Large, empty rooms form the entrance to Lucky Bean Café in Sanbusco Market Center, the commercial mall located just north of the Railyard that houses mostly high-end boutiques. A couple of signs display arrows pointing to the café, which is tucked in the corner of a 25,000-square-foot room. While Lucky Bean’s owners maintain that their business is fine, the empty rooms surrounding the cafe hint at a deeper problem in the city.

In this year’s primaries, 75 percent of registered voters didn’t show up at the polls. Here’s an unscientific breakdown of their reasons why.

Although Nelson attempted on several occasions to find help from various agencies, not one provided assistance until the Begays told their story to SFR through their niece, Patsy Chacon, who translated from Navajo.

On a windswept hill in Albuquerque’s south valley, rows of metallic blue solar panels gleam beside a humming control center. The energy they capture from the sun’s rays goes into orange containers stacked with special lead batteries that store the energy for use after the sun goes down.

“DOH is sick and only you can make it better,” says a robovoice at the end of a voicemail greeting on the local Bullying, Abuse, Retaliation and Fraud Tip Hotline. The unofficial hotline, created last fall for the New Mexico Department of Health employees, is just one of many examples of ongoing dysfunction at the state’s largest agency.

To most who pay attention, Dist. 3 Public Regulation Commissioner Doug Howe is a marked improvement over former commissioner Jerome Block, Jr. Block resigned last September after pleading guilty to various felonies and is currently on probation.

Voters in House District 46, which stretches from Santa Fe up through the northern pueblos to Española and includes parts of White Rock and Chimayó, have grown accustomed to power. Outgoing New Mexico House Speaker Ben Luján, who represented the district for more than 35 years, possessed a legendary ability to control the Legislature and defend northern New Mexico. But by next session, all of this will change.

On May 15, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission voted to grant a protest, lodged by a branch of the federal Department of Energy, that questions whether New Mexico Gas Company is adequately prepared for another weather event like last winter’s deep freeze—and whether it could have prevented the major service interruptions that devastated much of the state last year.

On July 12, 2011, Lynn Degenhart resigned from his post as a member of the New Mexico Passenger Transportation Association board with a message titled “Ethical Concern.”

When Gov. Susana Martinez gave her first State of the State address on Jan. 1, 2011, she emphasized two priorities: improving education and keeping businesses in New Mexico. But SFR has found that, in the 15 months since Martinez took office, the New Mexico Public Education Department has paid out more than three times as much in professional service contracts to out-of-state education contractors than to those located in New Mexico. What’s more, it’s unclear whether some of them have produced tangible results.