Merilee Dannemann 2022

Political food fight starts early

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Rebecca Dow looks fabulous on that horse, don’t you think? Poised to gallop toward the camera, with a posse of tough cowboys behind her. I would hire that camera crew in a heartbeat. Her TV commercial slamming Mark Ronchetti, rival Republican candidate for New Mexico governor, is all downhill from there.

The ad accuses him of “working with climate change activists funded by George Soros.” Linking the former TV weatherman to philanthropist Soros is a stretch, but of greater concern, the use of the name is a dog whistle to dark-web conspiracy theorists.

Ronchetti’s ad slamming back is no better. The ad calls Dow a “liberal,” based largely on her vote for one bill in 2021, using the old Willie Horton trick of linking her to criminals with ugly faces. It doesn’t work very well, and it’s not likely that the “liberal” designation will stick.

We all knew something like this would be in the cards for the general election. It’s a shame this disgraceful food fight had to start in the primary. If one of these two emerges as the Republican nominee, your opinion of that candidate might very well be tarnished. It would serve them both right if one of the other three Republican primary candidates, who, as of this writing, don’t have TV commercials, beats them both. Fellow candidate Jay Block has made that point.

These ads focus on issues that consultants apparently believe will move conservative voters. Crime and the border top the list. During a drought of frightening severity, when at least four major fires are destroying forests and communities, these candidates are telling voters what’s most important to them. But who is making those decisions?

We’re seeing too much of this new breed of ruthless political operators whose mission is to appeal to the extremes in their party and who don’t care about the wreckage they leave behind or the future of the state. If these candidates have let their consultants dictate the issues they raise, will they also let consultants dictate their policies as governor?

Alas, the Democrats have not risen above this nasty practice. In the highest profile statewide race in this primary, for attorney general, I was planning to praise the two candidates for their polite and positive advertising until they blew it with their own demeaning slugfest.

But another dynamic is at play in this primary, and it’s brand new. For the first time, New Mexico has something approaching an open primary.

This year, if you are a New Mexico registered independent or “decline to state” voter, or registered with a minor party, you can become a Democrat or Republican for a day. You can show up at your county clerk office or polling place and change your registration. Then you can vote in the primary of the party you have selected and change your registration back later. (Note – please check with your county clerk for the technical details and documentation requirements.)

So if you are, for example, an unaffiliated voter who regards “climate change activist” as a compliment rather than an insult, you can register Republican and vote for Ronchetti. Or vote for Dow because you like her “liberal” voting record. I recommend you rely on information more substantive than those commercials, consider the three other Republican candidates, and do your homework before voting: review the whole ballot including legislators and local officials.

Almost a quarter of New Mexico’s 1.3 million registered voters are either DTS or registered in a minor party. While it’s not likely they will make much difference this first time around, they could surprise us. Their participation might change the messaging next time around.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Trust but verify

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Suppose the office manager of your nonprofit organization had to leave town urgently for a family emergency in another city.

Now, who knows the passwords?

That manager may be a part-time volunteer. Unlike for-profit businesses, nonprofits sometimes rely on volunteers and often have an ever-changing Board of Directors whose members may not be familiar with the administrative procedures.

That’s why you want matters like password and file management to be written policies, followed scrupulously.

At least two people should know the usernames and passwords for critical files, including the website and Facebook page. It’s best identify people by position, not name. Office manager and board secretary, not James and Susan.

Who knows what those files are? How are they secured against prying and tampering? Is there a list of the major files? Where is it kept? Who has keys?

How often are the files backed up, and where are the backups kept -- somebody’s thumb drive or a cloud storage file that nobody knows how to access? What’s the contingency plan if the computer is stolen or goes up in smoke? There should be a policy requiring regular backups, a safe method of storage, written instructions and more than one person knowing how to access the files.

This article is a follow-up to my recent column about financial reviews for nonprofits, with help from Tsiporah Nephesh, executive director of New Mexico Thrives, an affiliate of the National Council of Nonprofits. It’s to help remind readers of the unexciting but vital things we might overlook in the places where we participate0

. Policies like password management establish routine practices so people know what to do and can pick up after each other whenever necessary.

Beyond matters of practice and procedure, there are major matters of corporate due diligence, beginning with the IRS.

