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Morning Word
Gov signs special session bill
Reiterating her discontent with state legislators for failing to consider her public safety proposals during a special session earlier this month, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham yesterday signed the one bill lawmakers did pass, providing wildfire relief money to South Fork and Salt fires and flood victims in Ruidoso. House Bill 1 allots $100 million, $70 million of which will go toward zero-interest reimbursable loans to local governments. The Mescalero Apache Tribal government, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department and state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management each will receive $10 million. “The Legislature’s failure to prioritize public safety for New Mexicans during the special session is deeply disappointing,” the governor said in a statement. “However, I am relieved that we managed to secure aid for critical recovery efforts in communities damaged by fire and flooding.” The bill also includes money for behavioral health outpatient treatment and competency diversion programs through the Administrative Office of the Courts. “By improving the courts’ capacity to provide appropriate services, we are building out our systems so that New Mexicans can get help when they need it,” state sen. Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, says in a statement. “We are committed to continuing the ongoing work to rebuild our behavioral healthcare system, address the root causes of crime, and make our communities safer.”
Lujan Grisham holds public safety town halls
Speaking of safety, following the failed public safety special session, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham launched a series of public town halls on the topic, and, flanked by members of her administration among others, has thus far traveled to Las Cruces, Albuquerque and, last night, Española, to speak with residents about the issue. “This conversation is really important to me personally and to the entire state,” she said to attendees last night. “Like every New Mexican, I’m no stranger to the fact that there isn’t a New Mexico community that doesn’t have some risk, whether that’s drug or overdoses, whether that’s too many kids who drop out of school or whether we have issues in sustaining businesses or we have road rage and related vehicular homicide. This is a state for far too long it’s just recognized that these risks exist, but the strategies we deliver to our communities don’t ever seem to be enough. I think that will resonate.” Reporting on the Monday night town hall in Albuquerque, Source New Mexico says residents raised issues ranging from unlawful and unfair evictions to challenges finding treatment for mental health. The governor also acknowledged concerns that helped torpedo her legislative priorities, namely that her proposals on topics such as involuntary commitment and panhandling stigmatize mental health and homelessness. “These issues are not about criminalizing being poor, unhoused or mentally ill,” she told attendees. “But there is an intersection.”
City voters may see $25 million road bonds on ballot
At its regular meeting tonight, the City of Santa Fe governing body is scheduled to consider a resolution from Mayor Alan Webber and City Councilors Michael Garcia and Carol Romero-Wirth to place a bond question on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. If approved by voters, the $25 million bond would go toward more than 50 road improvement projects in the city, including repaving Airport Road from Cerrillos to 599 and Cerrillos Road from Cielo Court to Airport Road, which a city news release says would be required to be 85% complete within three years. The criteria for selecting the 54 road projects, the news release says, included city councilor recommendations, residents’ requests, the “severity of the road conditions, the volume of traffic and a fair distribution of funds” across the city. “Our residents have told us they want our roads fixed, and we hear them loud and clear,” the mayor said in a statement. “The people have spoken, and we’re doing our best to respond to their call to action.” In addition to addressing major streets needing immediate improvements in all four city districts, the proposed bond issue also includes 10% “set aside” for roads in smaller neighborhood projects that would be identified later. A fiscal impact report on the resolution says, if approved, property taxes would increase marginally: “The estimated increase is $25 per year for 20 years for a home with a market value of $500,000.”
DOI releases final Indian Boarding School report
At least 973 Native American children died while attending federally operated or supported schools, according to the US Department of the Interior, which yesterday released the second and final volume of an investigative report as part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative launched in June 2021. The report also identifies at least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 different school sites. The department released the initial volume in May 2022. “The federal government—facilitated by the Department I lead—took deliberate and strategic actions through federal Indian boarding school policies to isolate children from their families, deny them their identities and steal from them the languages, cultures and connections that are foundational to Native people,” DOI Secretary Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna) says in a statement. “These policies caused enduring trauma for Indigenous communities that the Biden-Harris administration is working tirelessly to repair.” The report also includes eight recommendations from Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland (Ojibwe), which include issuing a formal apology from the federal government; repatriating the remains of children and “funerary objects” from Indian boarding schools; and investing in “remedies to the present-day impacts of the federal Indian boarding school system.”
Listen Up
No time like the present for civic engagement. New Mexico In Focus Executive Producer Jeff Proctor delves into two leading topics in today’s society, talking with Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver about her office’s efforts fighting election misinformation, and American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico Executive Director Peter Simonson about how the landscape has changed in the civil liberties realm during the nearly quarter-century he’s been leading the organization.
Hitting the high notes
Two performances remain for this season’s world premiere at the Santa Fe Opera of The Righteous (8 pm, Aug. 7 and 13), composer Gregory Spears’
and poet Tracy K Smith’s tale of a Southwestern preacher whose faith is tested amid the political and cultural tensions of the 1980s. The opera receives a “critic’s pick” from New York Times classical music critic Zachary Woolfe, who writes of the rarity of seeing an opera that is a true original, as in not based on a previous story or adapted from one that is well known. “Opera audiences, traditionalists even before the pandemic, have ventured back warier than ever about buying tickets for anything other than the standards,” Woolfe writes. “So as companies try to present contemporary pieces alongside Aida and La Bohème, they bank on familiar titles and subjects.” With The Righteous, Spears and Smith have aimed for nuance and scope in their story. “Almost all of the many characters, especially David’s first and second wives, are depicted with detail and sensitivity,” Woolfe notes. “This is a caricature-free zone.” Hear more from the composer and librettist about this work in a recent episode of Colores on New Mexico PBS. With last weekend’s opening of a revival of Stephen Lawless’ 2009 production The Elixir of Love (see our review here), all five operas are now on the stage for at least a few more shows. Catch ‘em while you can.
The smell (and sights) of fall
Hatch green chile season has arrived! In Southern California, that is. So says The LA Times, anyway, which devoted a recent edition of its cooking newsletter to the best spots to find roasting Hatch green chile in Southern California, alongside recipes. We read out of curiosity and to fuel our sense of existential dread. “There really is nothing like the intoxicating smell of freshly roasted green chiles on a crisp and cold autumn morning in the Hatch Valley in southern New Mexico. The sweet and smoky perfume is so distinct that the very smell of Hatch green chiles is now the state’s official aroma.” All true. The newspaper also talks with Kelly Urig, a native New Mexican who wrote New Mexico Chiles: History, Legend and Lore, about hopes for this year’s harvest following last year’s disappointing yield. Her family used to farm chile in Hatch, and still helps process it (she lives in California). “This year is going great,” she says.”All signs say this harvest season is going to be a very good crop as far as taste and as far as commercial viability.” Closer to home, the Hatch Chile Fest has been scheduled and will be going down Aug. 31-Sept. 1. While the smell of roasting green chile may have begun, fall hasn’t quite arrived. Nonetheless, Travel & Leisure magazine urges folks to get ready by traveling to prime spots for fall foliage, of which New Mexico is one. Specifically, T&L includes The Enchanted Circle between Taos, Eagle Nest, Red River and Questa on its list of 21 fall-favorite spots.
Some like it hot
The National Weather Service forecasts a mostly sunny day, with a high temperature near 94 degrees and north wind 5 to 10 mph becoming west in the afternoon.
