Rep. Luciano "Lucky" Varela, D-Santa Fe, chair of the Legislative Finance Committee
Minutes ago, Trip Jennings at the New Mexico Independent reported that New Mexico legislators, fed up with the Governor’s line-item vetoes, are contemplating a [...]
This week’s SFR draws attention to an oil-industry tax break extension sponsored by oilman and US Rep. Harry Teague, D-NM, a newbie to Congress whom conventional wisdom describes as “vulnerable.”
Yesterday, Public Citizen put out a list meant to shame Congressional opponents of [...]
Give it to me straight, doc...
At first glance, it looks like the New Mex’ business editor Bob Quick had an uncharacteristic scoop in yesterday’s paper: Federal regulators have put the smack down on Santa Fe’s own Charter Bank. Quick’s [...]
Sarah Singleton, who will replace First Judicial District Judge James Hall after his retirement at the end of this month, tells SFR she’s been “inundated with calls” since news of her appointment broke today.
“I want to thank the Governor for selecting me,” Singleton says. “I will say to the community [...]
Alfredo Vigil, DOH Secretary
State employees can work on New Year’s Eve, according to a press release just in from the Governor’s office; the Dec. 31 furlough day will be shifted to Friday, March 5, 2010. The furloughs, which apply to 17,000 state employees, [...]
The Heart of Santa Fe Press Conference
11 am-2 pm
Thursday, Dec. 10
Free
Warehouse 21
1614 Paseo de Peralta
989-4423
This Thursday, Dec. 10, Santa Feans will come together again in memory of the four teens killed in the DWI car accident on June 27. The victims are [...]
Fear not, fans of the Video Library, the downtown staple is here to stay—just displaced a few blocks over in the Harvey Building at 839 Paseo de Peralta, in the Travel Bug and Mucho Gusto complex. The new space has 90 unassigned parking spaces, a luxury [...]
The Santa Fe River in September.
(A little weekend reading on water, life and the future of the Santa Fe watershed. The story’s after the jump.)
David Harrington, who is beanpole-tall and sports an old-fashioned ten-gallon-style felt hat, came to yesterday’s State of the Santa Fe Watershed Conference wearing [...]
State Senator Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Bernalillo
Senator Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Bernalillo, is on the fiscal warpath, and she wants the New Mexico Department of Health to own up to nepotist practices in hiring—during a hiring freeze.
The Department of Health, Beffort says, hired approximately 91 new employees after [...]
This week, SFR staff writer Corey Pein revealed the identity of mayoral candidate Asenath Kepler’s parody “tweeter.”
Santa Fean Jaime Dean decided the clumsy use of social networking by political candidates deserved some good-natured mockery and fired up a Twitter account for “Asinine Kepler” called [...]
The Santa Fe New Mexican’s Tom Sharpe breaks the news this morning that the New Mexico Free Press is ceasing publication for unexplained reasons. Whether it was lambasting Barack Obama’s fascist-socialist takeover in lunatic columns “from the Wilderness,” re-running Andy Rooney and Dave Barry’s most stale material or [...]
At 7:23pm last night (old news, FB-time), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman posted an open letter to all users, informing us that the FB management plans to “build a better system” for privacy control. Except building, in this case, essentially means eliminating regional networks like “Santa [...]
The Torres Gallery at 207 W Water St. was raided today by agents from the IRS and Treasury Department, who confiscated most of the artwork inside. Officers from the Santa Fe Police Department assisted.
“I can’t tell you anything,” IRS Revenue Officer TW Lyons said when [...]
Today is World AIDS Day, which is why Twitter is red and Santa Fe Community College is offering free, confidential HIV/AIDS testing and Southwest CARE Center is organizing a farolito-bedecked remembrance tonight (5:30pm) in the Railyard.
But for one New Mexican (who preferred to [...]
Interesting tidbits keep turning up in the Thornburg Mortgage bankruptcy case, one of the largest in US history.
Court documents show that in October, the company, now known as TMST, had $24 million in the bank (or rather, banks—foremost among them being New Mexico Bank & Trust). That month alone, [...]
