Merilee Dannemann5-13-24+

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Where did the yard signs go?

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

A few years ago I supported a certain candidate for City Council. I displayed her yard sign in my front yard. She won the election, and she told me three of my neighbors had told her they voted for her because they saw my sign.

This year I have not put out any yard signs. A yard sign left over from the last election is gathering dust in the garage. I have not been approached by volunteers from any campaign asking me to put up a sign or offering to give me one. I think there’s a trend.

I am seeing fewer yard signs this year than in previous elections. Even a nearby household that displayed its Trump signs prominently four years ago has no signs this year. I’m wondering if voters are reluctant, this year, to put their politics on that kind of display.

There are still plenty of signs for local candidates in public spaces and especially in the legally permitted perimeter outside polling locations. That’s fine, but it’s not the same as a sign in front of someone’s home announcing that the people who live in that house endorse that candidate.

Some candidates are charging money for them – something previously unheard of, at least in New Mexico. Yard signs have now become “merch,” items for sale along with T-shirts and coffee mugs, emblazoned with the candidate’s name or logo.

Nella Domenici is offering yard signs in your choice of three colors for $20 apiece. You can coordinate the sign with your landscaping. Her page is even selling lapel buttons, another item that used to be a giveaway, at $10 for two. Martin Heinrich’s yard sign costs $5 more than Domenici’s and comes with a detailed product description, explaining that it is environmentally friendly, recyclable, made in the USA and union printed.

Yvette Herrell has gone in a different direction. Instead of asking voters to vote for her, the signs she’s selling (as well as hats, t-shirts and bumper stickers) say “God, Guns, Green Chile, Real New Mexico Values,” and don’t mention her name. That’s an unusual choice for a political campaign. Gabe Vasquez’s merch also includes imaginative items, but they all mention “Gabe for Congress.” While he and Herrell have both used their dogs in their TV commercials, Vasquez wins the dog-lovers’ competition by having a dog bandanna for sale.

(I’m not trying to help anyone sell these things; it’s too late in the campaign for that.)

There’s a bigger concern about why there are fewer yard signs this year. Our politics have divided us as never before.

I’m wondering whether some voters are worried about creating long-term enmity against neighbors who vote the other way – or even worse, that they might invite a rock through the window. Passions about this election have become so heated that that is not unrealistic.

I think something similar started happening to bumper stickers a while ago.Political bumper stickers are not common this year. It’s understandable. One insurance company study says cars with bumper stickers are more likely to incite discourteous behavior or even road rage than cars without, depending on how the other driver feels about a bumper sticker’s message, and when parked in public could also lead to that rock through the window.

Election Day is almost upon us. I admit that when the election is over, if the candidates I prefer don’t win, I will probably still be angry. But I will try to remember – and I hope you will, as well – to focus that anger on the politicians who deserve it, not the neighbors across the street who voted the other way.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

What you need to know before you vote

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Early voting has started in New Mexico.

Before you head to the voting booth or fill out your mail-in ballot, your first stop should be nmvote.org, on the Secretary of State website.. From that page you can obtain a sample ballot, which will show you everything that’s up for a vote in your district.

In this general election we are not only voting for president but also one United States senator, all our members of Congress, the entire state Legislature, both House and Senate, and about half of our elected local officials including county commissioners. The other half will be up for election two years from now. There will also be local bond issues.

You might want to look first at the proposed constitutional amendments.There are four amendments proposed to the state constitution. For an impartial analysis, go to the nmlegis.gov website, click on Publications, then click on Constitutional Amendments, Arguments For and Against, prepared for the public by the Legislative Council Service.

Amendments 1 and 2 both propose changes in property tax exemptions for veterans who are homeowners.New Mexico provides two levels of exemption: A $4,000 exemption for all veterans and a complete exemption from property tax for 100% disabled veterans.