Nonprofits are required to file an IRS form called a 990, or 990-EZ for smaller organizations. This is a public document and must be made available to anybody who requests it, subject to a $5000 penalty. Not just your members – anybody, including nosy journalists like me. So it should accurately reflect what your organization does and how responsibly you do it. Help from professionals is strongly recommended.

The 990 is not just a tax form with blanks. It asks questions and requires descriptions. The instruction manual is 102 pages long.

You must state on the 990 whether all your board members have read it. It also asks whether the organization has in place official policies on three topics: Conflict of interest; Document retention and destruction; and Whistleblower protection.

You don’t have to have these policies. But you must disclose whether you have them or not. They are considered best practices.

The IRS itself says: “Charitable organizations are frequently subject to intense public scrutiny. … The recommended conflict of interest policy is a strategy we encourage … to establish procedures that will offer protection against charges of impropriety involving officers, directors or trustees.” Nephesh says the best practice is to have each board member sign the conflict of interest policy once a year.

Your IRS filing should be followed annually by a filing with the New Mexico attorney general. Do you have Directors and Officers Insurance? That insurance protects board members if the organization is sued. Nephesh says this is so important your board should schedule a presentation from your insurance agent once a year.

There’s more. If you are on a board, this is to remind you to check it all out.

In my related previous article I said the people who might take advantage are, sadly, always people we trust. They are the nicest people. So are the people who, with the best of intentions, forget the passwords. As President Reagan famously said, trust but verify.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

New Mexico corruption has changed

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

A certain municipality, I heard, had a high rate of workers’ comp claims among city workers. This was mentioned in conversation at the Workers’ Compensation Administration, where I worked. The subject came up because the mayor was a friend of mine.

Maybe the city was looking the other way while city workers used workers’ comp as a gravy train. Apparently nobody was troubled by this. It was a long time ago and I’m not mentioning names. Another friend, a county commissioner, told me the county road crew had paved the parking lot of his business without asking him. He did not approve and told them to tear the paving up, which I found regrettable, since the work was already done. He knew the road crew had paved the driveways of the other commissioners and he did not protest.

This was the New Mexico of a bygone era. In a talk for New Mexico Press Women a few weeks ago, recently retired Albuquerque Journal investigative reporter Mike Gallagher recalled that in those days, it was more or less expected that county commissioners would get their driveways paved and other favors.

Gallagher’s comments brought a flood of memories.

It was understood commissioners’ relatives would be hired for road and gravel jobs.

School board members got their relatives hired as custodians and cafeteria workers. I was told these two groups dominated the power structure of the schools. That was before the ascendancy of the teachers’ unions.

When one local school board broke precedent and hired its first female superintendent, the board immediately promoted her husband to head coach of the high school.

An anonymous caller told me a certain school superintendent had hired his relatives to run the cafeterias. They were deliberately making the food taste bad so students would not eat it and they could take the leftovers home to their pigs. My editor declined to investigate. It could have been true or a prank by the caller. That is still my favorite small town corruption story.

Perhaps I should be outraged by these things, but in truth I am somewhat nostalgic for these simpler times.

An old timer with a long memory told me state agency offices used to be rented and had to move when the governor changed, into property owned by supporters of the new governor. I didn’t see this firsthand, perhaps because I arrived during the public building boom of the 1970s when renting became less common.

Recently I asked a retired former official of the state’s Risk Management Division if we have ever had workers' compensation claims from legislators. We shouldn’t because legislators are not employees.

The former official said the intense political pressure to pay claims was the reason this person resigned. Not legislators, the former official said. Others, unspecified. That was more than I was prepared for.

When two state treasurers went to prison for taking kickbacks related to investment of state funds, and then a Senate president pro tem was caught siphoning millions from a courthouse construction project, those scandals changed New Mexicans’ perception of who we are. We became aware that New Mexico was vulnerable to corruption on a multibillion-dollar level. I think we lost a certain innocence that had been part of our culture.

I had called that former official intending to get some perspective on how things could change if we start paying salaries to legislators. Salaries would redefine the legal standing of legislators, and this would involve a number of legal and technical issues that will have to be figured out. As this change looks increasingly likely, New Mexicans need to ask questions like these so issues like insurance coverage will be analyzed before this change is made. Otherwise they will be litigated later at great public expense.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

All refugees deserve a haven

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Ukrainians fleeing from their embattled country have been met at the Polish border with hot soup, shelter, official ID cards, and invitations to the homes of Polish families. Some of their children are already going to Polish schools.

