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Primary election is coming right up

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

New Mexico’s primary election is a few weeks away, on June 4. As attentive voters know, in New Mexico the primary election is at least as important as the general. Depending on your district, you might have a little work to do researching your choices, and it’s time to get started.

As usual, many counties are dominated by one party or the other and the primary is the decisive race for local positions like county commissioners and county clerk. Chavez and Lea counties, for example, have only Republicans running for county commission. Taos County has only Democrats. Valencia County has three Republicans and one Democrat running for treasurer.

Torrance County has only one county race – commissioner of District 3 – with four Republicans running.

A number of legislative seats have contests in the primary. One of them might be the House or Senate seat in your district, so you will want to know who’s who. You might need to read a few websites, attend a community forum or talk to the candidates in person.

If there’s any doubt whether you are registered, you can check at nmvote.org. That’s a section of the Secretary of State website that also links to other information, such as your sample ballot.

To find out who’s running in your district, first look around your neighborhood for yard signs. Then look online for the voters’ guide published by the League of Women Voters, which will be as complete and comprehensive as these dedicated volunteers can make it. It is expected to be completed by May 7, which is also the opening day of early voting and the close of registration by mail or online. Go to centralnmvoterguide.org or to Vote411.org.

The entire list of candidates for this election, from president on down, is on the Secretary of State website at (sorry for the long address) candidateportal.servis.sos.state.nm.us/CandidateList.aspx?eid=2876&cty=99. Options at the top of the page allow you to select just your own county or specific races.

In several legislative races there is no contest; I counted 14 Senate seats unopposed (9 Democrats, 5 Republicans) and 24 House seats, with no challenger in either the primary or the general. Almost all are incumbents.Some people think it’s a problem when a candidate gets a free ride back into office. I don’t – at least, not for our part-time unpaid Legislature. If the community is happy with the legislator’s performance, it’s okay to let him or her back into office without the burden of campaigning. It’s a vote of confidence and a huge relief for the legislator.

On the other hand, a nasty rivalry has arisen between centrist and progressive Democrats, causing some several primary contests among legislators. This accounts for some of the primary challenges to incumbent Democrats.

If you are a constituent in one of these districts, in deciding which candidate to support you may want to do a little research and make up your own mind about the issues in dispute, such as the paid family and medical leave bill that failed this year. I tend to favor the incumbents, in part because they took a sensible position on a badly written bill.

For Congress, the only primary contest is in District 1 between two Republicans running to oppose incumbent Democrat Melanie Stansbury. There is no primary contest in the U.S. Senate race.

As always, because we are so late in the national calendar, New Mexico’s vote for president will not help to pick the nominees, but if you are an anti-Trump Republican and would like to express your feelings by voting for Haley, Christie, DeSantis or another candidate, now’s your chance to do so without affecting the outcome.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

A medical cost you didn’t know about

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Most of us have never heard of independent medical examinations. We might need to know a little more about them.

An independent medical examination (IME) is an exam performed when there is litigation related to a sick or injured person’s medical condition that requires more than the opinion of the treating physician. A doctor is hired – or, if necessary, a few doctors with different specialties – to give an unbiased opinion.

New Mexico workers' compensation has an unusual system for IMEs. If the parties can’t agree to an IME physician and the judge has to select one, the judge may only pick from a list of doctors approved annually by a committee.

The committee members are selected by the Workers' Compensation Advisory Council. Ironically, selecting these committee members is the only actual power the Advisory Council has; everything else it does is advisory only. The IME Committee, however, has real power, for just this one thing.

The Advisory Council has been mostly following the Open Meetings Act, in part because I helped set it up years ago when I worked there. But until now, the IME Committee has been closed. That is about to change.

Here’s the origin of this odd process. Prior to the 1990 workers' compensation reform, any doctor could do IMEs, but some doctors were regarded as biased and were deeply distrusted by either the insurance community or plaintiff attorneys. The committee was established as part of the reform, to screen out the biased doctors. Physicians who wanted to be eligible for IMEs ordered by a judge had to apply to the committee.