Amendment 1 expands the number of veterans who would be eligible for the disabled exemption to include those with partial disability. Amendment 2 expands the amount of the basic veterans’ exemption from $4,000 to $10,000 and adds a mechanism for automatically increasing the exemption. (Disclosure: I benefit from the basic exemption, as my late husband was a veteran.)

I recommend voting NO on both of these. These changes would decrease property tax for veterans, but would cause a slight increase in property tax for everyone else, including other residents whose income is just as low. They would also reduce revenue for the counties and other local government budgets, and, to simplify a very complicated discussion, the counties are already cash-strapped.

If we want to honor veterans, there are other ways to do it. I also don’t like Amendment 4, which would allow counties to set the salaries of their elected officials, which now are set by the Legislature. I am not commenting on Amendment 3.

The League of Women Voters guide is online at centralnmvoterguide.org or Vote411.org. You can find information about all the candidates for public office at all levels plus discussions of the amendments.

Voting for judges: For many voters, this is the hardest thing because most of us don’t know enough about the individual judges.

In New Mexico we select judges via a hybrid system.

Most judges start off by being appointed when a vacancy occurs. Then they have to run in one contested partisan election, and if they win that one then thereafter we only vote yes or no on whether to retain them. In other words, no partisan contest after the first.

To help you decide on retention, you can check The New Mexico Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, nmjpec.org. This commission evaluates all judges who are up for retention and makes the evaluations public so we can have some confidence in how we vote.

One final thought.

This will be a terribly contentious presidential election. If you are still undecided about how to vote for president, please make a decision. Don’t leave it blank and don’t vote for a third party.

One of two major party candidates will become the next president of the United States. One of those two candidates has said repeatedly that he intends to dispute the results if they don’t make him the winner. The post-election process will be easier on all of us if the results are clear.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Workers’ comp legislation will help the lawyers

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

In the 2025 legislative session, we will probably have a bill to increase the cap on attorney fees in workers’ compensation cases. It probably will pass.

This is mixed news, a little good, a little bad. Our workers’ comp system is unusual in having a cap on attorney fees at all. The cap was established as part of the 1990 reform of the workers' comp law. If the fee cap is increased, more cases will be litigated and costs will increase. Those costs will be passed to employers as premium increases and then to the rest of us as higher prices.

The vast majority of workers’ comp cases – roughly 95%, says the state Workers' Compensation Administration – are handled with no litigation.

Theoretically, the system works the way it’s supposed to. The claim is paid, the worker gets necessary medical care and is then able to go on with his or her life.

The attorney fee issue affects only the small percentage of cases where litigation is necessary. But it’s important to the system because those tend to be serious and complicated cases.

The fee to the injured worker’s attorney has to be approved by a judge. The fee is normally supposed to be paid half by the worker and half by the employer-insurer.

The current fee cap is $22,500 per case. A task force set up last year to study the issue agreed, reluctantly by some participants, to raise the cap to $30,000. The study found, not surprisingly, that the great majority of cases do not reach the cap because the case is resolved before the lawyers have to do that much work. But a few cases go on for years without resolution, and lawyers work without compensation.

It’s also possible that the fee cap could be eliminated entirely by a court decision. A case is pending on that subject.

Increasing the cap would no doubt mean more lawyers will become willing to handle workers’ comp cases. That is either good or bad, depending on facts that are not known because they have not been researched, though they should have been – via research studies that the Legislature should have authorized. The unanswered question is whether most workers are doing okay under the current system or whether many injured workers who needed a lawyer were not able to get one. Here is the larger concern.

The workers' compensation system is supposed to be for the benefit of injured workers and employers. But the only legislation we’re going to see is about lawyers.

Nobody is advocating legislation to improve the system for the mutual benefit of workers and employers. Well, except me.

The Advisory Council on Workers' Compensation, the governor-appointed group that is supposed to be the consensus builder for the system, has done, bluntly, almost nothing for years.