As Sandoval County’s experimental desalination plant nears the end of its pilot run, the age-old question of where New Mexico will get enough water to sustain it appears to have some new answers. For some people, anyway. Bruce Thomson, the civil engineering professor who heads UNM’s Water [...]
Updated at 5:05pm Tuesday; correction 9:16am Wednesday.
The details change, but the story never does.
The latest Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) brouhaha unfolded yesterday, when the New Mexico Environment Department slammed the lab with a hefty $960,000 penalty for failing to properly monitor radioactive pollutants [...]
Image via Wikipedia
If the prospect of hunting for a downtown parking spot in order to shop like a maniac on Black Friday leaves you cold (or, in my case, existentially nauseated), never fear. The city’s Buy Into It campaign (of which SFR is [...]
Carlos A. Pacheco, who's been hunting on the White Peak land for years, says he came to the news conference to "protest some [...]
As promised, here’s the good stuff:
“The Commissioners must lead by example————”
The PRC let reporters in to view super-thick binders with copies of a couple hundred survey ethics survey, like this one. Most were not redacted. Indeed, most responders didn’t [...]
On Nov. 12, the Second US Appeals Court ruled to uphold a 2007 New York district court decision in Wilson v. Central Intelligence Agency, the case in which former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her publisher, Simon & Schuster Inc., challenged the CIA’s heavy-handed redactions from [...]
It’s been an up-and-down year for the College of Santa Fe and its movie theater, The Screen. When the college entered dire financial straits in late 2008/early 2009 (or, rather, it entered them a long time ago, but only revealed to the public and its students, staff [...]
Image via Wikipedia
Former US Attorney for New Mexico, David Iglesias, is featured in the most recent Esquire Magazine’s Best and Brightest 2009 issue.
The article retraces the now-historical (or at least will-be-at-any-moment-historical) role Iglesias played in dismantling George W Bush’s Department of [...]
Update, 2:39pm: Here’s a response to this blog from Gilbert Gallegos, Deputy Chief of Staff to the Governor’s Office:
Nobody is asking lobbyists to “solve New Mexico’s budget woes.” And the Governor is not looking for a consensus or any recommendations from the task force. He wants a thorough analysis of [...]
In a pre-coffee, pre-email check Twitter post this AM, I gave props to the Santa Fe New Mexican’s “bombshell” on the results of the Public Regulation Commission’s internal ethics survey. Turns out the PRC sent the survey results to reporters around the state last night. Anyway, the New [...]
Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce president (and blogger) Simon Brackley passes along this chart, compiled from Chamber members’ responses to the question, “If a declining economy forces you to have to cut business expenses in the year ahead, will you cut?”
(Presumably, there should be an ellipsis after “will you [...]
Update 3: SFR asked Nathaniel Owings, owner of Owings-Dewey Fine Art, by email (he could not be reached by phone): “Is Owings-Dewey planning on moving or opening up a second location? If so, where? Are you considering the Marcy Street location where the gallery used [...]
As the Journal reported the other day, the 1st Judicial District nominating commission narrowed down a 17-person field to six names, which have been sent to Gov. Bill Richardson. He’ll use those to pick Judge James Hall’s replacement. Hall retires at the end of the year.
Below, [...]
Last night, in a spacious room at the Santa Fe Public Schools Admin Center, a bow-tied and dapper Steven Bingler expounded on the virtues of holistic urban planning, walkability, sustainability, the future—and how it all comes back to Santa Fe.
For the uninitiated, Bingler is something of [...]
Down at the 1st Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, the judicial nominating commission to replace retiring Judge James Hall has begun interviewing the 17 candidates for the job. One Republican commissioner, Frank Bond, is absent.
Only one person showed up early to offer public comment. Santa Fe attorney Sylvia [...]
Corporate greed, or top-secret-special meritocracy? Nuclear Watch of New Mexico has uncovered a somewhat astounding little figure: Michael Anastasio, the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), earns $800,348 a year—almost twice as much as US President Barack Obama (who makes $400,000, with a $50K cushion for [...]