After a few years most doctors stopped applying, and for a while there were not enough to meet the demand. I think there has been considerable increase in IME activity, and that would be useful information for public policy, but it’s not being tracked in any publicly available statistics.

New Mexico workers' compensation has a medical fee schedule, which is supposed to limit what doctors charge, but IME charges are not regulated. The list of IME approved providers is public, accessible on the website of the Workers' Compensation Administration. But the committee meetings have always been secret. After wondering why for several years, I realized there was no good reason, so I asked the Workers' Compensation Administration about it and asked the Foundation for Open Government for a little help. We now have assurance that the meetings will be open.

You might be asking why this is of any importance. Here’s why.

First, the IME committee does the public’s business. Indirectly, it has the power to shape the outcomes of lawsuits that affect seriously injured workers. And it affects an insurance system that we all pay for. So it should be transparent.

Second, medical malpractice and personal injury litigation also use IMEs. Those systems are far less regulated than workers' compensation and we are all paying for them, partly through government and partly through our own insurance.

Finally, medical-related litigation will be a factor when New Mexico eventually passes a paid family and medical leave law. There is no getting around that. Issues will arise that lead to litigation and add costs.

Right now among policy makers there is a quiet but furious dispute going on about the next round of legislation on paid family and medical leave. Some issues in that system will be comparable to issues in workers' compensation.

New Mexico did an imperfect but thorough job addressing those issues in our reform 33 years ago, and it should serve as a model. The bill drafters for this new system should study it.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Regulating yourself doesn’t work

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

On October 29, 2018, a passenger airliner crashed into the sea less than 13 minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, Indonesia. A few months later, a second plane crashed over Ethiopia. In total, 346 people were killed.

Both planes were the brand new Boeing 737 Max. Investigation placed the responsibility squarely with Boeing, the manufacturer. As news reports explained, Boeing had made technical changes that were not thoroughly tested and, as a deliberate policy choice to save money, had hidden these changes from both regulators and the pilots who would be flying those planes. The pilots had not been trained on how to handle a malfunction of the new feature.

The world’s most trusted airplane manufacturer had undergone a change of philosophy several years earlier. Following a merger and new management, the company abandoned its culture of excellence in favor of a focus on profit and stock price.

Employee reports of safety problems were ignored. Millions of airline passengers, including you and me, were put at risk. But because the company was so trusted, federal regulators allowed the company to use its own employees for some of the safety analysis that should have been done by government inspectors. All this has been widely reported.

At a hearing in 2020, then-New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall said, "This continues to be a case study of the complete and total failure of self-regulation.” Please read that again: “complete and total failure of self-regulation.”

Boeing was charged with conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration and agreed to payments of more than $2.5 billion, including both penalties to the government and compensation to the crash victims’ families.

And then, as we all know, on Jan. 5 of this year a door flew off one of these airplanes a few minutes after takeoff.

How many more times do we have to repeat this painful lesson before we finally remember it? Self-regulation doesn’t work. While it might appear to work in the short term, it exposes the consuming public to the whims of other people’s self-interest.

The tension between industry and regulators helps to keep those greedier impulses in check. Human nature is such that when regulators are not around to hold the line, eventually somebody will be tempted to get greedy or sloppy and take shortcuts. The honest employees who follow the rules will be edged out by adventurous types who provide a short-term competitive advantage because they have no compunctions about taking risks with their customers’ lives or fortunes. When something terrible finally happens we shrug our shoulders and wonder how this was allowed to take place.

This is what happened to the financial industry that led to the economic crash of 2008 – though the story was very different and the victims lost their homes, not their lives. That disaster resulted in part from the repeal of a Depression-era federal law called Glass-Steagall, which had been enacted to prevent exactly what happened.