It has been more than 20 years since the last task forces were convened to study ways to make the system better. That effort resulted in a few reasonable increases for injured workers. Since then, the only legislation helpful to workers has been advanced by specialized groups with their own advocacy structure, such as firefighters.

I contend that the best thing the system could do for New Mexico’s injured workers, which would also benefit their employers, would be to improve access to prompt and excellent medical care. Beyond the statewide shortage of doctors, access to healthcare is worse in workers’ comp. The system contains regulatory burdens that doctors don’t like; therefore most doctors avoid workers' compensation cases.

Some of those regulations can be fixed. Let’s hope the next task force is about that.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Tradeport development creates vast opportunity

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Imagine a truck stop the size of a small town. It covers 6,000 acres, more than 9 square miles. It has connections to move cargo from anywhere in the world to anywhere else. It serves trucks, railroad and air transport, and even though it’s 800 miles from the ocean it links with the largest seaports in the Western hemisphere.

It can service the most modern and energy-efficient trucks, next door to a comfortable hotel for drivers. It has warehouses and factories, privately developed, which create the opportunity for value-added manufacturing. It even has an internal transportation system using automated vehicles.

This is the Albuquerque Region I-40 Tradeport, part of the I-40 Tradeport Corridor, now on the drawing board. A grant of $15 million for the next phase of planning was announced recently, as part of a $39 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The Tradeport Corridor may be the biggest infrastructure project in the nation in decades. It originated from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This project helps to explain why advocates are calling that law “the largest long-term investment in our infrastructure and economy in our nation’s history.”

The entire corridor will operate on a coordinated platform so that cargo moves efficiently. Bottlenecks, like those at Long Beach during the pandemic, will never happen.

The corridor starts at the seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and has three hubs: Kingman and Winslow, Arizona, and Albuquerque, the biggest. It involves investments by multiple public and private sector partners. It will eventually cross the country.

Though not officially part of the corridor, a tradeport is also being developed in Gallup, following the same concept and with state cooperation. It has been in planning for a decade. Tucumcari is also planning on a smaller scale.

The I-40 Tradeport’s publicity says:

“The integration of cargo management systems and automated cargo handing technology throughout the I-40 Corridor will deliver a spectrum of efficiency and reliability benefits to shippers that will be broadly focused on improving cargo velocity efficiency, reducing shipping costs, creating modal and carrier choice, and supporting the connection between logistics service, distribution, and production locations.”

That means the project will develop a coordinated system for moving cargo, using clean energy, including electric and hydrogen powered trucks. The Albuquerque project will take advantage of the I-40/ I-25 intersection, Double Eagle Airport and the connection into Mexico.

The lead local partner is Bernalillo County, with Sandoval County and the village of Los Lunas participating. The main hub will be close to I-40, and the railway connection will be in or near Los Lunas. Sandoval County is participating to ensure coordination with its industrial development. The Gallup project, which is well into the planning stages, has a specific strategic advantage: federal trucking rules require drivers, after 11 hours of driving, to take a 10-hour break. Gallup is 11 hours’ drive from Long Beach.

A similar project is being developed along I-10 in Doña Ana County, involving the Santa Teresa port of entry, major rail lines, also starting at the Los Angeles area seaports, connecting to the port of Houston, and with highway connections into Mexico.

New Mexicans might want to pay attention to these projects and the possibilities they create for the future of commerce.

As we continue our perennial complaint about the need to diversify New Mexico’s economy, these projects are potentially a key to bringing our economy into the 21st century.

The obvious question for the rest of New Mexico is how to connect to these tradeports. So far these massive projects are mostly contracts and sketches, but it’s not too early to perk up the imaginations of entrepreneurs and economic development directors in every county.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Volunteers help assure honest elections

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

In my garage, clinging to a cabinet door, is a magnetic sign that reads, “Election Protection.” I saved it from the last general election, when I stuck it to the door of my car and drove around to polling places as a volunteer observer for Common Cause, a nonpartisan national organization whose mission includes safeguarding free and fair elections.

