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‘We want to disrupt the status quo’

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Steve Moise and friends have a new way to begin solving New Mexico’s many problems. He’s unveiling Imagine New Mexico.

“We want to disrupt the status quo,” he says. “New Mexico is change averse. We want to cause people to think bigger and better.”

The mission, he explains, is to incentivize a few well respected nonprofits “to collaborate and make positive, measurable change” instead of trying to chip away at the state’s many needs in isolation. “We’ll hire someone to facilitate. We’ll raise enough money to reward them for their work.”

We’ve seen organizations come and go. We’ve seen good groups spin their wheels. Why get excited about this one?

Well, for starters, imagine trusted groups tackling problems with more money, greater expertise and fresh ideas. Imagine that the people behind the new organization know New Mexico in ways the rest of us don’t and have spent their careers making big things happen.

Moise is an attorney with deep roots here, descended from pioneering merchants and ranchers in Santa Rosa. He took over the State Investment Office in April 2010, after former an under-qualified appointee’s explosive mix of politics and investments led to investigations by the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission.

Moise “became the Marshal Dillon of state investment when his predecessor left in a tailwind of allegations,” I wrote that year.

He scoured the agency from top to bottom and supervised an army of consultants, experts and lawyers who hunted down everybody who profited inappropriately. They clawed back $60 million for taxpayers. When Moise retired in 2023, the State Investment Office was squeaky clean, and assets had tripled on his watch.

Often asked why he wanted the job, Moise always said, “I love this state.”

That’s the drive behind Imagine New Mexico.

The other players: Best friend and former banker Doug Brown became interim State Treasurer in 2005 after the elected treasurer resigned rather than face impeachment. Brown was also a UNM regent. Mark Benak is a prominent high tech entrepreneur and angel investor. Christina Campos, before retiring last year, was the highly respected administrator of Guadalupe County Hospital in Santa Rosa. PGA professional Notah Begay, a Moise family friend, has his own nonprofit focused on Native American children’s health. Alicia Keyes isformer secretary of the state Economic Development Department.

Benak planted the seed. After selling his company, “he spent a year in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, a program for retired executives who are looking for their next iteration,” Moise said. He and Benak talked weekly, often about how to make New Mexico the best it can be. Benak wrote a plan and the two men decided to work together. Moise became president and Benak vice president of Imagine New Mexico.

They decided to focus on five areas – healthcare, education, crime, economy and poverty – and work to improve each area over time. Healthcare quickly became a priority. “Even though education screams for attention, you can’t educate kids who aren’t healthy,” Moise said. “The healthcare system is an abomination.”

To assure their decision making would be grounded in data, they hired Rebecca Kilburn, an economist with the Prevention Research Center at UNM’s medical school, to develop a dashboard that would allow them to see if programs were working. (A dashboard concentrates a lot of information into an easily understood format.)

The dashboard, which Moise describes as a work in progress, is now at ImagineNewMexico.org. “New Mexico has never had anything like it,” he said. “It was a massive project.”

The group will work statewide.

Already on their radar are New Mexico’s medical malpractice problem and physician recruitment. Imagine New Mexico will support Think New Mexico’s efforts but won’t lobby or campaign.

For nonprofits here, money is always tricky, but Imagine New Mexico already has backing from foundations, businesses and individuals all over the state. “It’s all private sector,” Moise said. “We will accept no government money.”

When Moise talks about his motivation, he recalls that decades ago, as a young attorney, he attend a meeting of business leaders in which the speaker was discussing how New Mexico compared to other states. “I was shocked,” he recalled. Nearly four decades later, not much has changed.

Many of us have had those moments. Moise and his allies see a chance to use their collected wisdom, experience and connections to make a difference.

One candidate gets real about New Mexico’s doctor exodus

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima, in declaring his candidacy for governor, did something no other Democrat has been willing to do: He challenged his fellow Democratic candidates to refuse campaign funding from trial lawyers.

Miyagishima stated correctly that New Mexico’s malpractice laws and the spike in litigation and insurance premiums in recent years is driving doctors from the state.

“We are the only state that is losing doctors,” he told the Albuquerque Journal, referring to data from the New Mexico Medical Society, which reported that we lost 248 doctors across the state from 2019 to 2024 while neighboring states added doctors.

Thanks to Democrats and their benefactor, the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, changes in malpractice law since 2021 multiplied malpractice lawsuits and spiked court awards and settlement costs.