Today’s Journal North Journal Santa Fe Santa Fe Journal* has a rather enraging story about an artist, Paul Pascarella, who, after getting hit by a passing vehicle, got a ticket for walking on the wrong side of the road. From the Journal (subscription required):
Pascarella was walking on a narrow [...]
Yesterday, at a meeting of the Santa Fe Council on International Relations, retired Los Alamos National Laboratory engineer Arvid Lundy spoke on a range of subjects related to the very salient theme of Iran’s nuclear weapons project.
After close to an hour of photos, statistics, histories and [...]
The New Mexico “Green Jobs Cabinet report” was released yesterday. It’s 98 pages of wonkery not intended for the casual reader.
Not to nitpick—or fearmonger—but there’s a word missing in the report. It’s kind of important. The word is earthquakes.
Although the report spends a good amount [...]
Here’s the news from tonight’s Santa Fe City Council meeting. I’ll update throughout the meeting (until I split, that is. Then you can follow the webcast here).
Railyard Cinema
One of this week’s more controversial items was placed, oddly enough, on the consent calendar, intended for pro [...]
Why LANL’s latest media dust-up shouldn’t be taken lightly.
On Monday, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board released a damning report on the safety of the main plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The crux of the report is that in the case [...]
The current issue of SFR has an update on the still-somewhat-mysterious death of Gilbert Roybal, the hair salon owner who was struck—apparently just once—on the street on Fiesta weekend, and died the next morning.
First, SFR reported witnesses’ concerns that responding Santa Fe Police Department [...]
Which of these costumes is safe enough for Santa Fe?
The Santa Fe Police Department has released its tips for safe trick-or-treating on Halloween, and while safety should in no way be taken lightly, these guidelines nonetheless do inspire [...]
A news release from the capital just came in, and it sounds like good news: Gov. Richardson’s freezing capital outlay projects and canceling grant agreements for all projects that don’t have third-party agreements. According to politico Steve Terrell, this could mean eliminating anything from the opera’s [...]
Got any thoughts on the new budget bills? Any feelings about the $250-million-plus cuts in government spending and services? On the seven long days (cost: $50,000 each) of tussling over how to save New Mexico from its $650 million budget shortfall? The bills are [...]
This just in from the Capitol: Sen. Rod Adair’s proposal to amend the House budget adjustment bill by slashing last year’s “pit rules,” which strengthened requirements for waste disposal by oil and gas producers, failed. Adair claims the amendment would’ve brought an extra $140 million into state [...]
State whistleblower Frank Foy’s attorney, Victor Marshall, just sent around a note saying Foy was diagnosed with colon cancer last week. According to Marshall, Foy “is undergoing surgery this morning to remove a section of his intestine. We hope that he will be okay. The prognosis is uncertain.”
Foy was [...]
Noting that some 4,000 New Mexicans will run out of unemployment benefits by the end of the year, the state’s senior US Senator, Jeff Bingaman, wants his colleagues to pick up the pace on approving an extension of benefits.
“It will not eliminate the dread [the unemployed] have about the need [...]
LT. GOVERNOR DIANE DENISH CHALLENGES SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO SAVE MONEY
Santa Fe, NM – Lt. Governor Diane Denish will be meeting with New Mexico school superintendents tomorrow to discuss energy cost saving measures. [...]
Santa Fe City Councilor Matt Ortiz gave SFR a look at a binder showing the expenses and revenues of Santa Fe 400th Anniversary, Inc, the largely public-funded non-profit organization that’s staging events for the celebration. In SFR’s earlier reporting on the anniversary budget, 400th Executive Director Libby Dover declined [...]
In case of emergency, break glass: Inside Railyard Co LLC's "offices"
SFR has learned that one of the principals in the company that wants taxpayers to help build a cinema in the Railyard has been charged several times with writing bad checks. Railyard Co LLC principal Richard [...]