My job was to observe polling locations from my car. If I saw any problems, I was instructed to report by phone – not to intervene. Concern about possible election disruption was very high. Volunteer legal experts were waiting by the phones.

Fortunately, New Mexico did well. We can say with considerable pride that New Mexico’s elections were ranked best in the nation by the prestigious Elections Performance Index, a project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab described as “a non-partisan, objective measure of U.S. election administration.”

Before that volunteer stint, I had already studied New Mexico election procedures – from registration to vote counting – and found our processes impressive and thorough. I have written several columns about that subject.I will probably volunteer again this year. The staff at Common Cause say the number of volunteers is down and they can use lots more. If you’re interested, contact Mason Graham, Policy Director, mgraham@commoncause.org or 505-417-4012.

This year New Mexico will have another set of observers to help reassure voters. The Carter Center is planning a major presence here.

The Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, has been observing elections around the world since 1989, with 125 missions in 40 countries, and has recently begun observing elections in the United States.

Their mission, as in their global election observations, is to increase public trust and confidence in the outcome of the elections they observe.

According to Carmen Lopez, co-leader of the New Mexico project, the center has been working on this since April. Its organizers plan to have nonpartisan observers in half of New Mexico precincts on Election Day and similar numbers for at least one or two days in early voting locations in every county – more than 250 people on Election Day. They plan to recruit both volunteers and paid staff at colleges and other locations. They will leave behind a cadre of people who understand in depth how our elections work.

Lopez said New Mexico was chosen because our state law allows nonpartisan observers in polling places, whereas many states only allow partisan observers.

“New Mexico is a great place to have a statewide effort,” she said, “because you don’t have to negotiate with every county clerk.”

As the Carter Center website explains, observers are stationed at polling places, election offices, and other satellite locations where election operations take place. Each team collects data using standardized questions.

They do not get involved or interfere in election processes, even if they see something that should not happen. They are trained to understand the election process as specified by law and to report on whether procedures are being followed correctly.

To learn more about this activity, go to observenmelections.org. To volunteer to observe in New Mexico, contact observenm@cartercenter.org.

If you have been confused by the unproven and probably false charges of massive voter fraud in other states, here is a thought: If you don’t trust our elections, take the time to find out exactly how they work. Consider volunteering.

And if you still don’t trust our elections after that, for heaven’s sake don’t run for office. If you win in an election you alleged was fraudulent, you have no right to claim you won.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Election time for the PERA board

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

If you are a retiree from New Mexico state or local government, you probably recently received a letter from PERA telling you about your pension increase starting in July. PERA is the Public Employees Retirement Association, which administers your pension.

You probably also received a packet from PERA inviting you to vote in the PERA board election, which is taking place now by mail. That packet contains a mail-in ballot, which must be received by Sept. 13 to count. You must sign the outer envelope.

Municipal and state employees will also be electing representatives this year and should have received their mail-in ballots.

Please take the time to vote for a representative on the PERA board. Information about the candidates is on the PERA website under “Board Elections.” It is important to show you are paying attention. You almost lost the right to choose a board representative a couple of years ago, in a legislative attempt to reconstruct the board with mostly appointed instead of elected members.

Don’t get excited about the pension increase. The amount is puny. For most retirees, it’s one-half of one percent – not enough to keep up with inflation. Some years ago, my accountant advised me I could afford to retire from state government. He cheerfully explained that my pension would include a 3% cost of living adjustment or COLA every year, and what a great deal that was.

That’s long gone. It’s not likely coming back any time soon. The analysts realized that with the COLA, the fund would run out – the phenomenon known as unfunded liability.

The PERA trust fund comes from two sources: deductions from the paychecks of active employees and their government employers, and the investment earnings of the fund. The number of retirees has been growing – 45,000-plus at the last report – and the number of active employees has been declining – recently 47,000-plus, affecting the ratio of money out compared to money in.

