Quick Reads

Balderas named president of Northern New Mexico College

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Attorney General Hector Balderas has his next job lined up, as president of Northern New Mexico College in Española. Balderas is term-limited and could not run for a third consecutive term as Attorney General. 

Balderas was chosen unanimously by the NNMC Board of Regents from a list of four finalists. “I’m inspired that the community was involved in the selection process—they have hope for change, and I am honored that the regents, faculty and staff will partner with me as we take Northern New Mexico College into the future, building on student success and institutional development,” Balderas said in a statement. Balderas will still need to discuss his contract with the board. His term as attorney general ends at the end of the year, and his replacement, 2nd Judicial District Attorney Raúl Torrez, will be sworn in at the start of 2023.

Uncategorized

Lawmakers and others want to make budget process more transparent

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Susan Boe still remembers the surprise she felt when she discovered the door was locked. Looking through the small window of a legislative hearing room in the state Capitol, she could make out the members of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee within. She had been tipped off that they were talking about the budget, and she wanted to sit in on the meeting, which she assumed was open. Boe, then the executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, was in for a rude awakening. 

The meeting was closed, off limits to outsiders. “It was pretty frustrating,” Boe said earlier this week, recalling that day nearly five years ago when she tried to get a sense on how lawmakers were finalizing the state budget.

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State now at more than 6,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 270 deaths

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The state has now confirmed over 6,000 cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. This came after the state announced 165 new confirmed cases of the disease among New Mexico residents and five additional deaths related to the disease. The Department of Health announced Monday it has now confirmed 6,096 cases of COVID-19 and 270 people have died COVID-19-related deaths. Of those, 67 were in McKinley County, which continues to have one of the highest concentrations of positive cases in the country. The state also announced that nearly two dozen inmates held by the state Department of Corrections at the Otero County Prison Facility have now tested positive.

A medical worker describes terrifying lung failure from COVID-19 — even in his young patients

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ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. As of Friday, Louisiana was reporting 479 confirmed cases of COVID-19, one of the highest numbers in the country. Ten people had died. The majority of cases are in New Orleans, which now has one confirmed case for every 1,000 residents.

News

State officials scramble to respond to restraint and seclusion in schools

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Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Attorney General Hector Balderas and Rep. Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, are all moving independently to rein in some of the most dangerous practices in New Mexico classrooms: restraint and seclusion. Each is pursuing separate initiatives to enforce stricter reporting requirements for incidents involving the controversial practices.  

Their efforts follow an October 2019 Searchlight investigation revealing that New Mexico schools routinely restrain and seclude special education students, often in violation of state and federal law. The state’s largest school district, Albuquerque Public Schools, has restrained and secluded students well over 4,600 times since 2014, the investigation found. It also found that APS repeatedly filed misleading reports to the federal government, even taking the extraordinary step of refusing to provide records to parents whose children were restrained or secluded.  

Often referred to as “therapeutic holding” or “physical management,” restraint is a contentious and dangerous method of behavior management derived from karate and judo, in which specially trained school staff place children and youth in physical holds that restrict movement. Seclusion, another behavior management practice, entails forcing a student into isolated rooms sometimes referred to as “scream rooms.” 

Child psychologists have decried the practices as ineffective and traumatic — for both students and staff.

Trumping the BLM

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Ever since public lands were made permanent parts of the American experience around the turn of the last century, there have been people dedicated to their privatization. The American people have strongly resisted the sale of public lands, frustrating those who saw the Donald Trump administration as a key opportunity to sell off national forests, Bureau of Land Management lands and national parks to states and corporations. There is little appetite in Congress for selling off these lands owned by all Americans, but now the Trump administration is working behind the scenes to disassemble our public land agencies and sell off their resources, though not the lands themselves. Of the four major federal land agencies, the Trump administration has first focused on the BLM in their efforts to disassemble the agency and weaken regulations. 

The BLM controls 248 million acres of public land and administers some 700 million acres of federal subsurface mineral rights. These are mostly lands that were left over after the national forests and other protected areas were set aside and often consist of remote desert lands in the vast interior of the West.

Marijuana
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GOP senator’s bill calls for state-run pot shops

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A Republican state senator on Thursday introduced a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana but, unlike a Democratic House bill, would have the state operate retail marijuana stores. Sen. Mark Moores of Albuquerque said in a phone interview Thursday that, considering the number of western states that have adopted laws treating marijuana more like alcohol, legalization in New Mexico is inevitable. “It’s a just matter of how we want to do it,” he said. “We should do it in a smart way.” Moores said his proposal would take steps to reduce harmful effects of marijuana, “while allowing adults the liberty of using marijuana if they want to.”

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Dunn switches to Libertarian Party

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State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn, one of New Mexico’s top elected Republicans, has switched parties and registered to vote as a Libertarian. Dunn said Saturday he is considering his next political move as his term comes to an end later this year. Some Libertarians have launched a campaign to draft him as their candidate for the U.S. Senate. Regardless of his next steps, Dunn’s departure from the GOP means Republicans now hold one less statewide elected office. And it comes as the party grapples with factional battles as well its very identity in a purple state during the age of President Donald Trump.

Martin Heinrich

Udall questions Interior secretary on future of NM’s national monuments

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Are New Mexico’s two national monuments safe from a reduction in size or elimination by President Donald Trump? That’s the question U.S. Sen. Tom Udall had for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Wednesday during a Senate subcommittee hearing. The Democratic senator is a staunch supporter of the designations of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte National Monuments, each of which are part of a review of national monuments ordered by the Trump administration earlier this year. “Will you commit to me today that you will respect the wishes of the vast majority of New Mexicans and maintain the existing boundaries of these two monuments?” Udall asked the former Montana congressman. Zinke said he would seek local input, referring to the process in the Bears Ears National Monument.

Abortion

Congressional Dems decry ‘McCarthy-era tactics’ in abortion investigation

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A controversial congressional panel investigating abortion practices in New Mexico and the across the country is under scrutiny for its tactics and mission from some of its own members. In a report released this week titled “Setting the Record Straight: The Unjustifiable Attack on Women’s Health Care and Life-Saving Research,” Democratic members of the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives skewered the majority in the committee for using “McCarthy-era tactics” to conduct “an end-to-end attack on fetal tissue donation and women’s health care.”

The Select Panel, chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, earlier this year sought subpoenas from Southwestern Women’s Options and the University of New Mexico and recommended the state Attorney General open a criminal investigation into the health clinic’s fetal tissue donation policy to the university. Related: Lawsuit alleges clinic donated fetal tissue without woman’s consent

Congressional Republicans formed the Select Panel after controversial, heavily edited videos of Planned Parenthood by anti-abortion activists went viral in 2015. Those videos led to unproven claims that abortion clinics across the country were selling fetal tissue for profit. The Select Panel is expected to release a final report on its investigation into fetal tissue donations before Congress adjourns later this month, according to Special Panel spokesman Mike Reynard.