Poland, a country of about 37 million, has opened its arms to more than 2 million Ukrainians. Similar stories are reported from other neighboring countries.

In New Mexico, migrants seeking asylum are left waiting in a tent in Mexico, returned to the country they tried to escape, or are sent to prison.

If the contrast was not immediately obvious to you, you haven’t been paying attention. It was so obvious to me that I’m almost embarrassed to write this column. This should not need to be said. One such prison is the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, privately operated by the company CoreCivic. It was recently found so unsafe and unsanitary that inspectors from the U. S. Homeland Security Department demanded all detainees be relocated.

The inspectors’ report has been challenged by U. S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-New Mexico, who conducted her own inspection a few weeks later and found conditions much safer than the report indicated. So that is a controversy, and we can keep an open mind until further facts emerge. Just remember the federal government is paying CoreCivic $2 million a month for that facility.

The basic point remains. It’s illogical and inhumane to keep people in prison when their only crime was escaping from life-threatening conditions in their homeland. If they crossed the border illegally, maybe that was because our outdated policies have made it so difficult to reach legal asylum. We’ve known for years how stingy Americans are about letting the world’s dispossessed into our nation. The Ukraine crisis has thrown the contrast into sharper relief.

Refugees have been flooding into Europe since the Syrian Civil War began in 2011, fleeing the same kind of destruction that Russia is now visiting on Ukraine. While there has been some reluctance, European nations have been pretty gracious in letting them in. We have largely avoided those waves of migrants because of the conveniently located ocean.

About 6.8 million Syrians are refugees and asylum-seekers, and another 6.7 million people are displaced within Syria. According to Statista, the United States has admitted 22,561 Syrians since 2011. A drop in the bucket.

There is no ocean to stop refugees from Central America, where families flee not from war but from cartels that, reports say, want to turn their sons into criminals and their daughters into prostitutes.

Or from Haiti, probably the most desperate place in our hemisphere. In recent months they have been chased by immigration officers on horseback or sent to – you guessed it – the Torrance County facility, where Searchlight New Mexico documented they were denied access to legal counsel for weeks.

We’ve admitted more than 66,000 Afghans, including more than 7,000 housed at Holloman Air Force Base until January.

About 400 Afghans are expected to resettle in New Mexico, according to officials at Lutheran Family Services, the state's primary non-governmental refugee resettlement organization – in Las Cruces, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque. Another drop in that bucket.

Refugees who have survived the gauntlet of our deliberately cumbersome screening processes can find some official support in addition to these nonprofit services. The state’s Human Services Department provides a refugee resettlement program. UNM has a Refugee and Immigrant Well-being Project, which pairs undergraduate students with refugee and immigrant families.

So we are not doing nothing, but we Americans are not doing nearly enough to meet the need in a world disrupted by wars, famines and climate change. Ukrainians deserve a safe haven. So do Central Americans whose lives are threatened in a country overwhelmed by gangs.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

The dilemma of New Mexico oil

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The world is better off, said the gentleman from the oil industry, with New Mexico oil because of our clean industry practices, compared to, for example, Russian oil. Our environmental impact is much cleaner.

He was speaking in December 2019 at a pre-legislature meeting of the Association of Commerce and Industry, now renamed New Mexico Chamber of Commerce. That argument today has new urgency.

The world demands oil. If we don’t produce it, somebody else will -- possibly somebody who will use the money to bomb cities and kill babies.

What to do about the oil industry has been New Mexico’s great moral dilemma for decades. Everything about oil is bad for the environment: the way it is extracted, the use of water, leaking methane, and the effects of the way we all consume it, in cars, trucks, airplanes and plastics.

It is also one of the greatest contributors to the comfort and convenience of modern life. And it makes lots of money. New Mexico’s economy is utterly dependent on it. Even most environmentally concerned New Mexicans understand that in this state, we just say yes to oil.

According to the U. S. Energy Information Administration, New Mexico had record-high production of crude oil and natural gas in March 2021, averaging 1.16 million barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil and 6.19 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) of natural gas. We are vying with North Dakota for the status of second highest producing state, after Texas.

The industry contributed $5.3 billion in state and local tax revenue for the fiscal year 2021, according to the New Mexico Tax Research Institute. That revenue was a big factor in teachers’ raises and other public benefits passed in the recent legislative session. Oil and gas are underwriting our state’s most important investment, an educated next generation.