I’ve previously written about how Dems torpedoed the malpractice reform bill in this year’s legislative session. There’s more.

Think New Mexico had a package of bills to address our healthcare shortages. The bipartisan think tank has a long track record of advancing useful legislation, but this time David faced Goliath. The trial lawyers have deep pockets and matching clout.

One of the most important bills was the bipartisan HB 243 by Rep. Marian Matthews, a moderate Democrat from Albuquerque, and House Minority Leader Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena. It would have allowed New Mexico to join the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, an agreement among states to recognize each others’ professional licenses. Forty-three other states have joined.

“It’s the easiest way to have a substantial increase in doctors, Matthews said. “It could provide expertise that’s not even available in New Mexico.”

Companion bills would have done the same for other healthcare professions.

HB 243 passed the House unanimously and then sat in the Senate Judiciary Committee more than a week before being heard. Matthews and Armstrong were pleased that Rick Masters, the compact’s general counsel, came to New Mexico to present before the committee. “They went out of their way to work with us.”

Matthews, herself an attorney, was astounded by what happened next. Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, spent hours reading every line and paragraph the Senate Judiciary committee wanted stricken. Duhigg made dozens of amendments that transformed the bill.

“We told them if they insist on changing the bill it would be unacceptable to the compact. They did it anyway. It was ugly,” Matthews said.

It should be noted that the law firm of committee Chairman Joseph Cervantes, D- Las Cruces, sues doctors. So does Duhigg’s lawfirm.

The gutted HB 243 died on the Senate calendar. The other compact bills also died.

Why? Because the trial lawyers object to a provision in the compacts that prevents them from suing the interstate compact commissions, which oversee the compacts. “There is no good reason to sue them, but the lawyers object to the idea of shielding anyone from potential lawsuits,” said Fred Nathan, of Think New Mexico.

In the aftermath, Republicans called out Dems for tanking these bills, and the governor agreed with them.

“People die when they can’t get access to healthcare,” she said. She complained that her public safety bills died in the same committees that defeated the healthcare bills, and she chastised the trial lawyers by name.

“Just look at the number of malpractice cases brought in New Mexico,” she said. “Look at the number of law firms coming from out of state to prosecute cases here.”

Duhigg sent her constituents a long letter bragging about her accomplishments during the session but didn’t mention her role in depriving them of doctors.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing from doctors. A surgeon describes colleagues planning to retire early or leave the state. “All of this is lawsuit driven,” she writes. “These are good surgeons! They are kind, thoughtful, skilled. They didn't go into surgery for money; there are so many easier ways to make money.

“Ours is a stressful field at baseline. Complications hurt us and haunt us, but they are a reality of practicing surgery. As much as we would love to have perfect outcomes, as hard as we work for it, we know that complications will happen. In New Mexico, we are punished for situations we can't control. And as the number of doctors declines, we get busier and busier, patients have less primary care, and we face uncontrollable emergency situations. It is truly a vicious cycle.”

Candidate Miagishima worries his name might be an obstacle. If he champions healthcare providers and stands up to the trial lawyers, everybody will know his name.

Big beautiful bill has hidden costs

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

During recent debates over the president’s big beautiful budget bill, I wanted to know how the safety net would work. After all, New Mexico has the nation’s highest per-capita rate of Medicaid coverage with 840,000 people enrolled, more than 40% of the state’s population.

Nationally, Medicaid covers more than 71 million poor, elderly and disabled people. The big beautiful bill would cut the program by nearly $700 billion over 10 years and take health coverage away from more than 10 million people.

The big numbers and potential impacts generated endless debate about poor people, and what I heard made me wonder if the debaters had met any actual poor people. I have, and they’re not as lazy as the right would have you believe.

Let me introduce you to some neighbors from my time on the wrong side of the tracks.

Across the street was a woman I’ll call Mary, a single mom with three boys. She was a cleaning lady who worked long hours in other people’s homes to pay the rent. My next door neighbor was an older woman who was in poor health and on Social Security disability. That wasn’t enough to support two teenagers still living at home, so the fourth member of the household, an adult daughter I’ll call Alex, worked a low-wage retail job. Alex was the family’s primary supporter.

