneys made in their opening arguments in Santa Fe Wednesday — that many of the case’s relevant details are outdated.
For example, Zuckerberg pointed to the data vulnerabilities associated with using third-party apps. It was popular in the social network’s early days to play games like FarmVille or Words with Friends on a computer while logged into Facebook, but that changed once social media use increasingly migrated to smartphones.
“Before maybe 2012, most of the use of Facebook was on our website. Now it’s in mobile apps,” he said. “We had a developer platform that allowed developers to build things that would go inside the website. On mobile apps, that’s not how it works, because of the rules around Apple and app stores and things like that. So, it’s evolved quite a bit over time.”
The trial, which stems from a lawsuit former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas filed in 2021, is expected to run through early October. NMDOJ attorneys on Thursday also began questioning witness Samuel Woolley, a University of Pittsburgh professor and expert on computational propaganda, after finishing the recording of Zuckerberg’s deposition. Witness questioning is expected to continue Friday.
Influential state senator facing ethics complaint over sons' business says he followed state-issued guidance - Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
An influential Democratic state senator is facing an ethics complaint over records that suggest he lobbied a New Mexico Department of Transportation engineer in 2024 about his sons’ paving company.
But Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday he was following guidance he’d sought from the State Ethics Commission and did not cross any ethical bright lines.
“I don’t get paid in any way from that company,” Muñoz said in a Thursday interview.
The complaint against him and the NMDOT — along with three individual DOT employees — was filed with the Ethics Commission last week by former state Sen. Jacob Candelaria, who is an attorney in Albuquerque.
It hinges on DOT emails discussing work done by Prestigious Paving, a Gallup-based company established in 2019 by Muñoz’s two sons that has been paid more than $18.8 million by the state over the last four-plus years.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
New Mexico lawmaker’s use of campaign funds for college football game in Ireland draws criticism - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico state Rep. Tanya Mirabal Moya (R-Los Lunas), who is seeking re-election to her third term in the Roundhouse, used campaign funds to purchase airfare, hotel rooms and tickets to a college football game for herself and her husband in Ireland last August, according to campaign filings.
State law says elected officials and candidates can only spend campaign funds on items “reasonably related to the performing the duties of the office held.”
American Bridge 21st century, a national progressive Super Political Action Committee and opposition research organization, first identified the expenditures and sent them to Source NM. Spokesperson Tiffiany Vaughn said the House District 7 race is one of several state legislative races the organization is tracking.
The expenditures also prompted criticism from the campaign of Mirabal Moya’s Democratic opponent in the Nov. 3 general election. Mirabal Moya, a Belen schoolteacher, is running against Democrat Rickie Gonzales for the New Mexico House District 7 race. The district covers part of Valencia County.
Gonzales referred Source NM’s request for comment to his campaign manager Michelle Mares, who told Source NM on Tuesday that she reviewed the expenditures and particularly finds the tickets for Mirabal Moya and her husband to attend the Aer Lingus College Football Classic “very suspicious and unnerving.”
“I don’t think her husband traveling around on the dime is what the people of our district really want,” she said.
Neither Mirabal Moya nor her husband Jason Moya, who is also her campaign treasurer, responded to multiple requests for comment from Source NM.
But Owen Scarpa, a spokesperson for New Mexico House Republicans, defended Mirabal Moya’s roughly $5,300 in expenses as “official legislative business” that was part of the American Irish State Legislators Caucus summit. The annual, multi-day event bills itself as trying to “foster and strengthen the longstanding relationship” between the United States and Ireland.
Mirabal Moya and at least two other Republican lawmakers — state Reps. Mark Murphy and Angelita Mejia, both of Roswell — attended the summit between Aug. 23 and 25, according to a photo Mirabal Moya shared with the Valencia County News Bulletin. Murphy and Mejia did not respond to requests for comment.
An itinerary Scarpa shared with Source NM shows the summit ended with the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin between Iowa State and Kansas State. Mirabal Moya spent roughly $600 via Ticketmaster, filings show, for tickets to the game.
On Wednesday afternoon, following Source NM’s inquiries, Mirabal Moya reimbursed her campaign account for the price of her husband’s ticket of roughly $300, campaign filings show. Scarpa said in an email that Mirabal Moya “made a mistake in how the purchase was reported.”
