artdirector@sfreporter.com
Legislators consider raising taxes on alcohol
State lawmakers later this week are scheduled to continue discussing proposed revisions to New Mexico’s state taxes on alcohol. Taxation and Revenue Department Director of Tax Policy Mark Chaiken and Chief Economist Lucinda Sydow will present an overview on excise taxes on alcoholic beverages, cannabis, cigarettes and tobacco products to legislators on the Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee Thursday during its two-day meeting in Santa Fe. New Mexico In Depth, which recently published a seven-part series on the state’s alcohol problems, reports that lawmakers at this week’s meeting will continue examining ways the state’s alcohol tax system could be adjusted to both deter excessive alcohol use and fund treatment. “Everyone needs to understand the landscape before we have a serious conversation about how it should be changed,” state Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, tells New Mexico In Depth. The current tax structure, the story notes, doesn’t adjust with inflation and any of its preventative value has all but evaporated in the last 30 years, David Jernigan, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health, says. As for funding treatment, of the annual $50 million raised by alcohol taxes, 45% benefits local DWI grant councils, 5% drug courts and most of the rest goes to the state’s general fund. Rep. Jason Harper, R-Rio Rancho, tells NMID that formula needs to change and says he would not support any increase in taxes until 100% of revenue benefits prevention and treatment programs.
President Biden signs spending bill with $2.5 billion for NM
President Joe Biden on Friday signed HR 6833, which provides fiscal year 2023 appropriations, and includes the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act, along with $2.5 billion for Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire victims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will oversee allocation of the funds. The Democrat members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation all either sponsored or co-sponsored the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon bill; the US Senate passed the bill last Thursday, followed by the US House on Friday. “Congress has made it abundantly clear that the federal government has a moral obligation to do right by New Mexicans by passing my legislation that will deliver an expected $2.5 billion in relief to New Mexico,” US Sen. Ben Ray Luján said in a statement. “This legislation secures federal funding in assisting New Mexicans who have lost everything, items that can’t be replaced as a result of a wildfire started by the federal government.” US Sen. Martin Heinrich said in a statement he and Luján had “talked to every single senator who would listen to make sure we would have the votes to deliver the resources that New Mexicans need to rebuild in the aftermath of the worst fire in our state’s history,” but that the funding “is just the start of this process.” US Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-NM, was one of 201 Republicans in the US House who voted against the bill.
Gubernatorial race heats up
On Friday night, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and GOP challenger Mark Ronchetti participated in the first of two televised debates (the second will be held Oct. 12, the day after absentee voting begins). Libertarian candidate Karen Bedonie, who is also on the Nov. 8 ballot, was not invited to participate. The head-to-head match-up, as the Albuquerque Journal says, was indeed “testy,” as both candidates responded to questions about crime, education, the economy and other topics posed by moderators/KOB journalists Matt Grubs and Tessa Mentus. Ronchetti, as the Associated Press writes, “painted a dire portrait of public safety conditions and economic prospects for small businesses.” Lujan Grisham pointed out all the legislation her administration and the Legislature have passed to address both sectors. The governor, as forecast, also focused on women’s rights to a safe and legal abortion in New Mexico and her commitment to protecting those rights. Ronchetti has called for voters to weigh in on abortion through a constitutional amendment, after changing his website to delete more extreme views. A Washington Post op-ed recently identified Ronchetti as “one more example of how Republicans are scrambling to dial down their extreme views on women’s reproductive rights.” New Mexico’s Democrat and Republican parties both declared their candidates winners following Friday night’s debate. State GOP Chairman Steve Pearce, in a statement, said Ronchetti “has a firm grasp of the issues and understands how to solve the many problems created by Lujan Grisham.” The state Democratic Party, in a news release, said Lujan Grisham’s “strong record delivering on the issues New Mexicans care about most shone far beyond Ronchetti’s cheap attacks and extremist policy platform.” State Democrats, who released a debate bingo card in advance of the event, said Ronchetti “made it clear that abortion, the future of our environment and our public school systems, are all at risk in this election.” The most recent Albuquerque Journal poll shows Lujan Grisham with a seven-point lead in the race.