New Mexico regulates numerous industries through programs in several state agencies. In recent years I’ve written about the requirement to sanitize the holding tanks in trucks that carry milk from the farm to the bottling plant, the testing of gasoline before you pump it into your car and other regulations.

A friend of mine worked at Sandia National Laboratories in a position involving safe disposal of hazardous radioactive materials, accountable to the state Environment Department. He told me no one in his group ever lied to the state agency, partly because it was the right thing to do and partly because the penalty for lying could be as much as 30 years in prison.

My friend said the threat of the penalty was a great motivator for that educated workforce. Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Nine stealth city elections

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Nine municipal governments around New Mexico held local elections a couple of weeks ago. If you didn’t know anything about this, you’re in good company.

For these municipalities, according to the Secretary of State, there were a total of 122,035 eligible voters. Of those, 9,785 voted. That is 8.02%.

In the off-year consolidated local elections last November, the average turnout was about 20%, or two and a half times as much as this turnout. The municipalities that held elections in March were Artesia, Clovis, Española, Rio Rancho, Santa Rosa, Bernalillo, Cuba, Jemez Springs and Ruidoso. To remind you of how we got here, from the time of statehood, 1912, until a few years ago, the state constitution required that school board elections must be separate from all other elections. The reason, reputedly, was in 1912 women were not allowed to vote, but there was an exception for school elections.

That limitation ended when the federal 19th Amendment was passed in 1919.

The 1912 state constitution created a weird set of criteria making it almost impossible to reverse the voting restriction. It was so weird it was nicknamed the “unamendable” provision.

It was finally reversed a few years ago when we voters approved a state constitutional amendment, followed by a lawsuit in which the state Supreme Court overruled the “unamendable” restriction.

Now cities, school districts and other districts can hold their nonpartisan local elections together in November of odd-numbered years. But those nine municipalities have not adopted the new method.

Most of these municipalities had one or more contested city council positions as well as some uncontested ones. Several had a municipal judge on the ballot. A few had bond issues.

Here’s a rundown of contested races:

Artesia had one contested city council seat, one municipal judge and the prize for lowest voter turnout, 5.61%. A school board member had been elected in November.
Clovis had the mayor plus four contested city council seats; turnout 11.89%. In November the Clovis school board had two contested seats on the ballot. Villages in the same county (Curry) – Grady, Melrose and Texico – all had their municipal and school elections plus a community college board seat and a soil and water district in November, with a countywide 10% voter turnout.
Española had two contested city council seats and 6.51% turnout, almost as low as Artesia.
Rio Rancho had three contested city council seats, three bond questions, two propositions and 7.08% turnout.
Santa Rosa was the exception, with two at-large city council races and a 33% voter turnout: 646 ballots were cast out of 1,946 eligible voters.
The Town of Bernalillo had 8% turnout. It had one exciting town council seat with three candidates, whose vote totals were 333, 324 and 354. There might be a recount.
Cuba had three seats on the village council, turnout 14.97%.
Jemez Springs had three village trustees, turnout 15.38%.
Ruidoso had four contested councilor-at-large positions and 13% turnout. Lincoln County has several other municipalities and five school districts, all of which voted in November.

The advantage of a consolidated local election system is obvious. First and foremost, there’s enough substance to encourage voters to pay attention.

Voters have the convenience of going just once to the polls, as they do in even numbered years for the local, state and national partisan elections. Candidates for the sometimes obscure local districts, like water and sanitation, have a chance to get noticed. The financial savings of the shared election are considerable.

New Mexico has 105 municipalities (106 if you count the city-county of Los Alamos). If you live in one of the nine mentioned above, you might ask a city councilor why your community did not make the switch.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

A little change for better schools

By Merilee Dannemann

Back in the era of Susana Martinez’ governorship, there was a push for a law that would allow New Mexico public schools to hold students back in third grade if they couldn’t meet reading criteria.