No other lawmakers used campaign funds to pay for either the airfare, hotel stay or football tickets, according to Source NM’s review of Secretary of State campaign finance records. Scarpa did not respond to requests for comment on which other lawmakers attended and how they paid for their expenses, but he described all parts of the summit as legitimate. Source NM has a pending public records request for more information related to the trip.
“Every part of that trip, from the government meetings to the game, was official legislative business set by the caucus and directly tied to the work Rep. Mirabal Moya has been doing on behalf of New Mexico, not something she tacked on herself,” he said.
Mirabal Moya and other lawmakers have introduced legislation in recent legislative sessions that would create atrade commission strengthening economic ties between Ireland and New Mexico. The bill never made it to committee in the 2026 legislative session.
The Ireland junket does not appear to have been announced in House Republican news releases nor shared after-the-fact on social media, based on a Source NM review. That marks a contrast with other international trade trips state lawmakers have taken, including one to Mexico some House Democrats announced earlier this week.
In response to Source NM’s inquiry about the whether the expenditures violate state law, Secretary of State Director of Communications, Legislative and Executive Affairs Lindsey Bachman cited the law that dictates how campaign funds can only be spent on official duties including “mail, telephone and travel expenditures to serve constituents,” but also noted that the office has not received any complaints regarding the lawmaker’s Ireland trip.
Homewise unveils new 72-unit townhome community in southwest Albuquerque - Kylie Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
Homewise this week debuted its largest Albuquerque development to date, an all-electric housing project designed to lower costs for buyers in an already tight market.
The nonprofit organization, which helps low- to moderate-income New Mexicans achieve homeownership and also develops housing, celebrated the opening of its new 72-unit townhome community, Sombra del Oeste, in southwest Albuquerque near the intersection of Gibson and Snow Vista SW on Thursday.
Homewise served as the project's developer, while local homebuilder Abrazo Homes served as general contractor. Infrastructure work on Sombra del Oeste's 10-plus-acre site launched in January 2025, and vertical construction began at the start of this year.
As of Thursday, the project was roughly 40% complete, according to Homewise Project Director Eugene Chavez. Many of the project's unfinished townhomes are framed but still need stucco and interior work. Chavez anticipates the community will reach full completion in June 2027.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
New Mexico environmentalists host ‘people’s public hearing’ to decry Roadless protection removal - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The United States Agriculture Department’s move to repeal protections for roughly 45 million acres of federal forestland nationally without a public hearing prompted New Mexico environmentalist groups to host their own forums across the state this week, including one Wednesday evening at a basketball gymnasium in Albuquerque’s Barelas neighborhood.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins on Aug. 18 announced that the department had formally proposed repealing the 2001 Roadless Rule, which currently protects federal forestland, including roughly 1.6 million acres in New Mexico, from road construction and timber harvesting. She unveiled the proposal last year in Santa Fe during the Western Governors’ Association annual convention.
Rollins said the roadless rule has “frustrated” local forest managers and impeded wildfire suppression and prevention, though studies show that wildfires, most of which are human-caused, occur less frequently in protected “roadless” areas than in unprotected forestland.
The USDA’s announcement made no mention of public forums to host public feedback on the proposal. Instead, the department is accepting online comments on the repeal through Sept. 21.
A USDA spokesperson did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment Thursday about why the department is not holding public forums.
Such public forums are typical for USDA rule changes, according to leaders of environmentalist group New Mexico Wild.The proposed enactment of the Roadless Rule 25 years ago featured hundreds of such public forums across the country, according to theFederal Register.
The USDA has also opted to hold public hearings for other recent proposed rule changes, including those about reducing salmonella in poultry products and regulations forSouth Texas onion growers.
Approximately 80 people, including U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) attended the “people’s public hearing” on Wednesday in Albuquerque, hosted by New Mexico Wild and other local environmentalist groups. Organizers said they would submit testimony from speakers at the hearing to the USDA. Other forums will be held in Pecos, Las Cruces and Silver City in the coming days.
Heinrich told those gathered Wednesday that he attended the public forums in the late 1990s regarding implementing the Roadless Rule. Those forums improved the eventual policy that has remained widely popular for the last 25 years, he said.
“Let this administration know that it’s not okay not to have a public forum,” Heinrich told attendees. “That public process is at the heart of good democracy, good governance, and we won’t accept anything less than that.”
Other speakers said they were concerned that repealing the rule will increase light pollution, harm wildlife, damage watersheds, impede Indigenous cultural practices and remove the experience of solitude from the outdoors, all in service of profit for timber companies.
