It’s late afternoon in March, and spring is blooming. Roughly 50 of Santa Fe’s movers and shakers are gathered in a small building that resembles a slick, revamped old church, with bright white walls culminating into a triangular point in the center of the ceiling. Creative Santa Fe, the arts and culture nonprofit whose broad mission is to improve the city’s “creative economy,” is announcing a new direction after seven years of inaction, mostly on the city’s dime.

Five years ago, state agencies were in an uproar over New Mexico’s new online accounting system, known as SHARE. They blamed it for financial misstatements, unaccounted-for federal funds and other mistakes. In one high-profile case, the Federal Highway Administration threatened to cut off crucial funding when the New Mexico Department of Transportation failed to properly reconcile its federal funds with SHARE data.

On March 17, approximately 800 delegates from around New Mexico packed the halls of Albuquerque’s Crowne Plaza Hotel for the state Republican Party’s preprimary convention.

Standing behind a coffee-decorated cart situated in Concrete Jungle’s front patio, a scarf-clad Phil Santos prepares espresso, condensed milk and soda for a concoction he invented, called “Hola Cola.”

The plan: Despite the incubator’s success, however, shifting Santa Fe’s economy away from heavy reliance on its usual industries will take much more than one entity’s well-intentioned efforts.

Two years ago, Ernestine Morales spoke to SFR about her fear amid rumors of cuts in the state’s Medicaid-funded Developmental Disabilities Waiver. Morales’ daughter Monique was born with microcephaly, a neurological disorder that has kept her 44-year-old brain at the mental capacity of a 2-year-old. For the past decade, Morales has been taking care of Monique in her Albuquerque home under the DD Waiver for a monthly government stipend.

Chris Eyre has been involved with nine feature films since his 1998 debut Smoke Signals, yet the indie sensation, which was marketed as the first feature film written, directed and produced by Native Americans and which won a plethora of awards and acclaim, will likely remain his best-known work. In January, Eyre was named chairman of Santa Fe University of Art and Design’s Moving Image Arts Department, a big win for a college that nearly shut its doors for good three years ago. Now, Eyre is on a mission to make the department, in his words, a “world-class film school.” SFR sat down with Eyre to discuss his new position. This interview has been condensed from his comments.

If a recent tussle between a local engineer and officials from Los Alamos National Laboratory shows anything, it’s that one lab’s error is another man’s dilemma.

New Mexico Department of Health employees received an unwelcome Valentine’s Day gift last week when the agency’s Public Health Division director sent out a sweeping order.

On Jan. 17, the opening day of New Mexico’s 2012 legislative session, longtime state House of Representatives Speaker Ben Luján, D-Santa Fe, stood before a hushed chamber. Luján, a diminutive man in his 70s who for years had controlled much of what happened at the capitol, had just announced that he had lung cancer and planned to retire from politics. The 2012 session would be his last. It was the end of an era.