Health

New wildfire defense grant program at a snail’s pace as fire season looms 

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Kim Wright has spent hundreds of hours on the phone with neighbors.Wright, a retired nurse, volunteers with the Cimarron Watershed Alliance, a nonprofit focused on watershed and forest health on the eastern edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire made the fears of a catastrophic fire feel all the more real. So when she learned a year ago that the federal government was awarding more than $8 million to the alliance to help nine northern New Mexico communities better defend themselves against wildfire, she said, “We couldn’t believe it. We were so excited.”Creating defensible space around a house and structures, thinning nearby forests, and hauling away wood can cost up to $4,000, Wright said, “So this is a huge opportunity for everybody in these communities.”But people needed to know about the opportunity. She found and reserved places for three community meetings that later drew between 40 and 90 attendees each.

Health

Assisted living facilities are the new nursing homes. Oversight falls short.

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In July 2022, a partially paralyzed and “nearly bedridden” 75-year-old man in a wheelchair fell in his bathroom at Albuquerque Uptown Assisted Living, fracturing his hip, according to court filings. 

But instead of staff immediately calling an ambulance for the man, who “required assistance in all aspects of his life,” he remained at the facility “in significant pain” for three weeks, his estate’s wrongful death lawsuit alleges. Eventually, the lawsuit says, he was taken to Presbyterian Hospital, where the elderly man was diagnosed with blunt pelvic trauma and a broken hip. He subsequently developed severe bed sores and infections. He was taken home, where his obituary says he died on October 1, 2022, his wife of 35 years at his side. 

When the family’s attorney sought the man’s medical records, court documents claim, Uptown administrators said they did not have them. The man’s family could not be reached before publication of this story, and an Uptown official refused to answer New Mexico In Depth’s questions. 

If the man’s case prompted scrutiny from state regulators, their report doesn’t appear in the health department’s health facilities inspection reports database.

Indigenous Affairs

New Mexico AG greenlights new task force, creates online portal for missing Indigenous people

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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T). Attorney General Raúl Torrez plans to establish a task force focused on the disproportionate rates at which Indigenous people experience violence and go missing, the New Mexico Department of Justice announced Tuesday. The agency also launched the initial phase of an online portal for tracking cases of missing Indigenous people. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration in mid-2023 dissolved a group dedicated to addressing a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Advocates and affected families spoke against the decision, saying their work was just beginning. 

The Legislature seemed to agree, unanimously passing Senate Joint Memorial 2 last month calling on Torrez to convene tribal representatives, survivors and families, and law enforcement officials to update a state response plan created by the defunct task force in 2022 and offer legislative recommendations. 

The state budget includes $200,000 for that purpose. 

A spokesperson for Torrez, Lauren Rodriguez, said he’ll follow the Legislature’s guidance outlined in the memorial as he figures out the task force’s membership.  

The public portal unveiled on Tuesday — which includes 201 missing Indigenous people, with an average time missing of 2,886 days, or nearly eight years — comes two years after lawmakers mandated it. 

Lawmakers in 2022 passed a bill requiring the attorney general’s office to develop an online portal for cases of missing Indigenous people.

Indigenous Affairs

State budget includes $200,000 for new task force on missing and murdered Indigenous people

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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).The state budget awaiting Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s signature contains $200,000 for Attorney General Raúl Torrez to create a new task force concentrated on a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people.The money adds weight to the Legislature’s non-binding request that he take such action. Senate Joint Memorial 2 (SJM 2) passed on the last day of the 30-day legislative session. 

The task force’s fate now falls to Lujan Grisham and Torrez, in that sequence.The governor could eliminate the $200,000 appropriation using her line-item authority, which would leave Torrez to decide to form the task force anyway, without funding, or ignore the state Legislature’s request. 

Torrez’s office did not respond to New Mexico In Depth’s request to comment on his plans.The dollars are included in a special section of the budget that was added in the final days of the session. That section contains allocations by individual lawmakers. Which lawmakers provided $200,000 for the proposed task force is unknown, but will be published on the legislative website 30 days after Feb. 15, the day the session ended. 

Sponsors introduced SJM 2 — which, unlike a bill, doesn’t have the force of law — in response to Lujan Grisham’s decision last year to disband an earlier task force dedicated to finding solutions to the crisis, “leaving questions unanswered,” the legislation reads. 

The governor’s staff argue the previous group met its objectives and the state is now executing its numerous recommendations.

Indigenous Affairs

Legislature calls on attorney general to create new missing and murdered Indigenous people task force

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This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T). The New Mexico Legislature has asked Attorney General Raúl Torrez to create a new task force focused on a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people after a memorial containing the request passed in the final hour of the legislative session, which concluded at noon today.Senate Joint Memorial 2 cleared the House on Thursday morning after passing in the Senate last week. 

A spokeswoman for Torrez didn’t respond to a question from New Mexico In Depth about whether he plans to act on lawmakers’ request. Unlike a bill, the memorial isn’t enforceable. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham quietly dissolved a task force dedicated to finding solutions to the crisis in mid-2023. 

