Skip to content
  • Contact us
  • Get our headlines by email
Donate Now!
  • Donate Now!
  • New Mexico In Depth
  • New Mexico In Depth
  • About Us
    • Staff
    • Partners
    • Board of directors
    • Funding
    • By-laws
    • Awards
    • Republish our work
  • Tell us your COVID-19 Story
  • Money in Politics
  • Education
  • Criminal Justice
  • Diversity Fellowship
  • Native America
  • Report: Redistricting NM 2021
  • 2021 Legislative Special Edition
  • Subscribe
  • Support Our Journalism
  • Donate Now!
  • Top menu
    • Contact us
    • Get our headlines by email

New Mexico In Depth - Smart. Investigative. Journalism for New Mexico.

New Mexico In Depth (https://nmindepth.com/)

  • About Us
    • Staff
    • Partners
    • Board of directors
    • Funding
    • By-laws
    • Awards
    • Republish our work
  • Tell us your COVID-19 Story
  • Money in Politics
  • Education
  • Criminal Justice
  • Diversity Fellowship
  • Native America
  • Report: Redistricting NM 2021
  • 2021 Legislative Special Edition
  • Subscribe
  • Support Our Journalism
  • Don't Miss
  • COVID-19 in New Mexico

Police reform bills sweep the virtual statehouse, but outcome uncertain

By Ted Alcorn, New Mexico In Depth | March 2, 2021

Push to end private prisons stymied by concerns for local economies

Lawmakers running for Congress don’t have to disclose fundraising during session. We asked them to.

From our blog

  • Dark money 3
    Sen. Wirth seeks to close dark money loophole

    Sen. Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, is seeking to tighten a so-called “loophole” in New Mexico’s campaign finance laws that allowed a dark money group to hide its donors during the 2020 election. “I do think we need to continue our work to be sure that voters know who’s donating to independent expenditure committees,” […]

  • Why should we care about dark money?

    If there’s one thing that’s dominated my reporting over the eight months I’ve spent with New Mexico in Depth, it’s dark money; it was the subject of my first story, and almost half the stories I’ve reported since then. For the uninitiated, “dark money” typically refers to outside spending by nonprofit entities that are not […]

  • Lawmakers, and lobbyists too, push through in the midst of COVID

    The pandemic legislative session (as it will go down in history) lived up to its name just a week in, with at least one House Republican lawmaker and four Roundhouse staff testing positive for COVID-19. Given that lawmakers aren’t required to be tested, there may be more.  Democratic House Speaker Brian Egolf said he was “dismayed” Republicans […]

  • Serious Challenges in the 2021 Session

    With the demise of “moderate” Senate Democrats in the 2020 election, New Mexico’s Legislature again shifts leftward. As New Mexicans turn their attention toward 2021 the state remains in the throes of COVID 19 and the virus shows no signs of letting up. What does all of this mean for the 2021 Session? For starters […]

  • Fusion Voting in New Mexico: Bringing More Voters and More Choices Into Our Democracy

    The New Mexico Legislature has made great strides in the last few years toward opening up our state elections to more voters. Same-day voter registration was passed in 2019, automatic voter registration was codified and they made it easier to vote absentee.  Historic turnout in 2020, especially among first time and younger voters is evidence […]

  • Absence of watchdog groups means lawmakers must proceed with caution

    With news that the 2021 legislative session would be held virtually – with the public and lobbyists prohibited from being in the capitol building – it’s likely that legislative agendas are being adjusted. For interested citizens, lobbyists and state agencies charged with reporting to or suggesting reforms to the Legislature, the most important question may […]

  • Focus on Judicial Public Financing, Redistricting, Open Primaries This Session

    This past year, Common Cause New Mexico—along with many other groups— spent the majority of our time ensuring that this historic pandemic did not deter New Mexico citizens from exercising their most important right: the right to vote.  For months, we worked with community partners to instruct voters on registration and absentee voting, worked with […]

More from our blog

Recent Posts

  • Dark money 2
    PRC commissioner urges PNM to “come clean” on dark money

    New Mexico Public Regulation Commissioner (PRC) Joseph Maestas on Wednesday demanded that Public Service Company of New Mexico disclose whether it contributed to a dark money group that supported a November ballot measure seeking to overhaul the agency charged with regulating the utility. “I'm just simply calling on PNM to come clean, you know, disclose whether or not you donated to this dark money PAC [sic],” Maestas said during a PRC hearing, referencing the nonprofit group Committee to Protect New Mexico Consumers.