One major change mandated by the bill is work requirements for able-bodied, single adults. Sounds reasonable, right? What you might not know is that most Medicaid recipients are already working. So Alex will have to document 80 hours of work each month or prove she qualifies for an exception. But Alex is a high-school dropout who might have a hard time negotiating the new red tape. She might also be reluctant to take time off work, at a loss in pay, to visit a state office and make her case.

Benefits experts predict that millions of Alexes will get lost in the new system and lose their coverage. That seems to be the goal of the new requirement. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects the number of uninsured Americans will increase by 7.6 million.

The bill also requires states to check Medicaid eligibility more frequently, which the governor has said is a costly new administrative burden on top of Medicaid cuts the state can’t afford.

The big beautiful bill frays another strand of the safety net by cutting $300 billion (30%) from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly food stamps, which helps 42 million people. It’s the biggest reduction in the program’s history. More than 2.7 million households will lose benefits.

SNAP too has a job requirement. This one sweeps parents like Mary the cleaning lady into that category, so she would have to take time off work to document her hours and contend with unfamiliar new rules. And for the first time, states will have to absorb some of the costs of SNAP. Again, millions will lose their SNAP benefits at a time when federal cuts to food banks have emptied shelves.

Maybe you don’t give a hoot about poor people and their troubles, but you probably care about hospitals.

An emergency doctor told me, “What most people don’t know is that we have to treat people whether we’re getting paid or not.” He said his own hospital is also contending with tariff-induced price hikes on supplies and equipment.

As the number of uninsured people increases and expenses of uncompensated care rise, hospitals will see red ink. Medicaid is typically their largest source of revenue, followed closely by Medicare, which will also be hammered by the big beautiful bill.

Hospitals will try to compensate by raising rates for those with insurance and curtailing more services. It won’t be enough. They will look to the state, which has already tried to help struggling rural hospitals.

But Medicaid is the largest single source of federal funding for states and the second largest expenditure behind education. Replacing that revenue could mean raising taxes. Meanwhile many rural hospitals, already on the edge, will close.

The big beautiful bill is a complex piece of legislation, and Medicaid and SNAP are just two of many pieces. This is the House version, and the bill will change in the Senate. However, Medicaid will still be a target because it’s a big expenditure, and budget architects must come up with enough savings to pay for their tax cuts.

Jet as symbol of “greed and excess” hasn’t changed in 20 years

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

In August 2011 Gov. Susana Martinez stood before her predecessor’s jet, which was festooned with a big “SOLD” sign.

“Last year when I was running for governor, I not only promised taxpayers that I would not use this state jet as a personal air taxi, I promised New Mexicans across the state that I would get rid of this symbol of greed and excess in state government,” she said. “And today, I make good on that promise.”

Then she hugged the buyers, handed them the keys and waved as the plane taxied down the runway. Sale price: $2.5 million.

Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration acquired the Cessna Citation Bravo in 2005 for $5.5 million after the state sold his aging turboprop. The new twin-engine business jet, with a top speed upwards of 450 miles per hour, could get Richardson to Hobbs in 45 minutes and to nearly any other airport in the state in 35 minutes.

Richardson got his shiny man-toy after leaning on legislators for $5 million. It was the most expensive state aircraft in the region and the only state-owned jet in the Southwest.

Republican radio ads said the plane was proof of Richardson’s “lifestyle of the rich and famous.” It didn’t help that Richardson had used the jet to fly to Los Alamos, which took 25 minutes compared with a 45-minute drive.

Within two years, the jet’s appeal had dulled as political heat increased. Now an aspiring presidential candidate, Richardson announced in 2007 he would give up the Cessna Citation Bravo in favor of five Eclipse 500 very-light jets, manufactured in Albuquerque.

"The governor feels the time is right to convey a friendlier, folksier, more accessible image," a spokesman told Aero News Network, "A smaller, more personable aircraft ties into this image quite nicely." The spokesman referred to the five small jets as “the Richardson Air Force.”

But the economy tipped into the Great Recession, and the Eclipse purchase never came off. The jet became political fuel for Susana Martinez and political baggage for the Democrats. During her campaign she even had billboards declaring, “Sell the jet!”

In early 2011 the newly elected Martinez said: "At a time when New Mexicans are struggling to make ends meet, their governor should not be leading a life of privilege. We will get rid of that ultimate symbol of waste and excess; we will sell the state's luxury jet."

I wrote in 2011: “The jet has been more useful to Martinez on the ground than it was to Richardson in the air.” It was a simple issue that fit on a billboard, and it resonated with the public.