To recall the history: after 20 years with a 3% COLA, and a couple of years of strident arguments, the COLA was cut to 2% in 2013. Retiree organizations supported that change because it might save the fund – but it wasn’t enough. In 2020 a more drastic change was enacted. The COLA was reduced to 0.5% for most retirees, with a possible future profit-sharing increase if the fund performs well, and adding a so-called “13thcheck” – an extra benefit check that, critically, does not compound – for three years. The three years are over.

The 13th check required an infusion of cash from the state general fund. If you want to wish for something that’s possible, wish for another year of that.

The 0.5% increase is not keeping up with inflation, and some legislators are talking about whether they can help retirees in 2025. But restoring the COLA is unlikely.

On the back of the letter announcing your pension increase, you might see a little chart, indicating that your July pension would have a $30 deduction for your membership contribution to RPENM, the Retired Public Employees, a private nonprofit organization whose purpose is to represent retirees. If you had the deduction, you joined the organization and authorized the deduction. There’s a similar line for AFSCME retiree members. Both organizations have made endorsements in the upcoming election.

The PERA board had a great deal of disruption a couple of years ago, but it’s calmed down (thank goodness) and now its politics receive very little press coverage. So it’s up to you to decide whether to follow any of these endorsements or do your own analysis before voting. Just please vote.Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Domenici needs to show she’s from here

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Let’s not talk about race. It might upset the children.That’s the rule in Florida, at least, or so we interpret from the way it’s been reported. It means they don’t want to upset the white children. It’s not clear whether they consider the black children.

This was Florida’s response to something called critical race theory.

But if someone were to say we want to stop the teaching of critical race theory in New Mexico, how would that even make sense? Nella Domenici, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from New Mexico, said it. The statement was in a fundraising letter that the general public probably won’t see. Critical race theory started out as an academic concept that was only taught in colleges or law schools. It has been described as a legal framework for observing how systemic racism persists in spite of laws that attempt to overcome it.

The term was redefined a few years ago. A conservative pundit named Chris Rufo claims credit for this. It is now used by conservatives to mean whatever they want it to mean related to the discussion of race. The implication is that public schools are teaching that white people are oppressors and black people are victims, making white students feel guilty, and this should stop. Domenici’s letter says: “I want the federal government to stop telling states and local government how to run our schools. … And I want the left-wing Teachers’ unions to … stop pushing Critical Race Theory curricula that are divisive and anti-American.”

In the same paragraph she says the federal government should not tell New Mexico how to run its schools and then she says how the schools should be run. Which is it?

The letter is on Nella Domenici letterhead and signed by her. I have no doubt it is authentic

. But I did not get an answer when I asked her staff for a comment. I think it’s reasonable for New Mexicans to know what she means.

The history of New Mexico, as readers know, is not a simple story of racial domination of African Americans by Whites, or, as we say here, Anglos. Our history contains centuries of complex interactions of multiple ethnic groups, and that complexity factors deeply in our culture to this day. The differences among us are not only cultural but in some cases are enshrined in law, like the rights of the indigenous people whose ancestors were here first. To avoid talking about race when teaching history in New Mexico is not only insulting to this state, it’s impossible.

(Before I go further in oversimplifying racial history, this is not to imply that racial issues are simple anywhere else either.)

It must be tempting for someone named Domenici to take advantage of her famous family name. Her father, Sen. Pete Domenici, was admired and respected here for decades. But what is her real commitment to the job she’s running for?

Someone who knows New Mexico would not have written that incredibly insensitive comment. I’m guessing it was written by a staff member who knows generic partisan buzzwords but not New Mexico. But I have to wonder: since it was sent in her name, did Domenici even read it? Does she stand by these comments or not? Will she demonstrate that she takes responsibility for her own campaign?

It’s hard to imagine that someone named Domenici would be a carpetbagger in New Mexico, but it was her choice to seek to represent this state in the Senate, so it’s up to her to prove she isn’t. Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Monitoring the invasion of private equity into healthcare

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Healthcare companies should never have profit as their primary mission, don’t you think?