I wondered why there was any need for that to be in legislation, when such matters should be handled locally by the school. Somebody told me teachers or principals who tried to hold students back received death threats from parents.

I never tried to verify that claim, but the story was a sharp reminder that for some New Mexico parents, keeping their kids happy and comfortable is a higher priority than ensuring their education. So a recent news report that most school superintendents in New Mexico hold their jobs for four years or less is not a surprise. It’s nothing new. Many years ago the average tenure of superintendents was said to be three years.

School superintendents are hired and fired by local school boards. For a superintendent to be effective, he or she needs the support of the community, and especially of the board. If a superintendent is going to try anything innovative, that support from the board is essential. A superintendent who has to worry about getting fired for offending part of the community can’t afford to be very creative in advancing education.

Senate Bill 137 might help. The bill passed both houses with strong majorities and has been signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The bill is a reincarnation of a House bill that didn’t pass last year, but it has a few additional features.

One new element is a provision that prohibits a school board with a newly seated majority to fire the superintendent without cause for the first 60 days of the board’s term. Apparently it intends that members of the board be forced to spend a little time getting to know the superintendent before they can take radical action.

The bill also adds specific benchmarks to an existing requirement that school board members receive a bit of training. The existing law does not specify how much training is required. The bill’s language says new board members must receive a minimum of 10 hours of training during their first year.

The training must cover ethics and school personnel, public school finance, open meetings and public records, governance and supervision, and student achievement and support services.

The bill specifies that all other school board members must have five hours of training per year, and there are parallel provisions for members of the governing bodies of charter schools.

Ten hours for a brand new board member is pretty minimal.

Legislative analysis says that under rules of the Public Education Department, the training is provided by the New Mexico School Boards Association. That association has its own board, entirely made up of school board members from around the state – so one can imagine that the required training will probably be user-friendly.

There’s no real consequence for failing to get the training. The bill requires the school district to post the completed trainings on its website, so the public will know. That’s all.

Is it possible that this morsel of training could make a difference in the relationships between school boards and superintendents? Could it make school boards more willing to support a superintendent who wants to try something new or just push harder?

I doubt it. But I am increasingly convinced that in matters of education, small incremental steps like this are necessary because New Mexico communities will not tolerate anything too bold – such as requiring children to repeat third grade if they can’t read.

So I am glad the governor signed it.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Medical leave might not work for ranches

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Do you think there is workers’ comp insurance coverage on the Yellowstone Ranch? What about paid family and medical leave?

The fictional Yellowstone Ranch is the spectacular starring location of the “Yellowstone” TV series, now running on CBS after first being aired on a streaming network. The show is a 21st-century Western, replete with cowboys, cattle, horses and modern intrigue. People get injured in every episode.

In the last episode of Season 3, several people get shot, but I am more curious about Jimmy, the incompetent cowboy who dreams of rodeo stardom. Against orders, he rides a bucking horse with no one else around (an obvious safety hazard), gets thrown off and is last seen unconscious on the ground.

I thought of this because a few days after seeing the episode, at the Roundhouse I saw an old friend from the New Mexico Cattle Growers Association, who said her list of legislative chores included opposing the paid family and medical leave bill. She said it would be ruinous to ranchers. New Mexico ranchers have already lost their exemption from the workers' compensation coverage requirement, through the courts rather than by legislation. That TV show reminded me of why they had the exemption in the first place.

On the Yellowstone Ranch, the employees live on the property. They are housed, fed and provided with medical care at the employer’s expense. They don’t work set hours but do whatever task is needed at any time of day or night. They probably don’t get overtime pay because their time is not measured.

Back in the real world, when New Mexico ranchers were arguing against mandatory workers' compensation coverage, they said that’s what their lives are like. The workers’ comp system, they said, is not a good fit with a system where employees are compensated partly with intangibles rather than money.

The ranch hands at Yellowstone are, conveniently, all bachelors so there’s no need for family leave. They don’t need medical leave because the ranch is their home.

