coronavirus

Las Cruces Mayor seeks emergency powers

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Doña Ana county’s positive COVID-19 cases have jumped into the double digits — now at 13 — the third largest total after Santa Fe and Bernalillo counties. Las Cruces, the largest metropolitan area in Doña Ana county and southern New Mexico, has yet to declare a public emergency, however. That may change soon. 

The city council is scheduled to hold a special meeting tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. to amend the Las Cruces Municipal Code to include a new article giving the mayor additional powers during an emergency. Mayor Ken Miyagishima said without that action, he’s hindered from taking emergency action. 

“According to our city attorney, it’s not as clear or as concise as it should be to allow me to [take emergency action],” Miyagishima said in an interview. 

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller declared a local state of emergency on March 18, when New Mexico was reporting 28 cases statewide. But Keller needed the city council to approve new powers for the mayor. 

If passed tomorrow, the ordinance will allow Miyagshima to move forward with emergency actions without getting votes from the city council.

Covid-19

Navajo Nation asks tourists and other visitors to stay home as first Covid-19 cases emerge

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Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez sat at a desk with Chlorox handwipes as he announced through an online broadcast that the Navajo Nation was closed to outside visitors now that two Navajo people have tested positive in the Kayenta, AZ area. 

There won’t be barricaded roads, but tourist areas are closed and he asked everyone to respect the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation by not visiting during what he called an unprecedented situation. “The best thing to do is stay at home,” he said. 

In making the case for travelers to not come to the Navajo Nation, he noted that the first cases that emerged in New Mexico were from people who had traveled outside the state, bringing the “bug” home. He explained “bug,” saying was the best translation of virus in the Navajo language. 

Nez emphasized rapidly changing conditions, noting that recommendations from the federal government first limited gatherings to under 100, but have lowered now to groups of 10. He urged people to pay attention and to follow the advice of leaders. 

“We’re not closing down churches or ceremonies, but these are recommendations, just like we’re doing now, keeping 6 feet between us, rotating in and out of this room,” he said about how he and his colleagues were operating the press conference. 

The two people who tested positive are in stable condition at hospitals in Phoenix. They are from Chilchinbeto, AZ, which is in Navajo County. 

Dr. Loretta Christensen, chief medical officer for the Navajo area Indian Health Service, said extensive contact tracing is happening in Chilchinbeto to identify anyone who might have been exposed to the virus through contact with the people who tested positive so they can get tested. 

In total, she said there have been over 100 people tested in Navajo area IHS facilities and they have results from about 20% of those.

Community benefit

Are New Mexico’s hospitals shortchanging community health?

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In Albuquerque’s poorest neighborhoods where few grocers offer healthy produce, a cornucopia of subsidized fruits and vegetables for hundreds of families. In San Juan County, where more than one in 10 residents is diabetic, personalized classes to help participants reduce their risk of developing the disease by incorporating physical activity and healthy eating into their daily lives. And in Santa Fe County, where dozens of people die each year of drug overdoses, a facility where anyone with a substance abuse disorder can walk in to get sober, and then hopefully move on to treatment and recovery. What connects these otherwise disparate public health initiatives, and others around the state, is that they are supported, in part, by millions of dollars from the state’s nonprofit hospitals. It’s not simple generosity that motivates the largesse.

Help us create journalism for Albuquerque’s Native American population

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Albuquerque is home to one of the largest urban Native populations in the country. And yet you rarely see sustained, quality journalism about this community.That changes next year.Starting in June of 2020, New Mexico In Depth will embark on a reporting project that centers Albuquerque’s Native American population thanks to Report for America, a national program that pairs host newsrooms with ambitious reporters. NMID has been selected as one of RFA’s host newsrooms in 2020-2021. NMID proposed to cover a population that intersects with many of the complex challenges confronting New Mexico. There is much reporting to do – about resilience, about creativity, about a continuing effort to empower younger generations through culture and language retention. And, yes, about the thorny problems that disproportionately affect Native communities.   New Mexico’s underserved populations deserve quality news coverage. This grant pays in part for a new reporter for this worthy project, about half of his or her salary and benefits. NMID must raise the balance.So here’s where you come in. We’re asking you to help us financially.