Her staff said the group achieved its objectives and the state is carrying forward its recommendations. But some task force members believed their work was just beginning, and a handful of impacted families protested the governor’s decision in October.

Ethics

Lawmakers for second year kick ethics fixes down the road

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An effort to fix the state’s anti-corruption statute after the New Mexico Supreme Court barred prosecutors from bringing criminal charges under several of its provisions died in the state Senate. The legislation languished in a committee after clearing the House 66-0 with two weeks to go in the legislative session, which ended at noon today. 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham greenlighted the effort to fix the ethics law as the session kicked off in January. House Bill 8, sponsored by Rep. Kathleen Cates, D-Rio Rancho, would have fixed the Governmental Conduct Act, which provides standards for ethical conduct on the part of public officials, employees of state or local agencies, and lawmakers. 

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that three of the statute’s four provisions used by prosecutors were too vaguely written to result in criminal charges.  

Justices considered the statute in a consolidated case involving a county treasurer who offered money to an employee for sex; a district attorney who used her position to intimidate officers investigating her use of a public vehicle for personal reasons; a judge who illegally recorded private conversations in a courthouse; and a state cabinet secretary who used her position to access the tax records of a previous employer. In the latter case, prosecutors alleged she was trying to prevent an audit of that employer because she had embezzled money from them. (Her embezzlement conviction was later overturned on appeal with the court saying the statute of limitations had run out.)

After the Supreme Court ruling, prosecutors couldn’t criminally charge these public officials for state ethics violations. 

The proposed fixes to the ethics law included barring partisan political activity while on duty or undertaking it in a way that uses public resources.

Education

Tribal education trust fund is dead, legislative sponsor says

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The sponsor of a proposal to create a trust fund that would’ve given tribes in New Mexico millions of dollars to build education programs said Wednesday that he is pulling the bill from the Senate, meaning it is effectively dead. 

With less than 24 hours in the 2024 legislative session, Rep. Derrick Lente, a Democrat from Sandia Pueblo, says he decided to pull House Bill 134 after learning a number of amendments were going to be introduced on the Senate floor. 

The proposal would have created a trust fund with a $50 million appropriation, generating interest for the 23 tribes in New Mexico to spend on language programs and other needs related to education. It garnered bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, and a number of tribal leaders, Indigenous students, and educators spoke about how impactful it would be at committee hearings throughout the legislative session. But how the money would be distributed was the source of significant debate this year — and in the 2023 legislative session, when Lente unsuccessfully pushed for the fund. The Navajo Nation in particular had concerns about how to ensure the funds were distributed equitably. 

“As much as I thought that we were good to go and how it’s received so much support through the House process and even through Senate Finance,” Lente said, “we’ve come to a point where the discussion amongst tribes is a bit too great for me to want to comfortably have that discussion publicly in the Senate and I don’t think it’s fair for tribes to be put in that position.”Lente would not say where the Senate amendments came from and what they would do. But he said he’s asked Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth to not pull it up for debate in the Senate “out of respect for the tribes.” 

“I want to make sure that I respect 100% the tribal sovereignty of each pueblo, nation and tribe in New Mexico.

Ethics

Ivey-Soto bill raises conflict of interest questions

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A bill meant to modernize New Mexico’s marriage laws would increase the money people pay to the state’s county clerks for a marriage license. Meanwhile, the bill’s sponsor, Democratic State Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, is paid by numerous county clerks on a contract basis for technical, legal and training services. 

As the State Ethics Commission investigates complaints made last year that accuse Ivey-Soto, in part, of using his position as a lawmaker to curry favor with his clients, lawmakers are considering Ivey-Soto’s House Bill 242. The legislation’s aim, according to Ivey-Soto and his co-sponsor, Rep. Doreen Gallegos, a Doña Ana County Democrat, is to dust Victorian era moral codes off New Mexico’s books. For instance, it would prohibit  marriage of 16 and 17 year olds, which are allowed with parental consent, to people more than four years older than they are. The bill also allows anyone over the age of 21 selected by the couple to officiate at a wedding.

Alcohol

Rift between Democrats dooms this year’s alcohol tax push

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The push to change the state’s taxes on alcohol all but ended Friday when the House Taxation & Revenue Committee voted down one bill and declined to take action on another. Chairman Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, encouraged the bills’ sponsors to re-work their proposals in the coming months. But with no other measures advancing to address the state’s worst-in-the-nation rate of alcohol-related deaths, the Legislature kicked the can down the road on one of the state’s leading public health crises. Unlike last year, when an effort to raise alcohol taxes provoked vociferous opposition by beverage makers and retailers, dooming the proposal, the most important fissure this year was within the group supporting changes in alcohol taxes. In deliberations that stretched over two days, the tax committee considered divergent proposals.

Environment

Regional water planning shortchanged in state budget, advocates say 

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There’s a tale of two cities unfolding in eastern New Mexico: Clovis and Portales both rely on a single source of potable water, the Ogallala Aquifer. That aquifer is finite and rapidly depleting. Five years ago, New Mexico Tech offered both communities aquifer mapping research to predict how long their reserves might last. That research guided Clovis to shutting off 51 irrigation wells and saving 4 billion gallons of water. Portales didn’t choose to use it.