Now the Republicans are about to learn the same lesson.

The president wants to accept a gift from the Qatari royal family of a $400 million jumbo jet, dubbed the “flying palace” and “Arab Force One.” Yes, it violates the clause in the Constitution that bars officials from accepting gifts “from any King, Prince, or foreign State” unless Congress approves. Yes, it’s a gift from a nation that supports Hamas and hasn’t always had our best interests at heart. Yes, retrofitting the aircraft to meet security and communications needs could cost taxpayers a bundle, and the government wouldn’t even keep it. And, yes, the optics are really, really bad.

U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, observed: “I don’t like it. There’s a reason that people can’t even buy me a steak dinner. It’s not necessarily that you can prove I have an ethical problem, it’s that the appearance of it doesn’t look great.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley summarized it well: “Accepting gifts from foreign nations is never a good practice. It threatens intelligence and national security, especially when that nation supports a terrorist organization and allows those terrorist regimes to live on its soil. Regardless of how beautiful the plane may be, it opens a door and implies the President and U.S. can be bought. If this were Biden, we would be furious.”

There’s one thing they forgot. Like Richardson’s business jet, this latest man-toy will be a potent symbol that won’t go away. Expect to see it flying in thousands of campaign advertisements during midterm campaigns.

Lawmakers, governor let housing bills wither

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

For many people the most affordable route to home ownership is to buy a manufactured home, and planned communities of these dwellings appeal to retirees. But they often rent the lot. If the property sells it can throw homeowners into a tailspin.

“For me and many others, living in a 55-plus manufactured home community is a life choice that provides both affordable housing and a supportive, tight-knit environment,” wrote Joanne DeMichele in an op ed.

After the owner sold the property to out-of-state investors, “rents jumped, and services declined.” With repeated rent increases, retirees dipped into savings, “wondering what will run out first – their life savings or their life” while others were forced out.

In Alamogordo, she wrote, more than 100 people living in such a community “suffered for six months without natural gas before the California land investor made the necessary repairs. They are now told to expect another significant rent increase.”

Mobile homes are the second most prevalent housing in New Mexico after single family homes in all but three counties, according to the Mortgage Finance Authority. We have 380 mobile home communities that make up 17% of the state’s housing inventory (the national average is 5.5%), and 36,000 people live in manufactured housing.

Now we’re seeing the same trend in land ownership turnover that has plagued other kinds of rental properties. If the land is sold, residents may have to walk away from their homes because moving them is prohibitive. A manufactured home or mobile home is not a trailer; they can’t just be moved from place to place.

“It’s a huge problem,” says Rep. Marian Matthews, D-Albuquerque. “I have a senior park in my district with 700 residents. It used to be well maintained. Then a private equity group bought the property, maintenance declined, and rents increased. And property owners are scared that after the investors milk the property for a while they’ll sell it and not for use as a mobile home park. Homeowners could lose their entire investment.”

Matthews, who has visited the homes to meet with constituents, notes that they’re nice places to live as well as being affordable. “It’s critical housing,” she says.

She was a co-sponsor with Rep. Cristina Parajón, D-Albuquerque, and others of HB 426, which would have required owners of mobile home parks to notify residents and the Mortgage Finance Authority if they planned to sell the park and give residents a chance to buy the property if they can match price and terms of the third-party offer.

It passed the House 37-26 and died without being heard by the Senate Judiciary Committee, even though Sen. Moe Maestas, the committee’s vice chair, was a sponsor.

Two other housing bills died without being heard by Senate Judiciary: HB 253 would have expunged old eviction records, and HB 339 would have forbidden discrimination based on income source such as vouchers.

Scores of housing bills also fell along the way. It was disheartening to housing advocates because the session opened with great promise for housing.

Two bipartisan bills I liked took aim at housing supply. HB 571 would have incentivized municipalities to reform their zoning codes to encourage construction of affordable housing. It passed both houses unanimously, the Governor’s Office on Housing supported it, but the governor pocket vetoed it.

HB 554, would have made it easier to build multifamily housing in commercial districts and allowed casitas in residential districts. It passed the House but died in a Senate committee.

The only housing bill to become law was SB 267, which requires landlords to disclose all fees up front and limits junk fees.

Matthews plans to return next year with an improved mobile home park bill, but our cumbersome legislative system all but guarantees that a solution will take years, and people are losing their homes now.