Emmet Yepa is a Jemez Pueblo member and government affairs director at Semilla Project, a youth environmental justice group. He said the Roadless Rule has protected lands sacred to his people in the Santa Fe National Forest.
“As public lands, these areas should remain protected for the public good rather than open for development,” Yepa said. “We have a crucial opportunity to preserve these ecosystems while they are still healthy. Once lost, they cannot easily be restored.”
Plains Regional CEO dismissed - Eastern New Mexico News and KUNM staff report
The CEO of Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis – Bill Priest – was terminated this week. Eastern New Mexico News reports
Eastern New Mexico News reports that Hospital board member Brad Bender told Eastern New Mexico News that the move was a surprise to both the board and to Priest.
Presbyterian Healthcare Services, which operates the hospital, would not comment on the dismissal of Priest, who had been with the center for three years.
Presbyterian says that Brian Dietz has been made interim CEO.
Plains Regional Medical Center is the only hospital serving east-central New Mexico. The closest other New Mexico hospitals are located in Clayton, Las Vegas, and Lovington.
Measles case diagnosed in Valencia County - Santa Fe New Mexican
An unvaccinated child in Valencia County has tested positive for measles, the New Mexico Department of Health announced Thursday.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that it's the state's 19th case of the illness in 2026.
The previous 18 cases were largely confined to Southern New Mexico, with one identified in an unvaccinated Eddy County adult and the rest among federal detainees at jails in Luna, Doña Ana and Hidalgo counties.
AI literacy coach, used in Taos K-2 classrooms, sparks privacy concerns - Taos News
An AI literacy coach and testing tool used by Taos Municipal Schools and other districts across the state is facing scrutiny from parents and others concerned about how the software uses and stores recordings of young readers’ voices.
The Taos News reports that the New Mexico Public Education Department began requiring a tool called Amira I-S-I-P as its new statewide testing tool for students in kindergarten through second grade during the 2025-26 school year.
A bipartisan group of 35 state lawmakers sent a letter to PED Secretary Mariana Padilla Aug. 25. It called for greater transparency and additional independent testing to evaluate how accurately Amira measures students’ literary proficiency.
—Santa Fe New Mexican
The city of Santa Fe is planning to put treated water from the Paseo Real wastewater treatment plant into the Rio Grande via a proposed 17-mile pipe.
As the Santa Fe New Mexican reports, in return, Santa Fe would receive a credit for its San Juan-Chama water from the Colorado River basin. That means it wouldn’t have to release as much water from Abiquiú Lake.
That lake, a reservoir managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, was the source of the 650 million gallons of water released last week to replenish the Rio Grande.
Santa Fe’s Interim Public Utilities Director Jesse Roach told the Santa Fe New Mexican that the city is currently seeking an environmental permit, which he hopes to have a draft version available for public comment by the end of the year.
It’s a complicated process, though, because the proposed 17-mile pipeline requires permitting from three federal agencies: the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Reclamation.
Land grant appeals radio tower case to NM Supreme Court
—Taos News
In Taos, a local nonprofit radio station and the Cristobal De La Serna Land Grant continue to be engaged in a legal struggle.
KCEI-FM is branded as “Cultural Energy.” The station has a transmitter in Red River and a translator in El Prado. The Taos News reports that Robin Collier, president of Cultural Energy, wants to build a radio tower on U.S. Hill in the Sangre de Cristo mountains south of Taos. The land is within the Cristobal de la Serna Land Grant.
Building on the property would require what’s called a “quiet title” action, which resolves competing ownership claims to establish clear title. Last month, a New Mexico Court of Appeals opinion said that land grants are not immune from quiet title claims.
The Taos News reports that the Cristobal De La Serna Land Grant filed an appeal Tuesday in the New Mexico Supreme Court. The appeal asks the state’s high court to review the opinion published in August by the New Mexico Court of Appeals.
New Mexico AG backs Forward Party’s legal battle for ballot access
—Joshua Bowling, Source NM
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez this week backed the state Forward Party’s pending case before a federal appeals court that seeks to get its candidates on the Nov. 3 general election ballot.
New Mexico Forward Party Chair Bob Perls, a former state lawmaker whose campaign to run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján didn’t collect enough signatures to make the ballot,sued New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver in federal court in July. He alleged that she was enforcing ballot-access laws that created unfair burdens to minor-party candidates.