So I was buying lunch at Bagelmania today when a headline in the latest issue of The New Mexico Jewish Link grabbed my attention: “Sharia is America’s Single Biggest Threat.”
It was a good thing I hadn’t yet gotten my food and started eating, or I [...]
For the last several months, writer Corey Pein has been digging deep into the city’s domestic violence problem. This week, he looks at how DV plays out across income and status lines. A slideshow accompanies this week’s cover story, which can be viewed below as well as at [...]
In this week’s Reporter, our Indicators column looks at New Mexico’s video game industry. One of the more *exotic* shops, D-Dub Software, has developed what it calls the “World’s First Action Adventure Porno Video Game.” The game, Bonetown, features porn star Ron Jeremy and a cast of characters [...]
First, a caveat: This information was already out of date when I picked it up from the Legislative Finance Committee last week. An economist there says continued decline in the broader economy will make for bigger projected deficits as state lawmakers prepare to meet Oct. 17 for a special [...]
Dearest Santa Fe:
I’m leaving you. I’m moving west and filling up my border state bingo card. It’s an economy thing, a weather thing, a move-close-to-close-friends thing. Lest you think I’ll forget you, I’ve put together this list of places, people, issues that will always stick with me. [...]
Yes, I keep harping on the fact that New Mexico didn’t real end the death penalty, it just repealed it for anyone convicted of a murder after July 2009. There’s still two guys on death row in New Mexico and several other defendants in ongoing murder trials [...]
On a Friday-going-on-Saturday when the Carlos Fierro trial dominated local headlines, the company that was Thornburg Mortgage announced that its founder, H Garrett Thornburg, Jr, was stepping down as board chairman. Journal North editor Mark Oswald had the story, which you can’t read unless you subscribe [...]
OK, I know we’re Santa Fe and we shouldn’t mess around with Albuquerque politics, but tomorrow is election day and…I can’t help myself. This is, hands down, the silliest 11th hour appeal I’ve ever read from a candidate. You may need to click to enlarge.
For the [...]
The Trinity site, where the US set off the first man-made atomic explosion, is only open to the public twice a year. One of those times was last Saturday. I went with a couple of friends, expecting to find a couple dozen science geeks and amateur historians. I did not [...]
Footballer-turned-British-Green-Party-spokesman-turned-son-of-god-turned-cult-idol David Icke is returning to New Mexico. The controversial writer who formulated the theory that the world is controlled by reptilian aliens posing as celebrities and politicians (e.g. Hillary Clinton, the Queen Mum) will deliver a 7-hour lecture with 1,000 illustrations on Sunday, [...]
SFR was present at the First Judicial District Courthouse when the verdict in the long, arduous Carlos Fierro case was returned. Last November, the prominent 36-year-old Santa Fe attorney struck and killed William Tenorio outside of what was then WilLee’s Blues Club.
Fierro stood accused of vehicular homicide and one count [...]
Well, maybe this means New Mexico’s pay-to-play stigma has faded…
Obama has tapped New Mexico Human Services Department Secretary Pam Hyde to be the administrator of the US Health and Human Services Department’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Now, this isn’t to smear Hyde personally, but New [...]
For the second time, the Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine is running low on cannabis, proving once again that there is no way for a single non-profit producer to meet the statewide medicinal demand.
This time, however, SFINM says the Department of Health is doing something [...]
This just in from Santa Fe Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jason Wagner:
** NEWS RELEASE **
Santa Fe Police Detective Sergeant Louis Carlos announces that on Tuesday, September 29, 2009, the Crimes Against Children Unit arrested and charged three (3) juvenile males involved in an incident in which [...]
The Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics have released an extremely timely and thorough expose,
“Curious Clusters“, involving “hidden” Congressional campaign contribution bundling by health care special interests. Here’s their 1-2-3 on the investigation:
The investigation identified outside lobbyists that donated to [...]
The New Mexico Department of Public Safety has reviewed its case file on WilLee’s Blues Club and determined that investigators were correct to issue citations to the liquor license holder and a bartender for over-serving attorney Carlos Fierro—despite Fierro’s testimony this week that he had not had [...]