Social Security and the DOGE kids

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

At packed town halls held recently by New Mexico’s three U.S. House members, the defining feature of attendees was grey hair, and one of their most urgent worries was Social Security.

In New Mexico, 468,000 people get a Social Security check. Another 55,000 receive Supplemental Security Income. For a great many of them, missing even one check wouldn’t just be inconvenient, it would be disastrous – the difference between housed and unhoused, fed and hungry, as U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez learned when he surveyed constituents.

No recipient, myself included, considers Social Security an entitlement. “I paid in,” they will tell you.

Elders’ alarm over Social Security has festered for months. The president promised he wouldn’t touch Social Security except for “waste, fraud and abuse” and then turned Elon Musk and his DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, loose on the Social Security Administration (SSA).

In February Musk claimed that millions of people over the age of 100 were receiving a Social Security check, when he had, in fact, misunderstood the agency’s aged record keeping system. DOGE staff, without training or security clearances, embarked on a “major cleanup” of SSA records. Since March DOGE moved 10 million records to SSA’s Death Master File over the objections of SSA staff, according to the Washington Post. But DOGE itself was so unsure about its actions, according to Newsweek, that it advised SSA offices to reinstate people who came in with identification. That can take months.

The Washington Post reported last week on one man who learned he was added to the Death Master File when he couldn’t use his credit card to buy lunch. The government told financial institutions he was dead, clawed back his last Social Security check, and ended his pension checks and Medicare. Months later, he’s still trying to recover pension checks.

The undead have been showing up at Social Security offices, where they may or may not find somebody to help them. The Trump administration fired 7,000 people from SSA’s 57,000-person workforce, despite staffing at a 50-year low, and plans to lay off thousands more and close offices. At the same time, DOGE began requiring people without internet access to prove their identity with an in-person office visit.

The result was website crashes, hours’ long wait times by phone, and few actual humans still working in field offices.

U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury told a town hall this month that she was denied entry to the Albuquerque Social Security office, even though she had an appointment. She said the office, a regional call center normally staffed by 600, had around 250 to 300 employees.

She joined more than 100 members of Congress in asking SSA’s Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek to keep local field offices open.

Dudek, previously a mid-level data analyst, welcomed and enabled DOGE as other agency professionals resisted or resigned in protest. At DOGE’s direction, he has “pushed out dozens of officials with years of expertise in running Social Security’s complex benefit and information technology systems,” the Washington Post reported. In a recording obtained by ProPublica, Dudek urged co-workers to be patient with “the DOGE kids,” as he called them. “They’re learning. Let people learn. They’re going to make mistakes.”

Former Deputy Commissioner Jason Fichtner has compared DOGE’s Social Security cuts to a drunk operating a wrecking ball. His boss, former Commissioner Martin O’Malley, has warned Social Security recipients to save their money to prepare for future missed checks. He has explained that SSA’s overhead is far below commercial insurers. In his view the administration is trying to dismember the agency by breaking its ability to serve. Once broken, it can be privatized.

Which is what Stansbury said in her town hall. “They are trying to dismantle Social Security. The GOP has dreamed of privatizing it for years. A lot of major financial institutions can make a lot of money,” she said.

Project 2025, the administration’s 900-page blueprint, doesn’t address Social Security, but one of its authors, economist Stephen Moore, called Social Security a Ponzi scheme long before Elon Musk did, and Moore has long proposed deep cuts and privatization.

The debate over privatizing Social Security is long standing. Two thoughts: First, with a private account the broker gets paid whether the market is up or down, whether you make money or not. Second, we all deserve to make our own decisions about what happens to Social Security and not be forced into an outcome because the powers that be drove it into the ground.

As a Vasquez constituent told Source New Mexico, “It’s my money.”

Tax package was short on planning and long on politics

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Few subjects inspire as much fuzzy math and fuzzier thinking as taxes. It was just one reason the governor not only vetoed House Bill 14 but stomped all over it and lambasted Democrats in a smoking veto message:

“In a session where the Legislature found time to pass three separate license plate bills and designate an official state bread, it is deeply disappointing that they waited until the final days—indeed, the final hours—of the 2025 legislative session to take up a tax package. Even more troubling is the fact that what ultimately emerged lacked both strategic coherence and fiscal credibility. There was no plan and no preparation for how to pay for the tax relief in this bill. As a result, the Legislature had to delay any meaningful tax relief for working families until Fiscal Year 2027, despite the state sitting on more than $3 billion in one-time revenues and over 30% in reserves. That is not prudence—it is paralysis.”

