The Legislature is being asked to provide tax breaks to small businesses that hire people. In the real world nobody, but nobody, puts someone on the payroll for, potentially, years and years just because he or she got a tax break in 2013. People are hired because businesses need them, and all the tax incentives in the world won’t change that calculus.

“TV series are good for job creation and sustained economic growth,” Maestas told reporters Monday. “TV series that are successful stay around for several years. Movies come and go.” Longer series mean more job security for New Mexico crews, Maestas said.

The legislator said his House Bill 379 is meant to attract more series like AMC’s critically acclaimed Breaking Bad and USA Network’s In Plain Sight. Both series, shot primarily in Albuquerque, lasted five seasons.

But you do have to follow federal law,” Lamb said. She said she’s contacted Duran’s office with a simple question, “Can the duties of the board of registration be expanded without statutory authority?” She said that nowhere in the law does it say that boards of registration report names to the secretary of state for investigation.

Residents that fit this description are considered “liquid asset poor” which means they don’t have an emergency savings account that would allow them to go through any hardships like job loss, illness, divorce, or death.

Carol Wight, chief executive officer of the New Mexico Restaurant Association, said the group wants the city to impose a limit on much the basic $8.50 minimum wage can increase each year. Under the current ordinance, the increase is supposed to match changes in the Consumer Price Index, but it isn't otherwise capped.

The association also wants the city to hold off on another increase for tipped employees, who got a boost of $1.70 an hour this year and are due for at least another $1.27 next year. Wight said her group wants to leave this year’s raise intact but avoid next year’s.

NM House votes "neigh" to horse slaughter study. #nmleg

— Dean Hanson (@abqDean) February 4, 2013

On the heels of the 2012 general election in which Hispanic voters largely favored Democratic candidates and helped propel President Barack Obama to re-election, the GOP is looking to Martinez to take a more prominent role in bringing new Hispanic Republicans into the fold to run for state offices.

“Its goal is something she’s always talked about and committed to, which is to recruit more Hispanic candidates,” said Martinez political adviser Jay McCleskey. “… She’ll be very active in helping them raise resources, as well as helping them recruit candidates all across the country.”

The Los Alamos Commerce & Development Corporation (LACDC) has selected the Los Alamos Daily Post online newspaper as its Small Business of the Year for 2013.

On Jan. 29, a bus driver who had completed his route reported to a school secretary that a student was carrying a gun in a backpack, said Aaron McKinney, Tucumcari’s school superintendent.

Last year, Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed capital-improvements legislation that included $1.37 million earmarked for furniture, security equipment and computers for the 103,000-square-foot, $63 million courthouse. She maintained that Santa Fe County, not the state, should pay for the furnishings and other equipment.

In December, the state Board of Finance approved $250,000 for furniture and other equipment, and the Santa Fe County Commission agreed to provide another $275,000 for tables and other furniture. About $800,000 more is being sought in the current session of the Legislature for other furniture and equipment.

The airport expansion, including a new crosswind runway, is expected to cost about $24 million. Most of the project would be federally funded, but the town must come up with a $1.2 million match.

Rodríguez said it would be “bad financial planning” to go into debt to complete the expansion without having a solid plan to recover revenues from it. “It would not be a responsible recommendation,” he said. “We need cash.”

After graduating from high school, he hoboed around the country for six months, before joining the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933, a New Deal program to get Americans back to work during the Depression. He worked on soil erosion projects in Illinois and Michigan, and his story was featured on the PBS series, “The American Experience.”

In 1941, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was trained as an air traffic controller. After getting married to Zella Mae Ferguson, he returned to Illinois to try his hand at hog farming. But a hard winter of feeding the hogs through mud, ice and snow made him decide to try other pursuits — moving his family of four to Kansas to try restaurant management and Idaho to try homesteading.

In 1958, he moved to Albuquerque on his 43rd birthday to begin a career as an air traffic controller. But he came home every night with a headache, he told the Tribune, and he didn’t like working for somebody else.

So after visiting a small amusement park on the New Mexico state fairgrounds with his two children, he got the idea of starting his own park.