Morning Word: Clerks ask Supreme Court to rule on same-sex marriage

• The county clerks around the state
• are hoping the state Supreme Court will rule on same-sex marriage soon
• .
• ---
• Hey Dona Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins (the first county clerk to start issuing marriage licenses since the Sandoval County clerk in 2004), tell us how you really feel about clerks who aren't issuign marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

• “Let me put it this way, some people have balls, some people don’t, alright? Some of them truly believe that they need direction from on high and they’re not willing to do a constitutional analysis,” Ellins told TPM in an interview on Wednesday. “Some of them are philosophically opposed so they wouldn’t do it unless they were brought to the shed and whacked.”

• All in all, a good profile of Ellins from Talking Points Memo.
• Ellins is looking for
• donors to cover the defense of same-sex marriage
• .
• Dan Boyd has the numbers on same-sex marriage so far:

• Breakdown of NM same-sex marriage licenses by county: 401-Bernalillo; 275-Santa Fe; 202-Dona Ana; 37-other counties. #nmleg #nmpol

  — Dan Boyd (@DanBoydNM) September 6, 2013

• The first marriage licenses in Los Alamos County for same-sex couples
• was issued
• .
• The state Environmental Improvement Board
• unanimously approved the plan for the San Juan Generating Station
• .

• The plan calls for shutting down two of the four generating units at the plant, partially replacing lost power with a new natural gas-fueled generating station, and installation of more nitrogen oxide emission controls on the remaining two units at the plant. Those changes would cost about $430 million, or about half the estimated price tag for complying with EPA’s original order to install expensive NOX controls on all four operating units.

• State Sen. and gubernatorial candidate Linda Lopez
• spoke to V.B. Price on Insight New Mexico
• this week.
• Gary King has hired
• an experience hand
• to be his campaign manager for his gubernatorial campaign.

• Jim Farrell is a Las Cruces resident and a veteran of many Democratic campaigns around the country.
  
  Among the successful campaigns he's worked on are U.S. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who unseated an incumbent Republican in 2006; Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado, (one of the few openly gay candidates to be elected to Congress); and the U.S. Senate campaign for Mark Dayton of Minnesota (who currently is governor of that state.)

• Milan Simonich says that the rumblings of a possible extraordinary session to deal with the behavioral health saga
• is nothing but "extraordinary nonsense."

  If Woods or another Senate Republican sided with the Democrats, they still would have no shot at an extraordinary session.
  
  They would never be able to persuade five Republicans in the House to jump to their side.

• The Paseo del Norte/I-25 project
• is getting started
• .
• A judge ruled
• against the city of Albuquerque in a dispute with the police union
• .

• Mayor Richard Berry’s administration improperly withheld pay raises owed under a police union contract when the city faced a serious budget crunch three years ago, according to a recent state Court of Appeals opinion.
  
  The city should have reopened the financial terms of the contract for negotiation, the court said, rather than “unilaterally” deciding to exclude pay raises from the proposed budget, Appeals Court Judge Timothy L. Garcia said in a six-page order.

• Former state Auditor Domingo Martinez
• decided against running for another term at auditor
• . This is good news for Senate Majority Whip Tim Keller, who is running for auditor.
• At a real estate industry luncheon
• Albuquerque city council candidates debated how to develop the city
• .
• Pete Dinelli and Paul Heh
• took shots at Mayor Richard Berry at a candidate forum
• put on by the firefighter's union. Berry could not defend himself, as he did not attend.
• The
• Rio Grande Sun
• :

• The former embattled Española city manager James Lujan pleaded guilty to eight felony counts of conspiracy to commit fraud and a single count of demanding or receiving a bribe Aug. 27 in district court.
  
  The plea agreement Lujan entered caps the maximum prison time he could face to six years, although the deal has the district attorney’s office asking for a maximum penalty of less than a year, which would land Lujan in jail instead of in prison.

• The Lea County Electric Cooperative will
• get $25 million in loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
• to build a new distribution line.
• Burn, Old Man Gloom, burn
• .
• La Luz
• will burn an effigy of a demon
• .

• On Saturday at 10 a.m., retired Bishop Ricardo from Las Cruces will be officiating with a "Mariachi Mass" outside the La Luz Catholic Mission to begin the day of celebration and culminating with the fiery destruction of "El Diablo."
  
  Written across the broad red chest of "El Diablo" are the words of the seven deadly sins in the modern world -- greed, pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath and sloth.

Santa Fe Reporter