The fictional Yellowstone ranch is in Montana, which is not among the 15 states that still exempt agriculture from the workers' compensation requirement. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

So the fictional ranch has coverage. But what will happen to poor Jimmy, the stupid cowboy? A preview of next season says he will be paralyzed, but it doesn’t say whether the condition is permanent.

If Jimmy files a claim for workers' compensation benefits, I am pretty sure his claim would be denied. His accident was not work-related. He was not on that horse for any work-related purpose. Whether to cover his injury would not be determined by his politically powerful employer. It would be determined by the ranch’s insurance company. If he’s paralyzed for life, his future medical care could cost a few million dollars.

The insurance company would want to avoid that and would be justified.

Would the ranch take care of him anyway? Would he retain his bed in the bunkhouse and his place at the dinner table?

If this happened in New Mexico under the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill that almost passed, how would medical leave apply in this situation?

Jimmy might accept the generosity of whatever his employer offered voluntarily. But if he claimed medical leave, I think he would have to sue to get a court to determine what he was entitled to. The defeated Paid Family and Medical Leave Act contains no exemptions for specific industries. When it comes back next year, I wonder if my friend will propose an exemption for ranches or just join with other business groups in trying to kill the bill.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Family leave bills are not quite ready

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

If you get injured at work and need time off for your injury, you are entitled to workers' compensation benefits that compensate you for most of your lost wages.

What if the Legislature passes the bill to provide paid family and medical leave? Can you take paid family and medical leave (PFML) at the same time as workers’ comp? Surely you are not entitled to both. Are you?

Two bills proposing PFML are at the Roundhouse right now: HB 6 and HB 11, though HB 11 is tabled and only HB 6 is moving forward. Both bills say something about being ineligible for PFML if you are entitled to workers' comp benefits.

But the language is not clear enough to be reliable.

One challenge of writing legislation is that whatever the bill is intended to achieve, in the future somebody probably will try to find a loophole and get around it. The tedious task of bill drafters is to anticipate loopholes and prevent them in advance. The job of legislators, especially in the committee process, is to examine bills and try to find anything the drafters missed. When bills are passed with loopholes in place, somebody eventually will try to take advantage. Then the new law will not work the way it was intended, and the confusion will be resolved slowly, painfully and expensively in the courts.

Most New Mexico legislators barely know workers' comp exists. The only people who understand workers’ comp are the people who work in the field every day.

So it was concerning that the Workers' Compensation Administration did not provide input to the analysis of either HB 6 or HB 11. Both bills have Fiscal Impact Reports, the standard analysis written primarily by the staff of the Legislative Finance Committee, with comments submitted by several state agencies.

At a recent meeting of the Workers' Compensation Advisory Council, the WCA general counsel said he did not submit a report on the legislation because one had not been requested. But a few important things are missing from this legislation that a workers’ comp expert might have noticed. The bill should establish clearly that if a person has been injured at work, workers' comp takes precedence, and the person should seek those benefits rather than PFML. HB 11 does better at clarifying that than HB6.

The PFML proposed legislation provides leave for a person who has a serious health condition, but it doesn’t provide anything else – specifically, it does not provide medical care. Under the current draft language, the leave would be limited to 12 weeks. In workers' comp, medical care is an automatic part of the package and payment for time off can last for as long as 700 weeks (though it is based on the person’s recovery and is usually much shorter). That’s one of many reasons workers' comp is preferable to PFML.

The bill should clarify what happens if a person claims workers' comp benefits, but those benefits are delayed due to a dispute about the claim. Can that person claim PFML while the dispute is pending?

On that question I am not suggesting a proposed solution but just pointing out the issue: legislators should decide how those cases should be handled and add clear language to the bill. Bills on complex topics often take a few years to get through the legislative process. They have to be studied and studied again before they are ready to become law.

