Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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I grew up in Denver and still go back every summer to visit my sister, nephews and grandnieces in Aurora, Colo. And so, my ears perked up recently when I heard Aurora being paired with Springfield, Ohio, as the two most egregious examples of immigration run amok. I’ve never been to Springfield, but clearly the two are very different. Springfield is a town of 58,000 people in the Rust Belt of northern Ohio, about 80 miles west of Cincinnati. Aurora is essentially a part of Denver. If not for the city limit signs, it would b...
When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision. But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak. “It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can....
When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision. But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak. “It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can....
Every two years New Mexico voters get the chance to make changes to our state constitution. Some years they’re big, fundamental changes, like scrapping the old state Board of Education in favor of a secretary appointed by the governor or ending the cash bail system. Some years they are just tinkering around the edges. This is one of those years. Voters will have four constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. Two of them will increase state support for disabled veterans and all veterans who have been honorably dischar...
My best friend Kelly and I frequently had loud, boisterous arguments over politics that led folks to believe that we disagreed about everything. They were mistaken. His views were influenced by watching Fox News, and mine are influenced by watching CNN, so that’s where the arguments would start. But they didn’t end there. It usually didn’t take long for both of us to call BS on the TV talking points and get to the heart of the matter. That didn’t always lead to an agreement, but it almost always led to a common underst...
The number of New Mexico residents aged 85 and older will double in the next 20 years, according to updated projections by demographers at the University of New Mexico. I turned 66 last month, and plan to be one of them. The number of residents aged 65 and older is expected to increase by 200,000 during that same time period. It’s estimated that the state’s senior population will grow from 13% in 2010 to nearly 23% by 2040. All of which makes the recent surprise inspections of senior care facilities throughout the state eve...
If the recent Las Cruces town hall meeting on public safety called by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was intended to demonstrate the public’s concern about crime, it was a huge success. They expected it to draw about 200 people and take two hours to complete. Instead, a crowd of more than 500 packed the Convention Center ballroom for a discussion that lasted long into the night. There were a couple of clear takeaways. The first is a growing belief among residents that Las Cruces is no longer the safe community that it once w...
If you need assistance with your federal benefits, you can speak with staff members for U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan at their district offices. If you have issues with the city or county that need to be resolved, you can reach your representative on the city council and county commission at their offices. Constituent services are a vital part of the job for most elected officials. If, however, your problems are with the state, you can try reaching your state senator and representative, but they don’t have an o...
Several years ago, when I was covering state government from Santa Fe, I attended the annual briefing given to reporters prior to the upcoming wildfire season. After going over the current conditions and expectations for the coming months, the discussion turned to reporters’ safety. We were warned about the unpredictable nature of fire and the importance of following their directions at all times. At the end, they talked about worst-case scenarios. The instructor pulled out what looked like an aluminum-foil blanket and e...
The U.S. Supreme Court has just stripped away the final protections against gerrymandering. With a series of rulings in the 1960s, the court established that the 14th Amendment required political districts to be redrawn so that “the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the state.” The Roberts court has taken a two-step approach to dismantling those protections. In 2019, the court ruled that while gerrymandering intended to dilute the political strength of racial minorities was...
Here’s to the deep state, or, what we used to refer to as the federal government. With little fanfare, the Federal Trade Commission has leveled the playing field for millions of workers. The FTC freed an estimated 30 million employees who are now bound to their current employers through non-compete clauses. On a 3-2 vote, the commission found that the clauses are an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting com...
While mental illness isn’t a crime, it’s also not a permission slip to excuse crimes. Yet that’s what happens in New Mexico once a defendant has been found by the court to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. It’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for future crimes. That freedom from accountability has allowed a small number of offenders to act with increasing brazenness against both property owners and police. “We deal with them all day, every day,” Las Cruces Police Chief Jeremy Story said during a recent community radio...
Everybody wants to start at the top. And so, of course, the deep-pocketed investors behind the attempt to build a centrist third party under the No Labels banner started with a presidential election. And not just any presidential election, but one in which the Republican nominee is a former president who is facing 88 felony indictments in four separate cases and is vowing vengeance if he wins. Democratic voters with sour memories of Ralph Nader and Jill Stein still haunting them greeted the No Labels effort with fear and...
The capital outlay bill passed by the Legislature this year provides just under $290 million for 136 projects throughout the state, including $20 million for steam tunnel and electrical infrastructure upgrades at New Mexico State University. NMSU will also get $10 million for facility construction in the Creative Media Institute and $1.575 million for road improvements on the Gadsden campus. All 136 projects will be funded without any kind of ranking system to determine what our top priorities are, or vetting process to ensur...
