Stage Set for Real ID Debate
At the same time Gov. Susana Martinez and Democratic lawmakers are
on Real ID noncompliance, the issue is starting to impact New Mexicans.
reports the governor’s “spin machine kicked into high gear” on Monday after
announced it won’t accept New Mexico’s driver’s licenses to get on the missile base.
New Mexico Wildlife Federation members
on Monday to "condemn the behavior of anti-government protesters who have occupied federal land there since" the beginning of the year.
The armed occupation stems from a larger debate in the Western United States, including New Mexico, over how federal land ownership affects the public and whether various public lands should be placed in the hands of states.
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New Mexico has the 10th highest rate of federal land ownership, with nearly 35 percent of the state’s 77.7 million acres under federal management, according to a survey conducted in 2013 by the Congressional Research Service. In contrast, just under 2 percent of Texas is federally managed, a state more than twice the size of New Mexico.
Joey Peters reports, "A federal magistrate judge Monday
from top staffers in the governor’s office from a high profile case among other measures.”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs sought out a protective order that sought to bar any content from the leaked emails from being used in the case and to bar the public from viewing the discovery process. The defendants filed an opposition, saying that what the protective order asked for was “absurd” because the majority of the leaked emails had been published on the website of the Santa Fe Reporter since December of 2012. The newspaper put them online after receiving them as part of an open records request from then-Attorney General Gary King’s office.
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The developments mark the latest fallout in one of the longest ongoing scandals in Martinez’s governorship. It began with the leaking of emails from private accounts from some of her administration staffers in the summer of 2012. Some of these emails discussed controversial public subjects like a 25-year racino lease extension on public land sought out by two high-profile donors and shed light on lobbyist and insider access in the Martinez administration.
With less than a year’s data to go by, Santa Fe Schools superintendent
says the Public Education Department can’t justify the F grades it gave to two new schools in the district, Engage Santa Fe and Mandela International Magnet School, and Boyd says he’s going to appeal.
legislation and other
will be discussed again during the 2016 Legislature, which begins a week from today.
US Sen. Martin Heinrich has invited
, a University of New Mexico student from the Navajo Nation, to the president’s final
tonight in Washington DC. Heinrich plans to push college affordability this year in Congress. He’d like to see two years of community college offered to eligible students and “provide an affordable pathway to a four-year college degree for low-income students.”
New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas was
at a voters forum in Des Moines.
Daniel J Chacón reports, “A City Council committee
if the right-of-way is clear of other vehicles and pedestrians.”
Carol Miller, a community organizer from Ojo Sarco who supports the Rural Development and Food Security Bill, has an interesting piece on the so-called “brain drain” in New Mexico:
The underlying basis to the myth is the idea that rural young people who leave for an education will not come back, that our children, once enchanted with urban life, will no longer want to live in rural communities. In some cases, of course, that’s true, but it is not even close to a general reality. Just in the area where I live, in northern New Mexico, the people who stayed have maintained traditional agricultural economies or brought in new practices. There is a lot of brainpower here.
We’ll believe it when we see it, but
, according to Christine Anderson, Spaceport America’s executive director, could be rocketing to space from southern New Mexico by 2018, even though Richard Branson is a big supporter of the United Kingdom’s plan to build its own spaceport.
Santa Fe Reporter