Perls’ argument hinged in part on the number of signatures the state requires candidates to collect to make the ballot. Democrats and Republicans must gather about 2,500 and 2,350, respectively. He and another Forward Party candidate seeking statewide office, however, failed to collect the more than 14,000 signatures the state requires.
That disparity is discriminatory, Perls’ attorneysargued before U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Strickland in August. Strickland earlier this monthdenied the Forward Party’s motion to stop the secretary of state from enforcing those ballot laws, writing that aspects of the party’s case are likely moot as several of its local candidates qualified for the ballot. Perls subsequently appealed.
In an amicus brief filed Thursday, Torrez and other New Mexico Department of Justice officials backed the Forward Party’s argument before the appellate court.
“Major party candidates, minor party candidates, and independents should compete on a level playing field in New Mexico’s elections. Today, they do not,” they wrote in the filing. “New Mexico requires all candidates to earn their place on the ballot. But major party candidates can stroll onto the ballot while independent and minor party candidates must forge a more difficult path.”
The brief says that New Mexicans “deserve real competition at the polls” and requested that the federal appeals court order that the Forward Party candidates be placed on the ballot.
Lindsey Bachman, the secretary of state’s communications, legislative and executive affairs director, in a statement to Source NM noted that Toulouse Oliver, as the state’s chief election officer, “represents the interests of every voter in our state.”
“She maintains that the federal court made the correct determination and will continue to defend New Mexico’s election laws in this case,” Bachman said.
Perls has previously pointed tothe race for Luján’s seat in the U.S. Senate as a prime example. The Republican Party of New Mexico failed to field a candidate ahead of the June primary election, creating a relatively easy path for Larry Marker of Roswell, a write-in candidate whose name did not appear on the ballot, to become the party’s nominee.
Perls told Source NM on Friday that he did not know ahead of time that Torrez’s office was going to support his effort.
“Good for the attorney general for standing up for the voters and not taking a partisan approach,” he said. “Any person on the street would say that the signature requirements are unfair. You don’t have to be a lawyer to figure that out.”
Transportation officials urge state lawmakers to fund deteriorating roads as federal funding expires
–Matthew Mindschein, Source New Mexico
National transportation analysts, joined by a state transportation department official and contractors, told lawmakers this week that while they have identified improvements for the state’s substandard roads, they lack sufficient funding to make the repairs.
According to a 2026 report by TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit, 56% of all major locally and state-maintained roads in New Mexico are in “poor or mediocre condition.” Driving on rough roads costs the average New Mexico driver $1,043 annually in additional vehicle operating costs — a total of $1.6 billion statewide, according to the report.
National analysts told state lawmakers during the Legislature’s interim Transportation Infrastructure Revenue Subcommittee on Thursday that the New Mexico Department of Transportation identified $7.5 billion in needed projects to address the problem.
“These are projects that have been scoped out. There has been some planning undertaken, but quite simply, the funding is not there,” TRIP Director of Policy and Research Rocky Moretti said.
In June, NMDOT officials dished out hundreds of millions of dollars through bond sales for state transportation infrastructure repair, as part of a bill signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in February.
But the current funding gap remains nearly six times higher than in 2017, when NMDOT identified $1.3 billion in needed but unfunded projects, according to the report.
Sen. Larry Scott (R-Hobbs) asked the transportation panel if the failures listed in the report were “sudden, catastrophic and unanticipated,” or if they were due to lawmakers not “anticipating the need for repair” as New Mexico’s roads continued to get worse.
“It was definitely the latter,” Jim Garcia, the executive director of Associated Contractors of New Mexico, answered.
While lack of funding for New Mexico’s road infrastructure has been ongoing, costs are projected to increase while some key funding already in place is set to expire. The Infrastructure and Jobs Act, signed into law in 2021, provided $2.5 billion in federal dollars to New Mexico over five years for road and bridge investments. The funding expires Sep. 30.
And due to inflation, more funding covers less work. From 2022 to 2025, the Federal Highway Administration’s highway construction cost index increased by 45%.
Transportation officials noted that long-term transportation funding modelled after Texas and Arizona would also help. Arizona passed a five-year plan in 2026 that set aside $11 billion for road, bridge and airport investment.