  • New Mexico largest electric utility bankrolled dark money group in 2020 election

    The New Mexico State Ethics Commission announced on Friday that PNM Resources, Inc, the state’s largest electric utility, was the sole funder of a dark money group called the “Council for a Competitive New Mexico,” giving the group almost half a million dollars. The nonprofit entity, founded in March 2020, spent over $130,000 on mailers and robo-calls in five state senate Democratic primary races last spring after receiving $470,000 from the utility, seeking to boost powerful incumbents while attacking their opponents.

  • Dark money group pushing PRC reform tied to major oil company

    Exxon Mobil Corporation contributed to a dark-money group that supported a successful November referendum reforming the state’s Public Regulation Commission (PRC), according to a campaign finance report filed by one of its lobbyists. One of the largest oil and gas producers in New Mexico, the multinational conglomerate gave at least $10,000 to the “Committee to Protect New Mexico Consumers,” a nonprofit that spent a quarter of a million dollars touting the merits of a constitutional amendment, which eventually passed handily.

  • It’s unclear whether vaccines are reaching hardest hit New Mexico communities

    As New Mexico continues to amp up vaccine distribution, health officials don’t appear to be allocating a greater number of doses to those living in low-income areas that have been hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those areas include McKinley County, the southern border region, and communities in central New Mexico where some of the highest rates of positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths have occurred.  Other than some targeted distribution to congregant facilities like nursing homes and prisons, as well as health care and medical workers, the state is taking an approach of calling up individuals who've registered on the state vaccine portal.

  • NM lawmakers tackle civil rights protections and police accountability

    After a year in which police use of lethal force against Black people awakened large swaths of the American public to a discussion about systemic racism, lawmakers in New Mexico are looking to reform policing and better protect civil liberties.  The Memorial Day killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked mass marches across the country, including in New Mexico, to protest the unequal and dangerous treatment Black people encounter in interactions with police.  New Mexico is no stranger to calls for greater scrutiny of law enforcement.  The U.S. Department of Justice forced the state’s largest law enforcement agency into a consent decree after concluding in 2014 the Albuquerque Police Department exhibited a troubling pattern of excessive force, including one of the highest rates in fatal shootings by its police officers. The killings haven’t been limited to APD, either.

  • For the state’s dormant criminal abortion law, conditions are primed for a repeal

    Lawmakers and reproductive health advocates believe the time is ripe to remove a criminal abortion law from New Mexico state statute. First step: the reintroduction of a bill during the 2021 legislative session that would repeal a 1969 law that, while unenforceable due to the U.S. Supreme Court 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protects the right to an abortion, remains one of the most punitive of its kind in the country.  This story first appeared in New Mexico In Depth's 2021 Legislative Special Edition.

  • Rural schools battled bad internet, low attendance in the pandemic. Will spring semester be better?

    This story is part of a collaborative reporting project including New Mexico In Depth called "Lesson Plans: Rural schools grapple with COVID-19". Andy and Amy Jo Hellenbrand live on a little farm in south-central Wisconsin where they raise corn, soybeans, wheat, heifers, chickens, goats, bunnies, and their four children, ages 5 to 12.

New Mexico In Depth
Tweets by @NMInDepth

Community forum

  • “Thank you for this article on the complex work of training teachers and giving them the knowledge and experience they…”

    — Barbara Petersen, APS Board of Education, District 4 on Teacher shortage deeper, more complex than vacancies suggest

  • “"The litany of reasons for the exodus of teachers …" is not, as far as I can see, based on…”

    — ched macquigg on Teacher shortage deeper, more complex than vacancies suggest

  • “Lets not forget out own Whistle Blowers, whose lawsuit recently became public under the new Governor; https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6403995-LEA-2014-Lawsuit-R.html is worth a…”

    — Chris Mechels on ‘The silenced’: meet the climate whistleblowers muzzled by Trump

  • “Missing is the obvious, which the DAs don't wish to consider. Take the shootings to the Grand Jury; a REAL…”

    — Chris Mechels on BernCo DA: New Mexico AG should review questionable police shootings

On our website

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Our partners
  • Community forum
  • Republish our work

E-mail updates

Enter your e-mail address to get our headlines and news about New Mexico In Depth.

© Copyright 2012-2013 by New Mexico In Depth, Inc.

New Mexico In Depth is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News

Built with the Largo WordPress Theme from the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Back to top ↑