HB 14 was actually 16 previously tabled bills that Dems stitched together into a crazy quilt. Its sponsors were House Speaker Javier Martinez and Taxation and Revenue Committee Chairman Derrick Lente. It had something for everyone, but the major component was a tax credit that would have effectively eliminated income taxes for some working families.

The challenge, as usual, was how to pay for it. They seized on a new 0.28% oil surtax. That idea met strenuous objections from the industry and the business community. As Dems would learn, the president’s trade war has injured the state’s golden goose by driving down oil prices and driving up the cost of equipment and supplies. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil was $71 a barrel when the bill was introduced, $67 when it passed the House and $61 when the bill was vetoed.

That wasn’t the only hurdle. The oil tax would have raised $130 million. House Dems needed $72 million for their income tax proposal. The Senate’s tax committee added $70 million of its own tax breaks. You can see this doesn’t add up. And the Senate stripped out the oil tax.

House and Senate were at loggerheads until the day before adjournment. During last minute meetings, the Senate refused to budge on the oil tax. The final compromise involved paring down tax breaks and pushing them into fiscal 2027, so lawmakers next year would have to figure out how to pay for them. It’s no way to run a railroad, although Dems said they could use the bill as a template for action next year.

Fuzzy thinking also afflicted Republicans, who introduced HB 275 to do away entirely with personal income taxes. This would have cost $1.8 billion in fiscal 2026, according to legislative analysis. Their reasoning, backed by no studies whatsoever, seemed to be that with this big budget surplus, surely we can get rid of income taxes. Trouble is, the surplus is one-time money, not recurring money. The bill was never heard in committee.

The governor accused HB 14 sponsors of “decision-making driven more by political self-interest than public good.” Seeing machinations in Congress to justify tax breaks for the rich, Martinez and Lente referred to their legislation as “the tax fairness bill,” one of many on a list of Democratic bills to help low-income and middle class people.

“Fundamentally, this tax package is about fairness and putting our values into action,” said Lente in a news release. “We are cutting or fully eliminating income taxes for 300,000 hardworking New Mexicans who power our economy, while also making sure that the prosperous multi-billion-dollar industry that profits from the extraction of our natural resources pays its fair share.”

Its “fair share” is a third of the state budget.

Lente insisted the tax would fall on Big Oil despite Republican arguments that it would also hit Small Oil. Not everybody here is Exxon. When the Rs argued that the tax would hurt the oil industry, Dems countered that the president’s tariffs, layoffs and mass deportations were hurting everybody. That’s all true, but it’s not the basis of tax policy.

If either party was serious about meaningful tax change, they would have started long before the session in the interim tax committee. Then they could think and deliberate. They could make a plan, hear testimony and draft bills. Instead, HB 14 seemed to come out of nowhere and spring to life, like an accidental collision of cells in a petri dish.

Your word of the day: Uncertainty

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Tax season was extra painful this year. Because I did well in the stock market last year, I had to pay extra for capital gains, but those gains have evaporated and then some in Wall Street’s downward skid. Now, like millions of others with dwindling retirement accounts, I’m wondering what to do.

As a journalist, I’ve never made a lot of money, so it’s remarkable that somebody like me even has a stock portfolio. I credit that to workplace 401Ks, some smart brokers and the penny pinching I learned from my mother.

More than half of Americans are invested in the stock market, and now we’re watching the money we counted on as nest eggs or retirement income disappear, all because of the president’s trade war. As the markets bled trillions of dollars, even his supporters have objected.

On April 6 billionaire hedge fund investor and Trump backer Bill Ackman wrote that in socking allies and adversaries alike with massive tariffs we were destroying the world’s confidence in the United States as a trading partner, a place to do business and a safe place to invest. “(W)e are heading for a self-induced economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down.”

If this guy is alarmed, where does that leave people like me?

The state’s investment officers are also worried. Our much-admired permanent funds took a $1 billion hit, and public retirement accounts were also down. Bob Jacksha, chief investment officer for the Educational Retirement Board, blamed the market downturn on “economic malfeasance” by the Trump administration, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

Our permanent funds underwrite many of the lofty programs that come out of the Legislature, so a squeeze on the funds will eventually mean a squeeze in services. Managers of these big funds say they can ride out downturns in the short term, but what if it’s not short term?