Garcia told lawmakers that the “ideal path” would be for New Mexico to make a similar long-term funding plan, indexed to the Consumer Price Index to account for inflation.
Another benefit of long-term funding plans, Garcia noted, is that NMDOT and the contractor community are able to anticipate and accommodate projects years in advance.
“We need the money to do this. We have the capacity and money to build it. We just need the path to make it happen,” Garcia said.
New Mexico Department of Justice presents Mark Zuckerberg deposition in state’s Facebook case – Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Department of Justice attorneys led the second day of the state’s trial against Facebook by showing the jury a video deposition of founder Mark Zuckerberg regarding allegations that his company’s leaders publicly misrepresented how they stored and shared users’ data.
In the video deposition, attorney Randi McGinn, who’s representing the NMDOJ in the case, asked Zuckerberg a series of questions about the company’s data privacy policies. Although the case is largely focused on allegations that Facebook — now known as Meta Platforms — exposed personal information in data breaches such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, McGinn spent much of the deposition questioning Zuckerberg about the company’s practices regarding content moderation and combatting misinformation.
“Despite your promise to treat politicians the same as ordinary users, Facebook created something known as a ‘whitelist,’ which shielded politicians from being fact-checked, didn’t it?” she asked Zuckerberg, who answered that he wasn’t familiar with such a list.
After nearly an hour, their conversation turned to the case’s central themes: whether, and how, third-party apps on the website improperly obtained millions of users’ personal data.
In the Cambridge Analytica data breach, an academic posted a personality quiz on the website. When people clicked on it, they surrendered their data, as well as their Facebook friends’ data, which the creator then sold to a consulting firm that aided President Donald Trump and Ted Cruz’s political campaigns.
Attorneys for the state have alleged that the pattern of exposing the data of everyone on a Facebook user’s friends list was common for years.
Zuckerberg disputed that characterization in his deposition.
“You’re missing the most important part, which is that the person had to grant the app developer permission” to access their data, he told McGinn.
His statements echoed an argument Facebook’s attorneys made in their opening arguments in Santa Fe Wednesday — that many of the case’s relevant details are outdated.
For example, Zuckerberg pointed to the data vulnerabilities associated with using third-party apps. It was popular in the social network’s early days to play games like FarmVille or Words with Friends on a computer while logged into Facebook, but that changed once social media use increasingly migrated to smartphones.
“Before maybe 2012, most of the use of Facebook was on our website. Now it’s in mobile apps,” he said. “We had a developer platform that allowed developers to build things that would go inside the website. On mobile apps, that’s not how it works, because of the rules around Apple and app stores and things like that. So, it’s evolved quite a bit over time.”
The trial, which stems from a lawsuit former New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas filed in 2021, is expected to run through early October. NMDOJ attorneys on Thursday also began questioning witness Samuel Woolley, a University of Pittsburgh professor and expert on computational propaganda, after finishing the recording of Zuckerberg’s deposition. Witness questioning is expected to continue Friday.
Influential state senator facing ethics complaint over sons' business says he followed state-issued guidance - Dan Boyd, Albuquerque Journal
An influential Democratic state senator is facing an ethics complaint over records that suggest he lobbied a New Mexico Department of Transportation engineer in 2024 about his sons’ paving company.
But Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday he was following guidance he’d sought from the State Ethics Commission and did not cross any ethical bright lines.
“I don’t get paid in any way from that company,” Muñoz said in a Thursday interview.
The complaint against him and the NMDOT — along with three individual DOT employees — was filed with the Ethics Commission last week by former state Sen. Jacob Candelaria, who is an attorney in Albuquerque.
It hinges on DOT emails discussing work done by Prestigious Paving, a Gallup-based company established in 2019 by Muñoz’s two sons that has been paid more than $18.8 million by the state over the last four-plus years.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
New Mexico lawmaker’s use of campaign funds for college football game in Ireland draws criticism - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico state Rep. Tanya Mirabal Moya (R-Los Lunas), who is seeking re-election to her third term in the Roundhouse, used campaign funds to purchase airfare, hotel rooms and tickets to a college football game for herself and her husband in Ireland last August, according to campaign filings.
State law says elected officials and candidates can only spend campaign funds on items “reasonably related to the performing the duties of the office held.”
American Bridge 21st century, a national progressive Super Political Action Committee and opposition research organization, first identified the expenditures and sent them to Source NM. Spokesperson Tiffiany Vaughn said the House District 7 race is one of several state legislative races the organization is tracking.