The human and environmental costs are harder to measure.

The methane leaking from oil and gas wells is a slow environmental catastrophe. Methane traps roughly 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide. The Environmental Defense Fund estimates that New Mexico methane emissions from upstream oil and gas sites total more than 1 million metric tons a year, with the same short-term climate impact as 22 coal plants or 28 million automobiles.

Methane contributes to asthma, a common chronic disease here. Some 150,000 adults and 47,000 children are estimated to have the disease – almost 10 percent of our population. Right now, those concerns take a back seat to the need to stop buying Russian oil.

The United States buys roughly 7% of its oil from Russia, not enough to make the critical difference. (We export more than we import; I do not pretend to understand the economics of this global trade.)

Russia can sell it anywhere as long as there are willing buyers. To cut off Russia’s money supply, it will be necessary to offer those buyers a better deal.

This is an opportunity for New Mexico’s producers. I’m sure they are busy planning to ramp up production. If that happens, New Mexico will benefit financially from the tragedy of Ukraine, which is morally unfair but simply realistic. The environmental impacts could get worse.

Some of us will wring our hands, but we’ll take the money. That is a prediction, not a recommendation.

At the same time, we can be determined about implementing our strong new methane rules, regarded as some of the strongest in the nation. We can support the idea – suggested last week by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others – of taxing windfall profits.

And we can continue to forge ahead on building renewable power, to end global dependency entirely.

Among many competing urgent priorities, stopping this awful war is the most urgent.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

No fix for pretrial detention

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

New Mexicans hoped this would be the year we take legislative action on crime. The action ran into complications.

House Bill 5 was the most watched of several crime bills until it ran aground. The “rebuttable presumption” bill, sponsored by Rep. Marian Matthews, D-Albuquerque, and others, attempted to make it easier for judges to keep alleged violent offenders in jail pending trial.

Under this bill, in cases of certain violent crimes, the prosecution would enjoy the benefit of the doubt to hold a defendant in jail. The defendant would have to convince a judge that he or she poses no risk to the community. It would have changed the effect of the state constitutional amendment we passed in 2016, which required the prosecutor to show the judge the defendant was dangerous. In 2016 we thought we were voting for a simple principle. A person who is not dangerous and/or a flight risk should not be stuck in jail just because he or she can’t afford bail, but a dangerous person should not be released even if he can pay bail.

The amendment didn’t quite work out. In a few highly publicized cases, a defendant free on pretrial release committed a new violent crime, and our editorial pages exploded.

Some of us are disappointed that HB 5 did not pass. We are not comfortable with what replaced it – greater reliance on GPS monitoring.

But most New Mexicans may not fully appreciate the procedure necessary to keep someone in jail. It’s complicated and tedious, and it has to be accomplished within a very short time frame. Keeping a person in jail beyond a few days requires a legal proceeding and a decision by a judge. Meanwhile, a related matter was not getting enough attention.

A report by the American Bar Association, published in January, asserted that New Mexico has only one-third the number of public defenders the state needs. It said we are short 602 full-time attorneys.

We also have a perpetual shortage of prosecutors. So the wheels of justice are continuously stuck in the mud.

The problem of pretrial detention would be less dire if we had speedy trials. Among other things, that would reduce costs for our underfunded county jails. To do that, we would need enough prosecutors, defense attorneys, court staff and so on. But even in a spectacular budget year like this one, New Mexico is not willing to spend that much money.

In every pretrial detention case, a judge has to make a decision about incarcerating somebody who has not been convicted. Whether the law is biased toward the defendant or the prosecution, the administrative burden is similar.

So a district attorney has to gather and present evidence to show “probable cause” that a crime was committed and the defendant did it, and both sides have to present evidence of the character of the defendant – whether the defendant is likely to commit a new crime if allowed to go free awaiting trial.

This is a little like having to try the person twice. That takes the time and energy of lawyers, investigators, police officers and the judge. It is less work all around if the prosecution does not try to keep the defendant in jail pending trial. A former public defender once said to me (this is a paraphrase): our job is not necessarily to get the defendant off, but to make sure the police and prosecutors do everything they are legally required to do.