Bill Ackman is not an outlier. Anybody who knows anything about business and the economy has one word on their mind these days: Uncertainty.

A panel of New Mexico economists and trade experts speaking at UNM recently agreed that fluctuating tariffs would not only slam consumer prices everywhere but jeopardize free trade between countries, reported Source New Mexico. Jordan Rosenberg Cobos, president of the International Law Society, said “the uncertainty and the unpredictability behind the tariffs may be even more damaging than the actual tariffs. It’s like you’re taking a load-bearing wall out of the global economy without much notice.”

Jerry Pacheco, executive director of the nonprofit International Business Accelerator in Santa Teresa, has written about trade issues for years. What Trump called “Liberation Day” in announcing new tariffs should be called “Chaos Day,” he wrote.

“I have never seen so much confusion and scrambling in the trade community as I witnessed that day.”

Pacheco spent days calling contacts, trying to sort out how the on-again, off-again, permanent and paused tariffs would work here. His usual government sources didn’t know. Neither did customs brokers. Companies are scrambling to learn which tariffs might apply to them and how they will affect their markets. “It is this uncertainty that is the most difficult challenge.”

As an old business reporter, I can tell you what happens when businesses face uncertainty. They hit pause. They postpone hiring, equipment purchases, and expansion. If a slump persists, they cut expenses and lay people off.It’s no different for individuals: Do we buy a new stove or put it off? Eat out or stock up on beans?

Economists locally and nationally are starting to use the R-word.

“At this point recession seems more likely than not,” Albuquerque economist Kelly O’Donnell told the Journal. “Seldom have so many negative factors simultaneously converged on the U.S. economy, and unlike the global pandemic or world wars, the current crisis is entirely self-imposed.”

Lately, the president said on his way to Mar-a-Lago for a weekend of golf that “sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.” Clearly, he’s not the one taking the medicine.

Feds to New Mexico: Burn, baby, burn

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Our beautiful New Mexico skies have been stubbornly blue for months, and we know what that means. A few weeks ago, Patrick Lohman, of the online Source New Mexico, reported severe drought across the state.

Lohman has racked up more fire coverage than any New Mexico journalist, so when I see a fire story with his byline, I pay attention.

He also reported that “federal cuts could leave one-third of the state without dispatchers to monitor for nascent blazes and fewer firefighters to respond if they blow up.”

Go online and you’ll find colorful maps with the color red bleeding across the page to tell us that above normal fire conditions cover most of the state. Two years of moderate precipitation encouraged growth of fuels like grass and pine needles. Now they’re dry as paper. It’s a matter of when, not if.

“It’s bad, man,” UNM fire ecologist Matt Hurteau told Lohman.

In February the “Department of Government Efficiency” ordered the firing of 3,400 Forest Service seasonal employees. DOGE’s budget cutters were supposed to exempt firefighters. They didn’t know that 75% of the laid-off employees were trained and qualified in wildland firefighting. They didn’t know that most of the agency’s field crews are seasonal employees. They didn’t know that these crews not only clean recreation sites, they maintain trails and thin forests and that both steps are key to fire prevention. They didn’t know that during a fire, they’re also firefighters and fire support. And they didn’t know or care that the Forest Service is already understaffed, which is why every employee is involved in fire management.

A federal judge ordered the 3,400 workers to be reinstated, but they can still be fired in a reduction in force. The president has asked the Supreme Court to block the ruling.

What’s particularly shameful is that the Office of Personnel Management told these people they were being fired for “poor performance,” an obvious lie that hinders future employment. As one of them wrote recently, they willingly sleep on the ground, sweat and freeze to clear trails and clean campsites, and respond to backcountry medical emergencies – all for very little money.

At the same time, DOGE plans to close the supervisors’ offices of the Cibola National Forest and Gila National Forest. Both house dispatch centers that coordinate fire response by federal, state and tribal agencies and monitor wildfire detection systems. They cover 45,000 square miles. Although U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich has received “assurances” that they won’t close, the General Services Administration has been noncommittal.

UNM’s Hurteau worries that multiple wildfires in the West will quickly exhaust available resources. We’ll have permanent employees providing incident command, along with aircraft, but not boots on the ground. He also worries that under-staffed fire crews, who by nature and culture give their all, will be injured or killed.

