Morning Word
Report: Medicaid proposal would cut uninsured, save money
A new study from the nonprofit Urban Institute of a proposed “Medicaid Forward” plan projects between 407,000 and 542,000 New Mexicans would use the plan—including up to 142,000 currently uninsured residents—and it would save “billions” across the state. “Medicaid Forward is a path to provide more New Mexicans with coverage they can afford and to give employers more breathing room to reinvest in their businesses and their employees,” House Majority Whip Reena Szczepanski, D-Santa Fe, who sponsored legislation in the last legislative session to study the proposal, said in a statement. Under the proposal, Medicaid coverage would be available to all non-elderly New Mexicans (who already have Medicaid eligibility) and cap household insurance spending at 5% of income for all who enroll. Currently, Medicaid eligibility is limited to individuals making $20,120 or less. “Medicaid Forward is going to help a lot of people like me,” Cecilia Piñon from New Mexico Together for Healthcare said in a statement. “When I had health insurance through a previous employer, my copays were still unaffordable and I couldn’t always afford to seek the care I needed. During the pandemic I was enrolled in Medicaid, but when the public health emergency ended I made just over the income limit and was no longer eligible. I didn’t have another affordable option.” Nicolas Cordova, healthcare director of the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, called the study’s findings “incredible” in a statement: “Medicaid Forward is an innovative program that will strengthen the Medicaid program and close many of the coverage gaps so many of our families fall into.” Szczepanski’s legislation also requires the Human Services Department to develop recommendations for the implementation of Medicaid Forward, expected early next year for review by lawmakers.
Supreme Court rejects district court evidence decision
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled yesterday district court judges lack the authority during pretrial preliminary hearings in a criminal cases to determine whether evidence was obtained illegally by law enforcement. As most Law & Order viewers know, during preliminary hearings, prosecutors present evidence to demonstrate “probable cause” to help judges decide whether a case should move forward. As explained in a news release, the state Supreme Court in a divided decision “concluded that the New Mexico Constitution ‘does not provide the right to exclude evidence obtained from an unconstitutional search and seizure at a preliminary hearing.’” Rather, existing rules allow for a separate meeting in between the preliminary hearing and the trial at which evidence can be discussed and considered for potential exclusion. “Defendants have an existing pretrial mechanism to vindicate their right to be free from unconstitutional searches and seizures: a motion to suppress,” Justice David K. Thomson writes for the court’s majority. “Today’s ruling does nothing to diminish this remedy or change the majority’s commitment to protecting the right to be free from constitutional searches and seizures.” The decision affirms a decision by the state Court of Appeals that a Bernalillo County district judge exceeded the court’s authority in ruling during a preliminary hearing by dismissing a felony drug possession case after ruling a sheriff’s deputy had lacked reasonable suspicion to stop the defendant and searched him illegally (finding a bag of heroin in his pocket). The Supreme Court ordered that case back to district court.
City of Santa Fe hires new arts director
The City of Santa Fe announced yesterday it has finally replaced former Arts & Culture Department Director Pauline Kamiyama, who departed controversially in February after three and a half years. Kamiyama’s tenure included still-unresolved strife over the city’s historic monuments, as well as navigation of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time the city cut the arts department’s budget. According to her application, incoming Director Chelsey Johnson has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa and prior work experience as a creative writing professor in higher education, including most recently as an assistant professor of English at Northern Arizona University and creative writing program coordinator. “I come from a literary background in my own practice, but I’ve always been a huge aficionado of the visual arts, performing arts, music, theater, film—all that stuff,” Johnson tells SFR. “My community has always been artists of all kinds, more so than academics. I’m really excited to just be in a community with [so many interdisciplinary artists].” The city announcement about Johnson’s hiring says she will work closely with the Arts & Culture Department commissioners, the Office of Economic Development, the Community Gallery within the Santa Fe Community Convention Center and more in the coming year. “I’m coming in with an open mind and a clean slate,” Johnson says. “And I’m really looking forward to getting to know all the commissioners and the people in the neighborhoods and overlooked communities who have great artists among them who have yet to be uplifted.”