The expenditures also prompted criticism from the campaign of Mirabal Moya’s Democratic opponent in the Nov. 3 general election. Mirabal Moya, a Belen schoolteacher, is running against Democrat Rickie Gonzales for the New Mexico House District 7 race. The district covers part of Valencia County.
Gonzales referred Source NM’s request for comment to his campaign manager Michelle Mares, who told Source NM on Tuesday that she reviewed the expenditures and particularly finds the tickets for Mirabal Moya and her husband to attend the Aer Lingus College Football Classic “very suspicious and unnerving.”
“I don’t think her husband traveling around on the dime is what the people of our district really want,” she said.
Neither Mirabal Moya nor her husband Jason Moya, who is also her campaign treasurer, responded to multiple requests for comment from Source NM.
But Owen Scarpa, a spokesperson for New Mexico House Republicans, defended Mirabal Moya’s roughly $5,300 in expenses as “official legislative business” that was part of the American Irish State Legislators Caucus summit. The annual, multi-day event bills itself as trying to “foster and strengthen the longstanding relationship” between the United States and Ireland.
Mirabal Moya and at least two other Republican lawmakers — state Reps. Mark Murphy and Angelita Mejia, both of Roswell — attended the summit between Aug. 23 and 25, according to a photo Mirabal Moya shared with the Valencia County News Bulletin. Murphy and Mejia did not respond to requests for comment.
An itinerary Scarpa shared with Source NM shows the summit ended with the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin between Iowa State and Kansas State. Mirabal Moya spent roughly $600 via Ticketmaster, filings show, for tickets to the game.
On Wednesday afternoon, following Source NM’s inquiries, Mirabal Moya reimbursed her campaign account for the price of her husband’s ticket of roughly $300, campaign filings show. Scarpa said in an email that Mirabal Moya “made a mistake in how the purchase was reported.”
No other lawmakers used campaign funds to pay for either the airfare, hotel stay or football tickets, according to Source NM’s review of Secretary of State campaign finance records. Scarpa did not respond to requests for comment on which other lawmakers attended and how they paid for their expenses, but he described all parts of the summit as legitimate. Source NM has a pending public records request for more information related to the trip.
“Every part of that trip, from the government meetings to the game, was official legislative business set by the caucus and directly tied to the work Rep. Mirabal Moya has been doing on behalf of New Mexico, not something she tacked on herself,” he said.
Mirabal Moya and other lawmakers have introduced legislation in recent legislative sessions that would create atrade commission strengthening economic ties between Ireland and New Mexico. The bill never made it to committee in the 2026 legislative session.
The Ireland junket does not appear to have been announced in House Republican news releases nor shared after-the-fact on social media, based on a Source NM review. That marks a contrast with other international trade trips state lawmakers have taken, including one to Mexico some House Democrats announced earlier this week.
In response to Source NM’s inquiry about the whether the expenditures violate state law, Secretary of State Director of Communications, Legislative and Executive Affairs Lindsey Bachman cited the law that dictates how campaign funds can only be spent on official duties including “mail, telephone and travel expenditures to serve constituents,” but also noted that the office has not received any complaints regarding the lawmaker’s Ireland trip.
Homewise unveils new 72-unit townhome community in southwest Albuquerque - Kylie Garcia, Albuquerque Journal
Homewise this week debuted its largest Albuquerque development to date, an all-electric housing project designed to lower costs for buyers in an already tight market.
The nonprofit organization, which helps low- to moderate-income New Mexicans achieve homeownership and also develops housing, celebrated the opening of its new 72-unit townhome community, Sombra del Oeste, in southwest Albuquerque near the intersection of Gibson and Snow Vista SW on Thursday.
Homewise served as the project's developer, while local homebuilder Abrazo Homes served as general contractor. Infrastructure work on Sombra del Oeste's 10-plus-acre site launched in January 2025, and vertical construction began at the start of this year.
As of Thursday, the project was roughly 40% complete, according to Homewise Project Director Eugene Chavez. Many of the project's unfinished townhomes are framed but still need stucco and interior work. Chavez anticipates the community will reach full completion in June 2027.
For more information on this story, visit the Albuquerque Journal website.