From our blog

Do New Mexico tax breaks work? It’s hard to tell in expenditure report

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New Mexico lawmakers this week looked at a report that shows how much money escapes government collections due to tax breaks approved over the years. As lawmakers and the governor continue to examine how to reform New Mexico’s tax code, it’s timely. 

Called a tax expenditure budget, the report details more than a hundred tax deductions, credits and exemptions, how long each has been on the books, why they were enacted, and whether they achieve their desired result. (Need a primer on what a tax expenditure budget is? See our special report in 2016). 

While the report is the size of a small book and would take more than an afternoon to read, lawmakers complained it didn’t have enough information, per Dan McKay at the ABQ Journal. 

And they’d have a point. There’s no data for some of the listings, and much of the report has limited usefulness for evaluation purposes. Many items have brief evaluation paragraphs with little information, or in some cases, simply the word “none.” 

More information about how government policy is made and whether it’s meeting intended goals is always better than less. 

Not only is this tax expenditure report incomplete, however, the data it contains isn’t as accessible to the public as it could be. 

For example, if you go to the National Conference of State Legislatures website, you’ll find a nifty tool: a searchable database of tax breaks for every state.

New Mexicans gather for climate protests across state

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More than a thousand New Mexicans in Albuquerque and Las Cruces protested inaction by the nation’s leaders on climate change Friday, joining in a day of action that swept through cities across the globe. 

In Albuquerque roughly 1,500 climate protesters, young and old and from various backgrounds, began in Robinson Park at Central Avenue and Eighth Street where speakers motivated the crowd to fight for change and to demand no more delays. Protestors in Albuquerque turned out with signs and demands for the nation’s leaders to act on climate change Friday / Bianca Hoops for New Mexico In Depth

A sense of determinism rippled across the crowd as people urged the speakers on, including the city’s mayor, Tim Keller. 

“For the first time in decades our city has to issue ozone warnings again,” Keller said in a raspy voice to a rapt crowd. “We have to tell children not to go to soccer practices because the ozone levels are too high if you have asthma. I am not making this up. It is because of climate change.

climate change

NMSU climate series kicks off with a look at Chihuahuan desert

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Dr. Debra Peters presenting “Chihuahuan Desert Landscape in an Uncertain Future” to kick off the Fall 2019 NMSU Climate Change Seminar Series. Photo by Leah Romero. The New Mexico State University Climate Change Seminar Series (NMSUCCESS) and Friends of Organ Mountains — Desert Peaks kicked off the semester last week with “Chihuahuan Desert Landscape in an Uncertain Future”,  a presentation by Debra Peters, Ph.D., lead research scientist with the Jornada Experimental Range and adjunct faculty member at NMSU. 

Peters explained that Doña Ana County in the distant past was 100 percent grasslands, but desertification has changed the area substantially, as it has in other areas, over the last couple hundred years. By 1915 the county was about 37 percent grassland and 63 percent shrubbery. By 1998, the area was only 8 percent grassland.

NM system for reviewing police shootings remains broken

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Elizabeth Palma and her son, Anthony Benavidez, loved trips to the cinema. In early 2017 they enjoyed Disney’s live-action remake of “Cinderella” together. It would be their last movie. Months later, Benavidez, 24, lay fatally wounded by police in a Santa Fe apartment that bore the marks of his isolating schizophrenia: walls painted black, aluminum foil covering a bedroom window, heavy blinds draped over another. City officials paid his family $400,000 to settle a civil lawsuit after the killing.

Uncategorized

Santa Fe DA promises special prosecutor for fatal 2017 police shooting

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District Attorney Marco Serna says he will appoint a special prosecutor to review “additional information” in a 2017 police shooting that killed a 24-year-old man who was living with schizophrenia in his southeast Santa Fe apartment. The move marks a change for Serna, who accepted the conclusion of a panel of three DAs — from Albuquerque, Clovis and Las Vegas, New Mexico — in early 2018 that the two Santa Fe Police officers who fired should not be criminally prosecuted for the killing. Serna’s decision means one of the most controversial police shootings in recent Santa Fe history will get a second look. In March, when Serna announced that the panel had concluded no charges should be filed against officers Jeramie Bisagna and Luke Wakefield, Serna’s spokesman said the first-term Democratic prosecutor who is now running for Congress would adopt the panel’s findings. By that time the family had agreed to accept a $400,000 settlement with the city of Santa Fe in a wrongful death lawsuit.