There’s a genuine conflict between the profit motive and what healthcare is supposed to accomplish: providing a service that heals people’s illnesses or helps them stay healthy. For a healthcare institution to be successful, profit has to be tempered with giving priority to the wellbeing of patients.

America has been struggling with this conflict for decades, because so much of our healthcare is provided by for-profit entities. New Mexico regulators are making a new attempt to intervene, based on Senate Bill 15, enacted this year.

In recent years, businesses called private equity companies have entered the healthcare field, and it appears nothing good is resulting from this except for their investors.

Private equity firms’ business is simply to make money for their investors, whatever that takes. If it requires cutting costs by firing employees or selling off assets, that’s what they reportedly do.

As described in a Los Angeles Times opinion article, “Private equity is a 40-year-old Wall Street creation that thrives on cost-cutting, wealth extraction, short time horizons, and financial engineering. It bought, sold, and liquidated its way through the American retail sector years ago…”

Private equity has been implicated in the bankruptcies of well-known and popular companies such as Toys ‘R’ Us, J. Crew and many other former retailers whose names are still familiar.

SB15 gives the state Office of the Superintendent of Insurance (OSI) regulatory authority over proposed takeovers of hospitals in New Mexico. The carefully worded press release described the authority as “oversight over certain hospital transactions that result in a change of control.”

The bill that passed was a substitute. The original version would have given OSI the same authority over more types of healthcare entities.

At a recent public meeting, Superintendent Alice Kane cited statistics about the negative effects of private equity ownership of healthcare facilities, including factors like cutting back the number of nurses, eliminating services that were not profitable, replacing in-person medical visits with telemedicine, and producing higher costs and worse outcomes for patients.

Private equity firms, she said, own 38% of New Mexico rural hospitals. These facilities were vulnerable to takeover because they were starving for cash

. A new report from the Private Equity Stakeholder Project says 17 out of 80 healthcare bankruptcies in 2023 were backed by private equity firms, plus 12 bankruptcies by companies with venture capital backing. Another wave of bankruptcies is expected in 2024, the report says.

SB15, called the Healthcare Consolidation Oversight Act, starts creating a regulatory structure that will authorize OSI to review and approve or disapprove major management changes such as mergers and acquisitions. It was sponsored by Sen. Katy Duhigg, D- Albuquerque, and Rep. Reena Szczepanski, D- Santa Fe.

The new Healthcare Authority is to be involved in these decisions, the bill says. The Healthcare Authority is just now coming into existence, replacing the Human Services Department and adding bureaus moved from several other agencies.

The bill has a limited life. It contains its own repeal, effective July 1, 2025, and presumably is intended to lead to more comprehensive follow-up legislation next year.

A series of meetings around the state is underway to hear comments and receive recommendations on the next phase of legislation. The meeting schedule is posted on the OSI website under “health-care-consolidation.”

We’ve been hearing about the crisis of small rural hospitals for so long we can’t call it a crisis anymore; it’s just the way things are because we refuse to fix it. Maybe this new law can help slow down the inevitable decline.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Let’s get bold about fixing education

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The most overused word in the recent primary was “bold.” Candidates were claiming they had bold solutions for New Mexico’s myriad problems and failings.

Then we got the Kids Count report, reminding us that New Mexico is again 50 out of 50 in children’s wellbeing.

The bare statistics in that report show that New Mexico children’s literacy rate is much worse than the poverty rate. We have 23% of New Mexico children in poverty, almost 50% higher than the national average of 16%. But the rate of fourth graders who cannot read proficiently is 79%, 11 points above the national average – or, expressed another way, two out of three children who can’t read are not in poverty, so poverty is not their issue.

At the same time, we have a reported $3 billion or so in extra state revenue floating around.