In this week’s Reporter, Zane’s World takes the Santa Fe Opera and the College of Santa Fe to task for selling out the environment in Mora and San Miguel counties in order to plop a few drops into the bucket. And drops they are. Opera [...]
This just in from Politico’s Twitter: The Rockefeller Amendment to create a public health insurance option has died 8-15.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s spokeswoman Jude McCartin tells SFR that Bingaman was one of the eight to vote for the public option. McCartin says Bingaman hopes to make a [...]
Ethics and Campaign Review Board Member Fred Flatt has resigned in a scathing letter to Santa Fe Mayor David Coss.
Did I say scathing? More like claws-out, eye-gouging smack down. Here are the highlights:
Unfortunately, the Ethics Board suffers from both structural defects and a philosophy of ‘Let’s not look under that [...]
The College of Santa Fe is set to profit three times as much as the Santa Fe Opera in a recent mineral rights deal in Mora and San Miguel Counties, SFR has learned.
Last week, a document emerged showing that the Santa Fe Opera had signed on to [...]
On Sept 24, we reported that the Santa Fe Opera had leased nearly 27,000 acres worth of mineral rights to J Bar Cane, an energy exploration outfit. The wildcatters now have the right to look for oil and/or gas in the stretch of land that [...]
Tonight at The Screen, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn are in from Washington, DC to show and discuss their new documentary, American Casino. The muckraking husband and wife made a name for themselves through years of international investigative reporting; they also co-wrote and co-produced the 1997 George Clooney/Nicole [...]
Last night, KOB ran that story about how the Albuquerque Police Department has been snooping around the Backpage.com-administrated classified page linked through SFR’s web site.
According to reporter Valerie Castro, APD has made more than 20 arrests related to ads on the site. It should be noted [...]
Great scoop from the environmentalists at Drilling Santa Fe: The Santa Fe Opera has leased 26,746 acres worth of mineral rights in Mora and San Miguel counties to J Bar Cane, an oil and gas exploration company. Under the terms of the arrangement, the [...]
Bad news today from the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, which seems to add weight to this week’s Indicators column: The unemployment rate statewide increased .5 percent from July through August. While the rate remains lower than the national average, it still translates to [...]
In 1986, Gov. Toney Anaya made human rights history by commuting the death sentences of five men, essentially clearing death row. In this week’s edition, SFR examines how the death penalty debate could effect the 2010 governor’s race; Anaya granted us an interview to give us [...]
Eleven days after the attack that claimed the life of Gilbert Roybal, the Santa Fe Police Department is offering a reward for information about the suspect. Details below:
Entered Wednesday September 23rd, 2009 :: 01:16 p.m.
Please contact Crime Stoppers if you have info regarding the Gilbert Roybal homicide. [...]
In this week’s Reporter, I have a piece examining how the death penalty could affect the 2010 governor’s race, particularly in the Republican primary. In an interview with SFR, gubernatorial candidate Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Bernalillo–she voted to repeal the death penalty in 2007 and [...]
Recently, I hooked editor Julia Goldberg–a connoisseur of B-class sci-fi–on the British miniseries Torchwood: Children of Earth. The five-night special serves as the third and presumably final season of the Doctor Who spin-off (best described as an oversexed and homoerotic X-Files set in Wales).
In essence, [...]
The Observer, a newspaper serving the Union and Wallowa counties in Oregon, published a profile last week of a former Santa Fe-resident who stands to make a ton of money off his invention of the “Undetectable Nasal Insert,” which is technical-speak for earplugs for your [...]
Obviously, I’m not the first to ask the question, but this weekend was my first time visiting Chaco Culture National Historical Park: Doesn’t this ostensibly millennium-old scrawl on a canyon wall sure look like a space alien with a ray gun shooting a couple of stick [...]
The Journal is reporting this morning that the Public Regulation Commission is promoting Larry Lujan–an employee caught using PRC resources to campaign for Commissioner Jerome Block Jr–to transportation division director, a job with an almost $80,000 salary.