The appellate courts are creating new case law all the time. Whether they rule in favor of prosecutors or defense, they tend to rule in favor of making procedures more complicated. That has a cost.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Ethics and the predatory lending bill

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

“You think you’re a big shot. I own you, and I own the Legislature,” declared the liquor industry lobbyist, speaking loudly at Santa Fe’s La Fonda hotel, in a banquet room full of legislators and press.

This legendary event happened in January 1963 at the annual “Hundredth Bill Party.” As the legislative session ends, it’s a good story to help us remember where we came from. Here is the story as borrowed from David Roybal in his biography of the late legislator and reformer, Fabian Chavez Jr., titled, “Taking On Giants.”

The lobbyist was Frank “Pancho” Padilla, reportedly a competent lobbyist except when drunk. He accosted Chavez, who was sponsoring liquor reform legislation. “I bought you a thousand times,” he added.

At that time, Roybal explains, New Mexico law required liquor sellers to mark up the price of their product by certain minimums. Read that sentence again; it is hard to believe. Wholesalers had to mark up a minimum of 17.5% on whiskey, 25% on wine and 20% on beer.

For retailers, the minimums were 38.8% on wine and whiskey and 25% on beer. In other words, liquor dealers were required by law to maintain windfall profits. No wonder they thought they owned the state. To justify this practice, the argument was that the markup protected small businesses from unfair competition by big businesses. Years later, it looked to me like absolute nonsense.

A lot like the nonsense about predatory lending.

Lenders who charge very poor people 175% interest are doing them and society a favor, says the nonsense, because otherwise they would have no recourse. The lenders do them the huge favor of entrapping them into never being able to get out of debt.

We finally have a law, passed and waiting for the Governor’s signature, to replace that outrageous interest rate with a cap of 36%. The 36% cap is set by many other states and is in federal law for active duty military personnel. It has been studied extensively and proven to be feasible. So why on earth did New Mexico take so long to fix this national embarrassment?

When the legislation was introduced in 2021, co-sponsor Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Embudo, said she couldn’t get the votes she needed. “You know that elections are bought and sold by this industry,” Herrera said of payday lenders. The language sounded awfully familiar.

Think New Mexico, a public interest advocacy group, made the issue a top priority for a couple of years. They tried to pair it with a proposal to require financial literacy classes as a requirement for high school graduation, but that was dropped.

(I disagree on the financial literacy proposal. High school is too late. The students who need that training most are the ones who will not graduate, so financial literacy education should start in fourth or fifth grade.)

It helps to read the 2021 in-depth analysis by New Mexico Ethics Watch (www.nmethicswatch.org) titled “Big Interest in Small Loans.” The report analyzes the influences that have been swaying legislators on this issue – including a few prominent lobbyists.

The excuse that the poor borrowers will be left out in the cold is, pardon my French, horse hockey. If the storefront lenders all close, another business model will arise that can make a profit on 36%, like the credit unions. They testified in favor of the bill. That’s capitalism.

Please consider asking your own representative, in person, how he or she voted on this matter. Any legislator who voted against this reform does not pass the ethics test.

I would have liked to take a high moral position and recommend that you vote against those legislators in November. Here’s the only problem. Their opponents could be worse.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

How do we enforce Yazzie-Martinez?

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The coalition supporting the Yazzie-Martinez court decision is complaining that the state Public Education Department has not yet published a comprehensive plan. The demand was made public in a news release in early January.

Yazzie-Martinez, we recall, was the 2018 court decision that affirmed that New Mexico children are getting an inferior education, especially low-income, Native American, English language learner (ELL), and students with disabilities. The judge ordered the state to fix the problem.

The coalition has also complained that the state has not complied with a court order from May 2021 which required that all students be provided with a dedicated digital device and with high-speed internet access.

Devices, feasible. High-speed internet access, easier said than done.

The state recently created an Office of Broadband Access and Expansion, tasked with developing a three-year strategic plan to help coordinate internet expansion projects between state and tribal entities and private companies. A court order won’t make it move any faster.

No doubt, the court decision added impetus to the demand that New Mexico radically improve its education system, which New Mexico has been trying to do for decades. But the court order didn’t tell us how.

A coalition called Transform Education New Mexico, TENM, is the primary advocacy group for enforcing Yazzie-Martinez. It’s a big coalition, with about 20 signatory organizations.

“For decades,” declares TENM’s website, “the state has failed to provide our students with the education they need and deserve … creating some of the worst racial and economic inequalities for educational achievement in the country.”

The schools have certainly failed to fix this education gap. I’m not so sure they created it.