I have been collecting bold ideas for improving New Mexico education, and the extra $3 billion makes me feel somewhat bolder. If New Mexico really wants to implement bold solutions for education, here are a few.

Demonstrate to students that New Mexico values their education by sending them to school in good buildings. Rebuild or remodel every outdated school in the state so that school buildings are not only safe, healthful and comfortable but also handsome and well maintained. Include single-stall gender-neutral restrooms for students with special needs so we stop wasting energy on restroom arguments.
Do whatever it takes to teach every possible student to read. This might require significant changes in school transportation systems so students can stay for extended hours and have a ride home. Teach their parents if that proves to be necessary. Treat this like a crisis, because it is.
Similarly, do whatever it takes to get absentee students back to school. Maybe that means a new truancy police or new solutions for homeless students. Students who skip school are likely the same students who didn’t learn to read. The latest report from the Legislative Education Study Committee says 40% of students miss 10% or more of school days. Why would you go to school if you can’t understand what’s being taught because you can’t read?
New Mexico has made a start on financial literacy. It’s not enough in this world of complex technology and myriad hazards. Teach life skills beginning in fourth grade, with age-appropriate topics such as balancing a bank account, avoiding online predators, understanding social media, and especially basic parenting skills to prevent the next generation of CYFD tragedies.
Make the teaching of civics mandatory beginning in fourth grade.
Ban smart phones, period. The studies are conclusive that smart phones are making a generation of children lonely and miserable. This must be done on a whole school or whole district basis. School districts can decide whether to ban phones entirely or permit phones that only call and text. Ensure every school has a process for emergency contact by parents.
Let students practice cooperation by offering a wide choice of team activities, including sports, debate, music groups, science projects and so on.
Teach responsibility: Starting in first grade, devote five minutes of every school day to cleaning up. Time and level of responsibility increase in high school.
Restructure the relationships between the schools and other government agencies to overcome bureaucratic boundaries and ensure seamless cooperation.

· All of the above requires full staffing by qualified professionals, and how to achieve that requires a separate discussion.

If I were in the Legislature I would advocate for every one of these proposals. I hope they will all serve as discussion points.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

2024 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES 6-3-24

Do your research before you vote

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

“We need bold solutions, drastic overhauls and serious reforms,” writes a candidate for the Legislature in an op-ed article.

Bold, huh? Boy, that’s new and exciting. Oh, wait. It isn’t. It’s a standard cliché for everybody who runs for office.

This particular candidate wrote an entire op-ed filled with platitudes and generalizations. Not a single specific policy position was stated. I’m not giving this candidate’s name because it’s not my intent to embarrass the candidate, but rather to remind voters to look further. Lots of candidates do what this candidate did. It’s political fuzzy language. It’s Republicans saying all Democrats are radical, and Democrats saying all Republicans are extremists.

The early voting polls are open, and the primary election is in full swing. It’s up to us voters to do a bit of homework to find out about the candidates before we fill in the little black circles on our ballots.

In a primary, we may find that candidates of the same party have similar political views, so what matters may be their prior professional experience, their competencies and their likely ability to deliver. Especially in the Legislature, professional backgrounds matter because legislators bring their knowledge to their understanding of legislation.

Your criteria in a primary might be quite different from your concerns in the general election. It might be to pick the candidate who has the best chance of winning in November.

To oversimplify, in some Democratic primary contests the distinction is moderate versus progressive. The moderate argument is that, in a mixed district, by nominating a progressive in the primary, you may be handing the district to the Republican nominee in November.

In some Republican primaries, the distinction might be today’s Republican orthodoxy versus the old moderate Republican approach or any other variation.

In another recent op-ed, legislative candidate Nicole Chavez identified herself as the endorsed chosen successor of legislator Bill Rehm, who is not seeking reelection. She said she will follow in his footsteps.

Rehm has been an anti-crime champion. So we know what Chavez is going to prioritize. We also might note that Rehm sponsored many good bills that didn’t get anywhere, so a voter in her district might ask her how she plans to improve on his track record.