This little analysis of one bill may help to show why it’s time to modernize the Legislature so legislators have more time and staff assistance to study the issues. Bills to do some of that modernization are being considered, and they deserve plenty of attention.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Affordable housing is not affordable enough

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

If you want to buy your first home in New Mexico, and you are of low to moderate income, you probably should not count on buying a new one.

According to one of the state’s leading experts, New Mexico builders cannot build a house today for less than $250,000. A person of modest means can’t afford that. A person who can afford that amount makes too high an income to qualify for help from the agencies that are set up to provide that help.

So says Jack Milarch, CEO of the New Mexico Home Builders Association and one of the most trustworthy people I know.

Affordable housing is a great need and a very worthy goal for New Mexico, but Milarch says the numbers need to be tweaked before builders can get to work.

Milarch wrote an article a few months ago, cautioning about proposed changes in the construction conservation codes to make houses more energy efficient. Incorporating those changes not only adds to the direct cost, he said, it also tacks on supplemental costs like additional gross receipts tax and increased future property tax. And the long-term savings take many decades to be recouped.

Homeowner’s insurance has emerged as another serious obstacle. If the house costs more, so does the insurance. Prices are increasing dramatically, as my colleague Diane Denish has recently written, but some prospective homeowners can’t get insurance at any price. Insurance companies are refusing to cover some properties at all as a result of increasingly severe damage caused by climate events.

In a recent conversation, I asked Milarch what happens when family and medical leave are added to this mix. The answer was no surprise. It also adds cost, which has to be passed on to the consumer.

We are all both earners and spenders. Ironically, when benefits to workers increase, like family and medical leave, those same workers are disadvantaged when, as consumers, they try to buy a house.

Two very simple and obvious truths:· First, not all business owners have deep pockets. Some builders are small family businesses. Nobody should assume that they can afford these additional costs.· Second, at the end of every transaction is the consumer. In this case, it’s the home buyer. Builders can’t build what buyers can’t afford to buy.

Last May, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order creating a Housing Investment Council with a mission to bring New Mexico’s affordable housing development up to pace to meet demand in the state. The chair of the council is former House Speaker Brian Egolf.

The council’s work begins at a crucial moment, as average rent in the state has increased by 70% since 2017, but wages have only grown by 15%.Grisham said her goal is to have 30,000 houses a year built, with activity in every community.

The Home Builders Association is represented on that council. I hope other members of the council are listening.

At the same time, the state’s Mortgage Finance Authority (MFA) offers help with down payment for first-time homebuyers.

A homebuyer is not necessarily buying a new house. Milarch says the first-time homebuyer probably will have better luck finding an existing house. The MFA offers a great deal of information on its website, housingnm.org.

Looking at this from a long-range perspective, it appears to me that our society is reaching a point of reckoning with the wealth gap that has been increasing for the past four decades. Energy-efficient housing benefits not only the individual homeowner but the whole world, and we are all a little worse off when homeowners can’t afford it. I believe we will have to find creative new ways to shift the balance, and that will be a rough ride.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

A New Mexico long-range wish list

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

“New Mexico 2050” was the very ambitious title of an only slightly ambitious project. In 2015, a small conference was held and a book was published, featuring in-depth analysis of major issues by respected New Mexico policy experts, edited by former U.S. Sen. Fred Harris.

The book contained a great deal of information but lacked the long-term vision I had hoped to see. For all my years here, New Mexico policy makers have focused on fixing our myriad immediate problems rather than aiming with determination at long-term goals.

That’s reasonable, given how many immediate problems we have, but maybe it would help to set higher specific goals.

To quote author Stephen Covey, in “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” “Begin with the end in mind.” That means set the goal first then figure out how to achieve it.

It’s a new year, the state is flush with money and the legislative session has not started yet. So for a few optimistic moments, instead of being bogged down by pragmatism I’m starting my new year by thinking big.

