Morning Word, 06-27-12

The New Mexico news recap

Sorry for the late Word this morning. I have been battling some sort of bug the past couple of days and was not up to my usual schedule of finishing the Word around 1 am and posting it to NM Telegram, the Santa Fe Reporter and emailing it out to the subscribers. --- A little bit later than usual, but still, here is the news that you may have missed yesterday while doing other things.

Oh, and all our thoughts are going out to those affected by the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs. The scenes from up there look downright apocalyptic.

On to the Word:

  • Independent Source PAC has more dirt.The Martinez administration used private emails to collude with the Downs at Albuquerque owners while the contract to run New Mexico's State Fair racino was still in the procurement process, according to evidence obtained by Independent Source PAC and forwarded to the New Mexico Attorney General's office and the FBI. Now what ISPAC needs is a web designer to make their website look like something from this decade. And this is coming from someone who is running a basic Wordpress site.
  • SFR looks at the
  • courting of the Latino vote in the New Mexico Senate race
  • .
  • There are more ads in the Senate race. American Crossroads, the group run by Karl Rove, has
  • another positive ad up on behalf of Heather Wilson
  • while the League of Conservation voters has another ad up
  • attacking Wilson on her votes on regulating the chemical MTBE
  • .
  • Chris Collins, chairman of the Republican Party of Bernalillo County, says
  • the response to the public records request by Jay McCleskey broke no law
  • . The issue is more nuanced than Collins portrays it to be -- the issue is that the Public Education Department actually created a new list for McCleskey's request. The Inspection of Public Records Act requires government entities to turn over any already created documents. And one of the reasons a government entity can deny, and often does, a public records request is by saying the request will require them to create a new document. ISPAC says that in the past, it has had public records requests rejected for this very reason -- something that makes it look like preferential treatment for a political operator connected closely to Susana Martinez.
  • Sen. Phil Griego, who survived a tough three-way Democratic primary earlier this month, said
  • he will tour the newspapers in his new district
  • . Griego infamously ignored all media requests during the primary, which included questions about possible campaign finance violations by the long-time state Senator. Griego faces a Republican in November, but the district is considered a pretty safe Democratic seat.
  • Gov. Susana Martinez
  • wants Gary King off the legal team looking at pay-to-play allegations
  • of former Gov. Bill Richardson's because of a potential conflict of interest.
  • The governor said she is concerned because Bruce Malott, former chairman of the Educational Retirement Board, served as campaign committee treasurer for King when he ran for the U.S. House in 2004. Malott is a defendant in at least four lawsuits brought by private parties alleging wrongdoing in investments by the ERB and/or the SIC. Malott has denied wrongdoing and filed his own lawsuit alleging corruption by others.
  • King has been named as a possible Democratic challenger to Martinez in 2014.
  • Martinez
  • shook up the parole board
  • in an attempt to make sure those serving life in prison do not get parole.
  • The EPA says the Downs plan to stop animal waste and industrial runoff from reaching the Rio Grande
  • was not adequate
  • .
  • The EPA, through the New Mexico Environment Department, found the fairgrounds lacks an approved “storm-water runoff containment structure.” Without such a structure, water polluted by animal waste and manure — which produces nitrogen, phosphorus, organic matter, bacteria and sediments — eventually runs into the Rio Grande.
  • Hasn't been a good few years for the Downs or Expo New Mexico.
  • SFR has some video of a protest involving labor and Heinrich
  • over the layoffs at the T-Mobile call center in Albuquerque
  • .
  • The Santa Fe New Mexican continues its great health care coverage by writing about
  • a new 12-member task force to look at setting up the state's health care exchange
  • required in the recent health care reform legislation.
  • New Mexico officials pointed to the state's high rate of residents without health insurance as the reason they want to pursue an exchange. New Mexico has the second-highest uninsured rate in the nation, topped only by neighboring Texas, with 430,000 of New Mexico's nearly 2.1 million residents going without health insurance.
  • Martinez previously
  • vetoed legislation set up to create a health care exchange
  • because she said there wasn't enough guidance from the federal government on how to set it up.
  • The debate over who should run Albuquerque's public access cable channel
  • isn't going away
  • , as supporters of Quote...Unquote, which has run the channel for decades, say the city rigged it so uPublic would win the contract despite a higher bid.
  • Former state Senator Joe Carraro is
  • making another run at state Senate
  • -- this time as an independent. Carraro left the Republican Party after what he thought was mistreatment during a 2008 run at Congress where he was easily defeated by Darren White in the Republican primary. Carraro will be a big underdog to Sen. John Ryan in a race that has no Democratic candidate.
  • A libel case is starting in Gallup after the Gallup newspaper wrote that a now-former mayor of Gallup
  • was involved in a gang-rape 60 years ago
  • .
  • Holy crap, there might
  • be a grocery store in downtown Albuquerque
  • at Silver between 2nd and 3rd.
  • Eric Griego just sent out an email touting three progressive candidates for the state legislature (Christine Trujillo in State House District 25, Mary Ellen Broderick in state House District 30 and Linda Allison in State Senate District 40). Yesterday, Griego sent out an email supporting U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., in his re-election effort. Something we haven't seen, however, is Griego sending out anything in support of Michelle Lujan Grisham, who defeated Griego in the Democratic primary for that seat.