I recently asked PED deputy communications director Judy Robinson, “What is New Mexico supposed to do for the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit that we wouldn’t want to do anyway?”

Nothing, she said. “There is nothing in the court order that New Mexico wouldn't want to do anyway. … New Mexico has a moral imperative to provide an equitable education to the students identified in the court order.”

She detailed the executive budget proposal of $350 million on Yazzie-Martinez specific goals. The biggest item is $277.3 million for the well-publicized initiative to raise teachers’ salaries. PED controls only as much money as the Legislature appropriates. We’ll probably find out what’s appropriated within a few hours of noon on Feb. 17, when the legislative session ends and the budget is final.

Every year, almost half the state general fund goes to K-12 education, with additional money for higher education and, recently, pre-K. This year we have more revenue due to oil and gas production, but we also have major demands in public safety and cries for tax cuts.

One goal of TENM is a public education system that “embraces, reflects, and incorporates the cultural and linguistic heritage of our diverse communities as a foundation for all learning.”

A worthy goal, but there’s a drastic teacher shortage. The judge cannot snap his fingers and produce a new coterie of teachers who are both highly qualified and culturally appropriate.

If PED had produced that comprehensive plan in 2019, it would be in shreds by now because COVID-19 upended the system. The more thorough and detailed the plan, the more it creates openings for unforeseen obstacles and for the critics to pick it apart, producing more unproductive argument.

A comprehensive plan also would create a new cause for another group of opponents: the people who are showing up at school boards to oppose the update of the state’s social studies plan, and who have demonstrated a very different idea of cultural sensitivity.

The TENM coalition is calling for “transformative” change. Perhaps instead we should be all right with steady, incremental improvement.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Respect, money key to hiring for vital public services

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Here’s great news. You can get a job starting at $20 an hour plus pretty good benefits, including a pension. There are plenty of job openings for prison guards in New Mexico. The Corrections Department is even advertising on TV.

There’s just one catch. Guarding prisoners is a tough job. According to the list of essential job requirements on the Corrections Department website, you have to be Superman and Mother Teresa combined. While you may be decently paid, you would be working in an unpleasant and occasionally dangerous environment that is perennially underfunded and full of unhappy people who probably won’t like you.

An extra complication: if you take this job now, while there’s a statewide shortage of staff, you will have to accept extra shifts or moving around to cover different facilities around the state. Public employee staff shortages, you said?

The shortage of teachers is getting worse, as confirmed last year by a study from New Mexico State University. The school year opened with more than 1,000 job openings out of a statewide total of 21,000 to 22,000 positions.

The shortage of teachers is so severe the governor has called in the National Guard to help with COVID-19-related absences.

The governor’s proposed 7% pay increase for teachers is a good step, but it’s barely keeping up with the increasing cost of daily living. The money cannot make up for the difficult conditions teachers face these days.

The pandemic is not New Mexico’s fault, and it’s not the schools’ fault. But it is surely demoralizing to be forced to bounce between in-person and remote learning when students need stability, and you’re concerned about your own health.

The teacher shortage began before the pandemic. Perhaps teachers have gotten frustrated by being the butt of incessant criticism. As New Mexico’s ranking in education remains consistently near the bottom, teachers get the blame for conditions beyond their control.

No one is subject to more conflicting demands and expectations than teachers – except maybe police officers.

The governor announced she’s asking for $100 million for 1,000 more police officers. Does New Mexico have 1,000 qualified people who are willing to take those jobs?

Police officer salaries in New Mexico are roughly in the middle of all states, with an average (not starting salary) around $53,000 a year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But that’s not the biggest issue. Police officers are under constant pressure to make instantaneous life-and-death decisions, with consequences for one bad mistake that could ruin an officer’s life.

This has always been true, but the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, passed last year, made it tougher. It took away qualified immunity, which shielded officers from personal liability for violating someone’s civil rights, making it easier for an aggrieved person to sue an officer. While we certainly want abusive officers to be accountable, that’s a heck of a disincentive.

America is undergoing The Great Resignation. Workers are deciding that frustrating or unfulfilling jobs that involve risking health or safety are not worth the money.

A recent article in the Albuquerque Journal described a man who quit his job to start a mushroom farm. He is taking a career risk to fulfill a dream, not just to pay the bills.