I suggest that the state set some long-range goals. Here are two specific ideas as examples.

I’m skipping the obvious – education and economic development. We know New Mexico is obsessed with those issues, and I don’t believe a vision statement would move the process along any faster or alleviate the continuing argument about how to achieve results. Let’s find some other things that are challenging and worth doing.

First: eliminate all leaking carbon within 10 years. All of it.

As I wrote in a recent column, the oil industry should be capturing methane from active oil production, because it is highly toxic, has a powerful greenhouse effect, and doesn’t contribute any positive benefits.

Let’s expand that goal to include capping depleted and abandoned oil wells. If the science holds up, these capped wells can be made beneficial by using them to store carbon dioxide underground. According to “New Mexico Earth Matters,” a publication of New Mexico Tech, carbon sequestration is a well-established technique that has been used in New Mexico for decades. It involves injecting carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to push the oil out so it can be pumped to the surface.

The problem of abandoned oil wells is also well documented. The number in New Mexico has been estimated from 700 to more than 1,700. They can leak not only methane, but also hydrogen sulfide, benzene, arsenic and other chemicals, all toxic.

There is no political controversy around this issue. But there are possible administrative complications in determining who pays: whether specific wells are the responsibility of a known private owner or “orphaned,” meaning no former owner or operator can be located.

New Mexico has received $25 million in federal funds for this effort, and additional funding from other sources is likely.

Here’s a second and simpler goal: within 10 years, make New Mexico the most physician-friendly state, so doctors will want to be here.

This requires no explanation – just determination. The inadequacies of healthcare access in New Mexico, including our serious shortage of physicians, are based on public policies, such as our high Medicaid population combined with low Medicaid reimbursement rates. Those policies can be corrected, and the rewards are obvious.

If you don’t agree with these goals, suggest other ones. I’d like to see one of our trusted nonprofits start a New Mexico 2050 Commission.

As Yogi Berra famously said, “If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” Let’s decide where we want to go.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Greenhouse gases and the new methane rule

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Maybe the new oil and gas methane rule has a silver lining for New Mexico. That is, if Texas and other oil-producing states have to comply with the same rule as New Mexico, it’s no longer a competitive disadvantage for New Mexico oil production.

The new federal rule was announced December 2 at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai. The EPA’s press release says implementation of the rule will “prevent an estimated 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038, the equivalent of 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide – nearly as much as all the carbon dioxide emitted by the power sector in 2021.”

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who was at the conference, celebrated New Mexico’s contribution to the new rule.

The governor’s press release said: “The EPA worked closely with New Mexico in developing the new rule, which closely resembles rules that New Mexico adopted to curb the release of methane and ozone precursors in 2021 and 2022. Since adopting its own emissions rules, New Mexico has seen its average monthly amounts of methane released into the air decrease by 55%, while routine venting and flaring by New Mexico oil and gas producers has decreased by 70%... A recent independent study found that the emissions related to the oil and gas production in New Mexico is just half that of neighboring and less-regulated Texas.”

Some commentators think oil and gas are going to be around for longer than electric car advocates would like. I suspect they’re probably right. So, what if there is a completely different approach to reducing greenhouse gases? Maybe there is a way to put enough carbon back into the ground to compensate for the amount we generate. And maybe some of that can be done in New Mexico.

It’s called regenerative agriculture. It’s farming the old-fashioned way, mixing crops and livestock, trapping enough carbon in the ground that it might buy the human race a few additional years of transition.

I am neither a farmer nor a scientist so I cannot judge what’s practical, but I’m listening to scientists who say this can work and farmers who have made it work on their own land – while also producing superior crops, saving water and making money. This information comes in part from a documentary film called “Kiss the Ground,” which explains how regenerative agriculture works. According to this film, about one third of the earth’s topsoil has been lost over the last century or so, due to the destructive farming practices that created the 1930s’ Dust Bowl. More is being lost every year, reducing the land’s capacity to absorb carbon, adding to climate stress and forcing increased reliance on chemical fertilizers.