The geographic political divisions in New Mexico have become so entrenched that both parties have just stopped trying in areas of the state where the other side has the advantage. Of the 42 seats up for election in the state Senate this year, only 15 will be decided in the general election. Democrats will claim 17 seats and Republicans will win 10 without posting a yard sign, shaking a hand, making a campaign promise or kissing a baby. Democrats have apparently given up on the seat they held from 1989 to 2020 when John...
Most Americans think we have the right to attend public meetings and let our elected officials know what we think about how they’re doing. There is no such right in New Mexico. Our open meetings law requires that accommodations be made for the public to attend and listen to meetings of the city council, county commission and other government boards and commissions. But, there’s nothing that says we have the right to speak at those meetings. It’s up to each board to set its own rules. Typically, elected leaders under...
After having her Bernalillo County gun ban overturned by the court, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tried to do it the right way. She put together an impressive public safety package of proposed legislation that addressed not only guns but also bail reform, sentencing, and police pay and recruitment. If passed, it would have been a huge step toward addressing our state’s gun violence epidemic. New Mexico ranked seventh in the nation in gun deaths, according to a 2020 report by Johns Hopkins, which found that firearms were the lea...
In the days leading up to the primary election in New Hampshire, several voters received phone calls from a voice that sounded like and claimed to be President Joe Biden encouraging them to stay home on election day. It was the first well-publicized use of artificial intelligence in a dirty tricks political campaign, but it undoubtedly will not be the last. The New Mexico Legislature took action this session to get in front of the problem. House Bill 182, which awaits the governor’s signature, amends the Campaign Reporting A...
Throw my brain in a hurricane And the blind can have my eyes And the deaf can have both of my ears If they don’t mind the size. — John Prine I wasn’t blind yet when I had cornea transplant surgery in my left eye a couple of weeks ago, but I’m told that would have likely been my eventual fate. I was diagnosed with Fuchs’ dystrophy, which impacts a thin layer of cells that pump fluid to the cornea. The loss of those cells causes fluid to build up on the cornea, leading to cloudy vision and, over time, blisters that can break...
I was driving through Colorado last summer when I encountered a series of electronic highway signs warning me to, “Slow the fast down.” Being a product of the Colorado school system, I was taken aback by the poor grammar and sentence construction. Then it occurred to me that “fast” was a four-letter word starting with “f” so I was supposed to think — well, you know. How edgy. Just what I want in my highway signs. Now, it’s posted alongside Interstate 25, next week it will be doing the opening set at Jimmy’s Chuckle Hut. Ther...
The New Mexico Legislature is different from anything else I’ve ever covered. Part of that is structural, with arcane rules limiting sessions to 30 or 60 days and calling for legislators to work without pay or staff. And part of it is cultural. The time limitations mean every session is a sprint to the finish, with hundreds of bills dying a quiet death when the clock strikes noon on the final day. And yet, during each day of the session official business is temporarily set aside to make time for dancers, musicians, poets a...
Like the salaries paid by the Los Angeles Dodgers for Japanese imports, the revenue numbers for the state are getting to be so big that it’s hard to wrap your head around them. The latest estimate projects the state will collect just under $12 billion in fiscal year 2024, which runs through June. That’s up by $2.3 billion from the past fiscal year and by $3.9 billion from two years ago. All of which means that legislators will have just under $3.6 billion in so-called “new money” this year, beyond the $9.7 billion include...
While she has not yet announced her agenda for the 30-day session of the state Legislature that starts Jan. 16, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has made it clear that gun safety will be a priority. Success will depend on her making it the priority. Lujan Grisham overstepped her bounds when she issued an emergency order in September banning guns in all public places in Bernalillo County. While gun violence is an emergency, it is one that must be addressed by the Legislature. No governor should have the unilateral powers that...
Last summer I wrote a column praising the United States Senate for finally passing a bill to compensate those in southern New Mexico who suffered illness and death following exposure to the world’s first atomic blast at Trinity site. I ended the column with this: “That’s the good news. The bad news is that the bill now moves to the House, which seems much more interested in exploring the cocaine-fueled antics of Hunter Biden than doing anything to help the people they serve.” Now, the House has stripped funding in the def...
They said it couldn’t be done, and by “they” I mean me and just about everyone else who has followed the New Mexico State University football team over the years. In 2020, when the state was facing a $2 billion budget deficit and all but two games on the NMSU scheduled were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote my second column calling for the Aggies to drop down to the FCS division in football. It wasn’t that I didn’t like college football or appreciate the potential benefits that come with the national exposure...