State spokeswoman and husband killed in car crash
New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Communications Director Bernice Geiger and her husband Mark died in a car crash on Sunday, Sept. 3 in Arizona, the agency announced yesterday. According to a news release, Geiger began work at NMRLD in 2007, serving as the marketing director of the Securities Division. She became the department’s public information officer in 2017. “Bernice was an incredible person and cared deeply about NMRLD’s mission to protect public safety,” New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department Superintendent Linda Trujillo said in a statement. “In her more than 15 years at the department, she always made an effort to know everyone’s name and the knowledge she had of the department made her a trusted and respected colleague. I speak for myself and the rest of the NMRLD staff when I say we will miss the wisdom and kindness Bernice brought to work each day.” According to the Albuquerque Journal, Bernice and Mark Geiger, ages 60 and 62, respectively, died in the crash south of Holbrook. Mark Geiger, the Journal reports, worked as a lawyer for the Mexico Activities Association. “He wasn’t just an attorney. He was a friend of the NMAA, the superintendents, all the school employees,” NMAA Executive Director Sally Marquez tells the Journal. “He cared about kids, and that was his number one focus: making sure (the) NMAA was on a level playing field.” The couple had two children and two grandchildren, with a third on the way.
Listen up
The Craft Beer and Brewing podcast returns to New Mexico for an interview with Dave Chichura, director of brewing operations at Ex Novo in Corrales. Chichura discusses, among other topics: the challenges of making beer in rural environments; developing his recipe-writing skill set; and managing “hop creep.” This makes the second in back-to-back New Mexico-focused shows; ICYMI, the prior episode featured new Santa Fe resident and Keeping Together founder and beer-maker Averie Swanson.
Pondering Oppenheimer as a character study
When he first learned director Christopher Nolan was making a film about Robert J. Oppenheimer’s life, Stevens Institute of Technology Professor of Science and Technology Alex Wellerstein’s first question was: Why? “None of Nolan’s other films suggested an interest in historical biography,” Wellerstein writes for the Los Angeles Review of Books in a review-essay titled, “Fact, Fiction, and the Father of the Bomb.” “If anything, the most frequent critique of Nolan is his indifference to deep characterization. Since I have been thinking about J. Robert Oppenheimer for some 20 years, I can certainly understand his allure, but to Nolan? I worried that Oppenheimer’s inner complexity and subtlety, the very thing that historians find interesting about him, would be turned into a simplistic parody (the brilliant scientist, the weeping martyr, the weapons maker, etc.).” Wellerstein, author of Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, commends Nolan for avoiding that particular trap, but also notes how difficult it is for him to answer the most common question he receives about the film: Is it accurate? “It is a harder question to answer than one might think,” he writes, given how often history is disputed in all forms—including movies and books. Some portions of the film’s script come verbatim from known documents. “The film also contains tricky mixtures of real and wholly imagined dialogue,” he notes. Ultimately, Wellerstein finds comparisons of Oppenheimer to both Prometheus and Prince Arjuna in the cited Bhagavad Gītā reference wanting. “Perhaps we need to invent a new, modern mythology for such a figure,” he writes, “perhaps that is what Nolan is really trying to do.”
At home with O’Keeffe
Cowboys & Indians magazine takes a trip through the life and homestead of American modernist Georgia O’Keeffe, accompanied by Giustina Renzoni, curator of historic properties at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, who dissects O’Keeffe’s life—and her life’s influence on her design choices. O’Keeffe, Renzoni notes, made money from her art in her lifetime: “Her pieces sold for a quite a lot of money during her lifetime through her husband Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, so she was very well-known and independently wealthy,” she tells C&I. In addition to painting, she enjoyed travel and did so with a sense of adventure. Her need for solitude drew her to Abiquiú when she came out West and actually required her to learn how to drive so she could access the places in which she wanted to spend time. She ended up with two “homes” in Abiquiú—a studio within the 21,000-acre Ghost Ranch and a “winter home” 13 miles away. The latter, a circa-1750s adobe structure, went through extensive renovations. “Everyone who visits is always blown away by how deliberate the design is, starting with the color ranges of the adobe,” Renzoni tells the magazine. “Each room has its own visual character, different ceiling types, and wall treatments. She embraced the idea of finding beauty in every single part of her home, and she continued to design it throughout her life, changing the décor and furnishings. She really liked to think of her homes as her work as well.”
Sun’s out
The National Weather Service forecasts a sunny day, with a high temperature near 85 degrees and east wind 5 to 15 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon.
Thanks for reading! If science comedy centered on lesbian monkeys sounds appealing, The Word recommends the most recent episode of Scientific American’s “Science, Quickly” podcast.