COVID-19 by the numbers
Reported Sept. 30: New cases: 299; 618,683 total cases; Deaths: three; Santa Fe County has had 351 total deaths; there have been 8,567 fatalities statewide. Statewide hospitalizations: 100. Patients on ventilators: nine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent “community levels” map, which uses a combination of hospital and case rate metrics to calculate COVID-19 risk, several New Mexico counties turned from “green” (low) to “yellow” (medium) and “red” (high) during the prior seven-day tracking period posted yesterday. Catron, Grant and Hidalgo counties are now red; Rio Arriba and Otero counties are now yellow. Santa Fe County remains green. Corresponding recommendations for each level can be found here.
Resources: CDC interactive booster eligibility tool; NM DOH vaccine & booster registration; CDC isolation and exposure interactive tool; Self-report a positive COVID-19 test result; Curative testing sites; COVID-19 treatment info; NMDOH immunocompromised tool kit. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Listen up
October has arrived, along with October-related tasks in the yard. On the most recent episode of The Garden Journal podcast, guest Jannine Cabossel, aka the Tomato Lady, joins host Christine Salem to offer tips for yard work this month in advance of a potential mid-month first freeze. These tasks including turning off a drip irrigation system if you have one; cleaning up; starting a compost pile; and perhaps, later in the month, planting some garlic and shallots. Find the show’s program notes here. Produced by Santa Fe Extension Master Gardeners, Slow Food Santa Fe, New Mexico Healthy Soils, and Home Grown New Mexico, The Garden Journal airs live at 10 am on Saturdays KSFR 101.1 FM or streaming on KSFR.org.
Santa Fe’s mystique (and spunk)
Is Santa Fe’s “deep-rooted art scene” the key to its magic? That’s the conclusion ARTNews reaches in a story that describes Santa Fe’s “alchemical fusion of ineffable mystique and laid-back spunk,” the result of “a cultural continuum that links Indigenous peoples and European settlers to the multivalent influence of Santa Fe’s newest transplants.” The story recommends visits to the Plaza, Museum Hill and the Railyard, with particular shout-outs to IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Thoma Foundation’s Art Vault and Shidoni Gallery and Sculpture Garden, along with, of course, Meow Wolf and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (speaking of O’Keeffe, Albuquerque’s Electric Playhouse’s immersive O’Keeffe experience, “Music for the Eyes,” opened Friday and runs through Nov. 27). “This wide range of artistic traditions, media, and disciplines, all weaving together in a cogent way, is the key to Santa Fe’s magic,” the magazine’s editors conclude. “The spirit of the city’s diverse art scene lives in the spaces between dichotomies of old and new, physical and immaterial, dynamic and fixed.” ArtNEWS may love Santa Fe, but other New Mexico locales also received some love this week, including Madrid, named the best small town in the state by the Discoverer Blog, and Truth or Consequences, which USA Today chose as the town with funniest name in the state (USA Today also gave Dulce an honorable mention in this category, although we don’t really understand why).
Making tracks
An earthquake in Alaska last year may have revealed 30 new dinosaur footprints from three different species, the Washington Post reports, and paleontologist Tony Fiorillo, executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, is part of the team that discovered new prints this summer: one from an ankylosaur and the other by a carnivorous theropod. Fiorillo has spent 10 field seasons at Aniakchak, located toward the eastern end of Alaska’s Aleutian island chain. He first discovered a dinosaur footprint there in 2002. “Walking these couple of miles, there’s just a truly remarkable frequency of tracks on the beach and in the cliffs,” Fiorillo tells the Post, “And I would be a little hard pressed to think of that kind of density in track abundance” elsewhere. Fiorillo and his team are scheduled to present some of their findings at the Geological Society of America in Denver’s annual meeting starting Oct. 9. From there, Fiorillo says, “we’ll see what new questions come up as we really start to analyze the data and then think about next year.” NPR also spoke recently with Fiorillo and his colleagues about their summer in the Aniakchak Bay, and how their research may help inform work on climate change.
Balloon weather
The National Weather Service forecasts showers and thunderstorms likely today—with a 60% chance of precipitation, mainly after 3 pm. Otherwise, it should be partly sunny, with a high near 64 degrees and southeast wind 5 to 15 mph becoming northwest in the afternoon. How that translates for the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, which kicked off Saturday, remains to be seen, but you can watch live coverage here (and catch a nice clip from the launch courtesy New Mexico Magazine here).
Thanks for reading! Over the weekend, The Word plowed through this New Yorker story about the 100th anniversary of TS Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” but did not download The Waste Land app.