Commissioner Jason Marks, who may be the only commish currently un-embroiled in scandal, [...]
Updated: KRQE follows up with a report that this new mission is based on a handshake. See vid after the jump.
A late Thursday release from the governor’s office:
Governor Bill Richardson Applauds New Mission for 150th Fighter WingSANTA FE-Governor Bill Richardson today announced that the New [...]
We’ve learned that the New Mexico Supreme Court has denied 6-0 accused cop-killer Michael Astorga’s appeal to take the death penalty off the table.
According to TV reports, the court declined to rule on Astorga’s constitutional challenges to the death penalty, which included research from the Capital Jury [...]
Recently forced-out Thornburg Mortgage CEO Larry Goldstone told KSFR of his plans to start a bank back in March, before the company went bankrupt. Listen to the segment at their site.
The interview, which KSFR’s Bill Dupuy has dredged from the archives, raises some interesting questions.
First: If Goldstone had already [...]
This out today from the company that was Thornburg Mortgage: Confirmation of our report yesterday on CEO Larry Goldstone’s departure. (That’s him, pictured.) Also out are CFO Clarence Simmons and director Ike Kalangis.
Mr. Goldstone’s and Mr. Simmons’ resignations arose as a result of a disagreement between them [...]
Pretend you’re a newspaper. Don’t worry, it’s only temporary.
Now say one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in US history occurs on your turf. Then imagine that, in the course of the bankruptcy case, federal investigators determine the company’s management—which includes some of your city’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens—has [...]
At the 2009 Paranormal Symposium in Angel Fire, NM, “Monster Hunter” Nick Redfern explains that the American chupacabra is real. It’s just not a chupacabra. Read Redfern’s take on UFO records in this week’s reporter.
The American Chupacabra caught on tape after the jump.
[...]Last week, Reuters reported that the federal Justice Department official overseeing the bankruptcy, as well as the company’s creditors, are examining “potential misappropriation” of assets by Thornburg Mortgage executives related to their new venture, SAF Financial Inc.
Court filings say the new company was founded by Thornburg [...]
There’s an upside to a shitty unemployment rate–more unemployment checks! This just in from the Governor’s Office:
Governor Bill Richardson announced today that New Mexico’s unemployment rate will qualify the state to extend unemployment payments under both the federal Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC) and Extended Benefits (EB) programs…
In July 2008, Congress [...]
I put in a record request to get more details on this fraud report, just in from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office. If the other papers don’t have more details over the weekend, I’ll update the post.
Deputy Assigned: Tracy Baca
Commander Entering: Sgt. Ben Encinias
Location Of Incident: New Mexican Plaza
Suspect: [...]
This just in from Gov. Bill Richardson’s office: New Mexican drivers will get to choose between the traditional license plate and the new turquoise one. According to the press release:
About 77-percent of the 8,846 people who cast a vote during the month-long on-line voting, said they want [...]
Extra Rock:
If you don’t go to the Santa Fe Brewing Co. on Friday to see the Thermals, this is just a small sample of the fun you’ll miss:
Seriously, go.
***
Extra Rich:
Check out the web version of this week’s cover story. It’s got these cool spreadsheets so you can [...]
The Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor did not make Forbes.com’s “America’s Most Stressful Cities.” Nor did any other city in New Mexico.
The evaluation was based on a combination of economic and environmental factors, including the median home price drop, unemployment rate, air quality and number of sunny days.
Here [...]
For this week’s issue, I threw together a crossword puzzle for those among us who’ve been obsessed with the investigation into whether Richardson broke the law when the New Mexico Finance Authority awarded (or rewarded) an enormous contract to one of Richardson’s biggest campaign contributors.
When I interviewed koi enthusiast and pond engineer Joe Marquez on Friday, Aug. 28, his son-in-law Gilbert was on hand to videotape our interview. Gilbert has created a number of videos of Joe’s fish over the years, and koi fans across the world tune into his [...]
Alexa, Zane Fischer, Corey, Rani Molla, Julia Goldberg, Charlotte