The one spark of good news is that the state Forestry Division is in the process of training 1,500 full-time and volunteer wildland firefighters this year. It also has 37 full-time wildland firefighters in three crews.

And the Legislature passed House Bill 191, which creates two wildfire-related permanent funds to bolster the state Forestry Division. The Wildfire Suppression Fund will pay for contract wildland firefighters, equipment and supplies, and vehicle rental and repair. The Post-Wildfire Fund will pay for recovery efforts and environmental rehabilitation.

It’s a great idea, but the appropriation is $12 million, hardly enough to make a dent during a major disaster, especially if Forest Service cuts are permanent and FEMA disappears.

The bottom line is that Elon Musk, who pays close attention to his own bottom line, is leaving New Mexico to burn.

Juvenile crime divides lawmakers

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

Scott Habermehl was riding his bicycle to work in the early morning darkness as he always did, when a stolen car driven by a 13-year-old struck him. The force of the collision threw the Sandia National Laboratories engineer up over the top of the car. The driver and his accomplices, ages 11 and 15, raced away, leaving Habermehl to die in the road.

The kids then posted their escapade to social media, revealing that they saw the bicyclist, talked about hitting him, and then laughed as the driver swerved into the bike lane. The two older boys have been arrested and charged. Authorities are still figuring out how to charge the 11-year-old.

News of this crime broke on March 18, after legislators sent their crime package to the governor – without a juvenile crime bill.

“This case is an appalling and heartbreaking reminder of the serious juvenile crime crisis we face in New Mexico – and our lack of tools to properly address it,” said the governor.

Lawmakers this session had two bills aimed at juveniles. On March 6, a committee tabled House Bill 134, the one cops and district attorneys wanted. A weaker bill, HB 255, failed in a Senate vote.

Let’s look at HB 134 by Rep. Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis and a former prosecutor, who had worked with Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman to develop the bill.

HB 134 would have changed the state’s Delinquency Act to include 14-year-olds in the definition of “serious youthful offender,” triggering adult prosecution and sentencing, according to legislative analysis. Along with first degree murder, they could be charged with second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, and shooting at a vehicle or dwelling resulting in great bodily harm.

On March 6, Reeb explained to the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee, “We’re targeting the worst of the worst” and trying to hold them accountable. “We have 13-year-olds committing murder.”

Opposing the bill were juvenile advocates. Vanessa Hulliger, of Stronger Together, Never Alone, said harsher punishment doesn’t effectively deter juvenile crime. The ACLU said HB 134 would lead to over-incarceration of kids.

Speaking in support, Marcus Montoya, of the New Mexico District Attorneys’ Association, called attention to the effect of violent juveniles on the rest of the increasingly fearful community. The most violent kids need to be separated from other kids.

Reeb pointed out that under HB 134 kids would still receive a hearing about whether they were amenable to treatment. “We’re not giving up on kids,” she said. “Evaluations will be conducted.”

Bernalillo County Deputy DA Troy Gray testified that between 2022 and 2023 there were 24 murders by juveniles and 471 crimes involving handguns. Juvenile crime was up 57%. Without the bill, juvenile offenders would be free at 21, even if they were not rehabilitated. HB 134, he said, would give them the “flexibility of time.”

Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, complained that the bill would commit kids to incarceration with no chance for rehabilitation.

Gray assured her that they wanted to rehabilitate kids, but they must also be accountable. “This represents the worst kind of behavior,” said Gray. Some kids would continue to harm others as adults.

Democrats prevailed in a committee vote to table, but this bill really wasn’t partisan. Sam Bregman, who pushed for this bill, was once Democratic Party chairman. The governor and other Dems wanted it.

What we saw here was the divide between those who want to give child offenders every chance and those who know that some of them can commit heinous acts.

As a former volunteer juvenile probation officer, I see both sides. At times I sat in my car and cried about the kids’ lives. People always ask, “Where were their parents?” Well, most of these kids have zero home life, and drugs, alcohol and poverty play a role. One of the saddest comments I heard: “My mom’s boyfriend doesn’t like me. My dad doesn’t have room for me where he stays.”

Imagine that you’re 14 and nobody wants you.

Years ago, when juvenile crime was in the news, a reader informed me about psychopathic kids and the difficulty of treating them. Some will always be a danger to the public.

Legislators need to keep working on this. The governor is correct to hold their feet to the fire.

Sherry Robinson 3-24-25 on

sherry robinson 3-24-25 on

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