The candidates in this district have made it easy for voters to figure out who’s who. Chavez is competing with two Republicans and one Democrat. Republican Sara Jane Allen, a local founder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, a national organization that has been active in school board races. You can look up that group and find out its priorities. The third is Patrick Huested, who doesn’t appear to have a website (at least, I couldn’t find one) but who has supplied answers on vote411.org. The Democrat is Vicky Estrada-Bustillo.

In every race you’re voting for Democrat against Democrat or Republican against Republican. You could vote if you are a registered Libertarian, but I doubt there are any contests with two Libertarians running against each other.And if you are an independent or “declined-too-state” registered voter, you can vote in this primary by changing your registration literally at the last minute to Republican or Democrat, then changing it back again after this election. It’s a clumsy process but it’s New Mexico’s reluctant first step toward open primaries.

Unlike the general election, the primary ballot is short. It is not cluttered with bond issues or proposed amendments to the state constitution. It shouldn’t take you too long to figure out your choices.

And your vote will help determine how your local community is governed.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Lawmakers should weigh burdens to smallest businesses

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The man was said to be the only electrician in Mora, and my agency forced him out of business.

This was around 20 years ago. I learned about it in a staff meeting. The assistant general counsel who told us about it had tears in her eyes and a quiver in her voice, but she did it anyway.

My concern wasn’t just about the electrician. It was about all the people in an economically distressed county who might have needed his services and now would not have them.

The assistant general counsel said the electrician was semiretired but wanted to keep his license to do occasional odd jobs. But we – the Workers' Compensation Administration – required him to buy a minimum premium workers' compensation insurance policy, and he would not make enough money to justify the cost. So he was forced out of business.

The requirement is in paragraph 52-1-6 of the New Mexico statute, and if I try to explain it here I won’t get to my main point. I will simply say that in my opinion this was regulatory overreach based on the interpretation of one word. Nobody in the agency agreed with me, but I was not surprised that this happened. There were probably many similar stories that we never knew about.

That’s what happens when people who write a law neglect the little guy.

The little guys, very small business owners, are never at the table when laws are being drafted. They don’t participate, maybe because they don’t know how, maybe because they are too busy.

Very small businesses are one group that concerns me in relation to the current push to enact a paid family and medical leave law in New Mexico. This year’s bill was voted down, but we know it’s coming back.

Another vulnerable group is social-service nonprofits, including those that provide services like adoption, foster care and personal service to elderly clients or those with disabilities. Many of these nonprofits work under contract to state government. Here’s an unpleasant little secret: When the state enacts laws that directly increase the costs of paying employees, those laws apply to nonprofits as well as for-profit businesses, but the state does not necessarily increase what it pays to those nonprofits.

I watched this for years with a friend who ran a nonprofit agency. Every few years she would tell me the state had made a change that cut her funding, which forced her to eliminate something. The myth was that there were always inefficiencies that could be cut. But that was possible only for the first couple of cuts. After that the cuts were to real services affecting real people – the clients.

Rep. Marian Matthews has raised this issue. Matthews, D-Albuquerque, introduced a moderate and less costly alternative to the family and medical leave bill. Matthews’ bill was tabled in its first committee. She had been talking specifically about the severe costs to families when caregiver services are cut.

Our Legislature has been generous to employees in the last few years. We’ve increased the minimum wage from $7.50 an hour in 2018 to $12 an hour in 2023. Our paid sick leave law, enacted in 2022, requires employers to pay for up to 64 hours per year of sick leave. The employer also faces the cost of finding and paying for a replacement worker or going without whatever service the worker was providing.

Both the minimum wage and the sick leave program are meritorious, but legislators should be asking, before enacting another new employer responsibility, whether the administrative requirements of the sick leave program are reasonable or excessively burdensome.

And we should be making sure that employers at all levels, including the little guys, are being heard.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

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