State Revenue Projections Leap by $581 million

State revenues exceed projections by half-billion

New Mexico’s revenue picture for the fiscal year that ends June 30 looks more than $581 million better than analysts had projected, according to a report delivered yesterday to legislators on the interim Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee. The state’s reserve balance sheets also now show the highest levels in history: over $3 billion. Cash from the oil and gas industries make up the bulk of the increase in revenue, both in prices and production levels, as well as the industry’s wages, a combination that has led to what Charles Sallee, Legislative Finance Committee interim director, described as “unprecedented” conditions. “What a wild ride it has been the last couple of years from a fiscal standpoint,” he told the committee. The LFC estimated last December approximately $3.6 billion in “new money” over the previous year’s spending would hit state coffers. The agency plans to conduct a full economic forecast beginning next month. Chief Economist Ismael Torres said that state’s revenue growth estimate represents the highest growth rate in the nation, but cautioned a recession could be on the horizon in the case of developments in the US debt scenario and the war in Ukraine, among other factors. Global oil demand changes could also weigh into long-term expectations, he said.

Transit board wants to get back to work

As SFR reported earlier, the Santa Fe City Council held a special meeting this week to decide whether six proposed charter amendments from the Charter Commission should appear on the Nov. 7 ballot (they did not make that decision, so stay tuned). The Charter Commission’s report, however, also includes non-charter items, such as a recommendation for the City Council to evaluate whether its city boards and commissions are functioning and productive. One committee that is decidedly neither: the city’s Transit Advisory Board, which has not met formally in more than three years and whose members’ terms have all expired. Following SFR’s story on the state of dysfunction plaguing myriad aspects of the city’s Santa Fe Trails bus system, four former transit advisory board members signed a letter to SFR stating they are eager to get back to work and just need Mayor Alan Webber and the City Council to reappoint them. They may have to wait a while. When contacted by SFR, Webber said he had no immediate plans to make appointments to the transit board and has been focusing “on the planning commission, historic commission, veterans commission, a couple more.” One of the Transit Board members who signed the letter, Marcos Maez, became involved because the bus service heavily impacts Santa Fe Community College students, where he works as director of student engagement and recruitment. He says the four members intend to keep meeting informally given the importance of the bus system, but would need at least five members to actually conduct business.

Judge: Laws not subject to referendum

A District Court judge yesterday affirmed Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s position that six state laws under fire from a conservative petition drive are exempt from referendum. Ramona Goolsby of Rio Rancho filed a pro se court challenge against the secretary of state in April after Toulouse Oliver rejected petitions seeking to overturn new state laws codifying abortion access; requiring gender affirming health care and adding gender identity to the Human Rights Act; establishing school-based health centers; and making various changes to the election code. Toulouse Oliver argued the laws aren’t subject to referendum because of a provision in the state Constitution that exempts the applicability if laws address “preservation of the public peace, health or safety.” 13th District Court Judge James Noel agreed, granting her motion to dismiss the case. “It is very disappointing that New Mexicans are being misled about the referendum petition process by certain groups and individuals,” Toulouse Oliver said in a statement issued after the ruling. “But I’m pleased to see the court clarify this matter today with their ruling in favor of our position that the laws currently being targeted for referendum are, in fact, exempted from the referendum process.” The Albuquerque Journal reports Toulouse Oliver has denied 23 referendum petitions since the 60-day legislative session. Petition organizers with the New Mexico Family Action Movement say they will keep trying.

Third Rio Grande rafting fatality

A rafter died in the Racecourse section of the Rio Grande on Wednesday, bringing Taos County river fatalities to three within the last month as water levels surge. The Taos News reported that the rafter who died this week, a man in his 60s, went in the water when a raft flipped around 2 pm in a section of the river located near Mile Marker 27 on Hwy. 68 near Mile Marker 27. Taos Fire Rescue confirmed two others were injured in the accident. On June 3, 73-year-old John Matteson, of Loveland, Colo., drowned on a section of the river known as the Razorblade rapids. That day, the US Geological Survey gauge nearby registered river flows that peaked at 3,070 cubic feet per second, triple the maximum river flow recorded by the gauge last year. Filmmaker David Bishop died while rafting the Racecourse section on May 6. Taos County Emergency Services Chief David Varela told The Taos News even professional rafters are finding waters treacherous this season. “The amount of water that’s moving right now is insane,” Varela said.

Listen up

As the summer season grows ever near, the offerings at the Santa Fe Farmers Market expand (as do the Saturday morning crowds). On the most recent episode of the Heating it Up podcast, James Beard Award-winning cookbook author Cheryl Alters Jamison talks with Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute Executive Director Manny Encinias about the institute’s history, and the work it does to support the market; Northern New Mexico’s small farms and ranches; and to make fresh produce available to the public.

No place like home/museum

The Financial Times’ “world’s best house museum” series includes a recent story on Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home, and her captivation with New Mexico. The latter began with a glimpse on a train ride in the late 1920s, FT notes. She began spending time at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú in 1934, as had folks like John Wayne, Ansel Adams and Charles Lindbergh. At Ghost Ranch, O’Keeffe’s “art took a new direction as, from the doorstep of a small cottage, O’Keeffe painted supersized renderings of the spectacular red and yellow desert cliffs.” About 10 years later, she bought a “crumbling adobe” in Abiquiú, “restoring its Spanish colonial and indigenous architecture and adding broad landscape windows and skylights to capture the light and valley vistas she cherished.” After her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, died in 1946, she made the house her permanent home, and stayed there until 1984 (she died in Santa Fe two years later, at the age of 98). Today, on the Georgia O’Keeffe Home and Studio guided tour, visitors “can gape at the live landscapes she painted through the windows, and appreciate her collections of rocks, bones and mid-century modern furniture.”

Let it flow

Nothing says Santa Fe like a processional featuring Wise Fool’s giant puppets and street theater performers. They will be out in full force from 9:30 to 11:30 am Saturday morning for “FLOW,” a procession of giant puppets, street theater, music, poetry, dance and ceremony honoring the Rio Chiquito, once a tributary of the Santa Fe River (read more history here). The event starts at the northwest corner of Paseo de Peralta and East Alameda and follows the Rio Chiquito (now Water Street) to its confluence with the Santa Fe River near the Guadalupe Church. Saturday’s festivities follow three art-making and educational workshops that were part of a project by activist Jo Christian and artist/activist Bobbe Besold that received city funding through the Arts and Culture Department’s Art is the Solution: Water & Displacement mini-grant program. The processional will stop several times along the way and feature dance performances, speeches and readings, Christian tells SFR, making it less a processional and more of a “traveling performance art and experience.” Attendees are encouraged to dress in blue, green and white “watery” colors and to carry water that can be released at the end of the processional into the spot where the water for the Rio Chiquito once flowed. The event provides “the opportunity to honor and celebrate and know the history of our waters and to look at where we are now, in our relationship with water,” Christian says, “and consider the choices that we’re making and the paths that forging and how that will impact generations in the future…It’s a look back and a look forward and a present day celebration of water because water is life.”

Sweeping the clouds away

The National Weather Service forecasts a partly sunny day, with a high temperature near 78 degrees and northeast wind 5 to 15 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. Over the weekend, expect much of the same, with highs reaching 79 both Saturday and Sunday, though winds will gust to up to 30 mph on Sunday afternoon.

Thanks for reading! The Word highly recommends starting the day with this too-brief video of King Penguins emerging from the sea.