To state the obvious, New Mexico needs prisons, and we can’t run them without corrections officers. We need schools, and we can’t run them without teachers. We need public safety, and we can’t have it without police officers. If we want qualified people to apply for these jobs, money cannot be the only incentive.

It’s certainly going to cost taxpayers. Beyond that, treating public servants with a little more respect would help a lot.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Respect, money key to hiring for vital public services

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

An extra complication: if you take this job now, while there’s a statewide shortage of staff, you will have to accept extra shifts or moving around to cover different facilities around the state.

Public employee staff shortages, you said?

The shortage of teachers is so severe the governor has called in the National Guard to help with COVID-19-related absences.

No one is subject to more conflicting demands and expectations than teachers – except maybe police officers.

The governor announced she’s asking for $100 million for 1,000 more police officers. Does New Mexico have 1,000 qualified people who are willing to take those jobs?

America is undergoing The Great Resignation. Workers are deciding that frustrating or unfulfilling jobs that involve risking health or safety are not worth the money.

A recent article in the Albuquerque Journal described a man who quit his job to start a mushroom farm. He is taking a career risk to fulfill a dream, not just to pay the bills.

It’s certainly going to cost taxpayers. Beyond that, treating public servants with a little more respect would help a lot.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Picking up the garbage

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

New Mexico is branding itself as a destination state for outdoor recreation. We’ve had an Outdoor Recreation Division since 2019 in the Economic Development Department. We’ve had two state outdoor recreation conferences; another one is being planned. We’re investing the state’s prestige in this genuinely exciting initiative, taking advantage of our state’s great natural beauty and diverse environments.

Good thing somebody’s thinking about picking up the garbage.

In the special session that just ended, lawmakers allocated $10 million to the Clean-up New Mexico Roadway Beautification Program, quadrupling the Department of Transportation’s clean-up budget.

There’s plenty of cleaning to do. One DOT cleanup in October netted 8.5 tons of trash tossed or accidentally blown onto New Mexico roads. Another cleanup event last June netted 18 tons. That’s our garbage – yours and mine. Actually, not mine. I wait for a trash can.

And there’s a new worrisome element mixed into our trash: discarded surgical masks. Masks kill fish and wildlife. Numerous sources worldwide have found animals try to eat them, and their digestive systems get clogged. Fish get trapped in the elastic. Just what we need to demonstrate our bona fides as a nature-loving state.

I’m not aware that anyone is counting how many disposable masks are being used in New Mexico, how many are being disposed of properly and how many are literally in the wind. I can tell you that in one recent walk on my local school grounds, I picked up 17 in 20 minutes. (I then put the glove into a sanitizer. Thanks for asking).

New Mexicans are not alone in being sloppy with our garbage. One organization rates South Carolina and Nevada as the worst states for littering but puts New Mexico in the top ten.

Americans on average generate roughly 4.5 pounds of trash per person per day, or

1,642.5 pounds a year. Some of it goes into landfills, where it becomes useless but, we hope, is also rendered harmless. Some of it goes into the recycling stream, where we want to believe it will be made into new useful things, but it might not because recycling is not quite living up to its early promise. The rest goes wherever we drop it.

Reports indicate New Mexico is putting less waste in our landfills than in previous years. That’s supposed to be good news, and maybe it is. It could mean we’re producing less waste, or recycling more of the waste we produce. Or that we are dumping more waste out in the arroyos where nobody’s watching.

According to the Environment New Mexico Research & Policy Center, “Recycling rates in New Mexico reveal one of the most wasteful states in the nation. At 19 percent, the statewide rate falls almost 16 points below the national average 34.7 percent … In other words, 81 percent of the waste in New Mexico goes to landfills, incinerators, or spills into the environment.”

As with so many of New Mexico's endeavors, we are chasing our tails as we invite the world to explore our magnificent outdoors and then spend millions of dollars cleaning before visitors have a chance to see it. As a pattern, it's a little like our bold economic development ventures that crash against our embarrassingly low literacy rate.

On the website of the Outdoor Recreation Division is an enthusiastic statement from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham: "The Outdoor Recreation Division's success is dependent on collaboration, with New Mexican businesses, nonprofits, and partner state and federal agencies. Through this network, we aim to engage all New Mexicans as stewards of the state's incredible natural resources."

Can we try a little harder to remember that?

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Merilee Dannemann

Archive

Merilee Dannemann 2022

This website uses cookies.