Morning Word: Gov wants pay hike for new teachers, merit pay

"It's critical that we raise the starting salaries of New Mexico teachers and, when they're successful in helping our students realize their academic potential, reward their success in a substantial way," said Martinez.

The proposal would raise minimum pay for new teachers, known as Level One teachers, from $30,000 per year to $33,000 per year.

In addition to knocking the department’s handling of a situation in which Medicaid funding was suspended for the state’s major behavioral health providers in the wake of an ongoing fraud investigation, the report took shots at OptumHealth, the company that oversees the managed-care program for behavioral health.Although representatives of OptumHealth — which has been paid more than $135 million in fees by the state over the past three years — had been invited to the hearing, none showed, which angered some lawmakers.

As of Nov. 30, 934 state residents had bought policies through the federal exchange, up from 172 as of Nov. 2, according to HHS figures.

At November’s end, 16,289 New Mexicans had applied for coverage on the federal exchange, and 8,539 had completed the applications. Of the people who had applied for coverage, 9,058 are eligible to enroll in an exchange plan, HHS said.

Will New Mexico college students have to maintain higher grades and take more classes to get lottery scholarships? Will students from wealthier families be excluded from the popular program? Will the scholarships no longer cover full tuition?

These are among the possible options discussed Tuesday by the Legislative Finance Committee to shore up the Legislative Lottery Scholarship, which falls several million dollars short of demand.

Will that send taxpayers down a slippery slope?

“That’s my opposition,” Rep. Jim White, R-Albuquerque told New Mexico Watchdog on Wednesday. “Once we make the exception once and have taxpayer money used this way, the temptation will be, let’s do it again.”

While the study is primarily focused on future conditions, water managers already have seen changes over the course of the drought that has lingered since the late 1990s, such as warmer temperatures leaving little low-elevation winter snow. “We’re already starting to see a shift,” said Mike Hamman, manager of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Albuquerque office, which operates a number of dams on the Rio Grande.

The assessment is the latest and most detailed in a series of analyses that have all come to the same conclusion: that rising greenhouse gases, which are driving up temperatures and changing the region’s climate in other ways, are likely to cause substantial reductions in the region’s already skimpy water supplies.