Regenerative agriculture means reversing these trends by using a mix of crops and grazing animals on the land in rotation, nourishing the soil instead of tilling it. The practice is being promoted by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. New Mexico has a Healthy Soil law (Chapter 76, Article 25, adopted in 2019) and a Healthy Soil program based on this law, administered by the state Department of Agriculture at New Mexico State University. The program awards grants to local governments and other entities that adopt these practices. An interactive map at nmhealthysoil.org shows participation so far is sparse, and there’s a lot of room for expansion.

The possibility of making New Mexico a little less of a desert deserves serious examination by the people who could potentially make it happen. As long as New Mexico is going to continue producing oil and gas and releasing carbon into the air, we should support whatever can be done to minimize both environmental and health impacts of that production.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Election turnout was pretty good

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The recent New Mexico off-year election had an average voter turnout of about 20%. Some commentators said that’s a lousy turnout. I disagree. I think it’s pretty good considering the newness of this process.

It’s really different to have a ballot with only local candidates and issues.

I myself, based on the district I live in, had no city council or school board race. The only candidates on my ballot were running for the board of a soil conservation district. Like most voters, I knew very little about that district.

I also had some bond issues, but those would probably have passed without my help. I could have stayed home, but I found out something about the candidates in the conservation district and voted.

Though the low statewide total turnout was the big newsmaker, the variation from county to county was dramatic.

Top voter turnout was in Colfax County with a whopping 42% of eligible voters turning out. Of a total of 7,554 eligible voters, 3,224 cast ballots.

It’s anybody’s guess what drove this turnout. The biggest population center is Raton, which had only two city commission positions on the ballot. There were contests for mayor in both Angel Fire and Cimarron.

Bond issues for the Cimarron school district and Angel Fire road improvements received higher than 80% support.

A close second was Union County with 40% turnout. Out of 2,282 eligible voters, 922 voted. There was no contested mayoral race. One at-large school board position in Clayton had eight candidates.

De Baca County had 37%. The hot item probably was the contest for mayor of Fort Sumner. This county has only four precincts with 1,226 eligible voters. There were 460 ballots cast countywide. Three precincts are in the municipality, voted in the mayor’s race and cast 299 of those votes. De Baca had above 60% in favor of a hospital mill levy, school bonds and school capital outlay.

The lowest voter turnouts were Curry, 10.25%; Lea, 11.63%; and Cibola, 11.68%.

In Curry, the village of Grady had a contested mayoral vote, with the winner getting 13 votes and the runner-up 10. Clovis, the population center, had no mayoral or city council races. Of two Clovis contested school board seats, District 3 drew 328 votes and District 5 drew 237. Can we speculate that the citizens of Clovis are content with their public schools?

I find it puzzling when there’s a large number of candidates for a position – suggesting several citizens were motivated to run for the office – but a low total voter turnout for that position, suggesting that none of the candidates campaigned very hard. That happened in several races in Lea County. Eight candidates ran for a city councilor-at-large position in Tatum, but collectively they attracted only 515 votes.

Nine candidates ran for a school board position in Jal. That race attracted 915 votes. The winner beat the second place candidate, 173 to 172. Similarly, a councilor-at-large position in Jal had six candidates, with the winner beating the runner-up by 5 votes, 219 to 214. There must have been a few celebrations in Jal on election night!

Hobbs, by contrast, had three school board races, but two were uncontested and the third had only two candidates. Like Clovis, perhaps Hobbs is also content with its schools.

These consolidated local elections are a tremendous improvement over the past, when separate school board and city council elections drew much smaller numbers. It might take a few tries to get the hang of them. If you showed up at the polls unprepared and felt a little silly, now you understand how it works, and next time you’ll know better. We all will.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Merilee Dannemann 12-11-23 on

merilee dannemann 12-11-23 on

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