New Mexico environmentalists host ‘people’s public hearing’ to decry Roadless protection removal - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
The United States Agriculture Department’s move to repeal protections for roughly 45 million acres of federal forestland nationally without a public hearing prompted New Mexico environmentalist groups to host their own forums across the state this week, including one Wednesday evening at a basketball gymnasium in Albuquerque’s Barelas neighborhood.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins on Aug. 18 announced that the department had formally proposed repealing the 2001 Roadless Rule, which currently protects federal forestland, including roughly 1.6 million acres in New Mexico, from road construction and timber harvesting. She unveiled the proposal last year in Santa Fe during the Western Governors’ Association annual convention.
Rollins said the roadless rule has “frustrated” local forest managers and impeded wildfire suppression and prevention, though studies show that wildfires, most of which are human-caused, occur less frequently in protected “roadless” areas than in unprotected forestland.
The USDA’s announcement made no mention of public forums to host public feedback on the proposal. Instead, the department is accepting online comments on the repeal through Sept. 21.
A USDA spokesperson did not immediately respond to Source NM’s request for comment Thursday about why the department is not holding public forums.
Such public forums are typical for USDA rule changes, according to leaders of environmentalist group New Mexico Wild.The proposed enactment of the Roadless Rule 25 years ago featured hundreds of such public forums across the country, according to theFederal Register.
The USDA has also opted to hold public hearings for other recent proposed rule changes, including those about reducing salmonella in poultry products and regulations forSouth Texas onion growers.
Approximately 80 people, including U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) attended the “people’s public hearing” on Wednesday in Albuquerque, hosted by New Mexico Wild and other local environmentalist groups. Organizers said they would submit testimony from speakers at the hearing to the USDA. Other forums will be held in Pecos, Las Cruces and Silver City in the coming days.
Heinrich told those gathered Wednesday that he attended the public forums in the late 1990s regarding implementing the Roadless Rule. Those forums improved the eventual policy that has remained widely popular for the last 25 years, he said.
“Let this administration know that it’s not okay not to have a public forum,” Heinrich told attendees. “That public process is at the heart of good democracy, good governance, and we won’t accept anything less than that.”
Other speakers said they were concerned that repealing the rule will increase light pollution, harm wildlife, damage watersheds, impede Indigenous cultural practices and remove the experience of solitude from the outdoors, all in service of profit for timber companies.
Emmet Yepa is a Jemez Pueblo member and government affairs director at Semilla Project, a youth environmental justice group. He said the Roadless Rule has protected lands sacred to his people in the Santa Fe National Forest.
“As public lands, these areas should remain protected for the public good rather than open for development,” Yepa said. “We have a crucial opportunity to preserve these ecosystems while they are still healthy. Once lost, they cannot easily be restored.”
Plains Regional CEO dismissed - Eastern New Mexico News and KUNM staff report
The CEO of Plains Regional Medical Center in Clovis – Bill Priest – was terminated this week. Eastern New Mexico News reports
Eastern New Mexico News reports that Hospital board member Brad Bender told Eastern New Mexico News that the move was a surprise to both the board and to Priest.
Presbyterian Healthcare Services, which operates the hospital, would not comment on the dismissal of Priest, who had been with the center for three years.
Presbyterian says that Brian Dietz has been made interim CEO.
Plains Regional Medical Center is the only hospital serving east-central New Mexico. The closest other New Mexico hospitals are located in Clayton, Las Vegas, and Lovington.
Measles case diagnosed in Valencia County - Santa Fe New Mexican
An unvaccinated child in Valencia County has tested positive for measles, the New Mexico Department of Health announced Thursday.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that it's the state's 19th case of the illness in 2026.
The previous 18 cases were largely confined to Southern New Mexico, with one identified in an unvaccinated Eddy County adult and the rest among federal detainees at jails in Luna, Doña Ana and Hidalgo counties.
AI literacy coach, used in Taos K-2 classrooms, sparks privacy concerns - Taos News
An AI literacy coach and testing tool used by Taos Municipal Schools and other districts across the state is facing scrutiny from parents and others concerned about how the software uses and stores recordings of young readers’ voices.
The Taos News reports that the New Mexico Public Education Department began requiring a tool called Amira I-S-I-P as its new statewide testing tool for students in kindergarten through second grade during the 2025-26 school year.
A bipartisan group of 35 state lawmakers sent a letter to PED Secretary Mariana Padilla Aug. 25. It called for greater transparency and additional independent testing to evaluate how accurately Amira measures students’ literary proficiency.