More than one year after three top state officials refused to answer questions in federal court about fraud allegations and nine months after a federal judge held their cabinet secretary in contempt of court, the state Human Services Department (HSD) appears to still be seriously mishandling how it processes federal benefits to New Mexico’s poor.

This includes an apparent department directive instructing caseworkers to limit interviews with those enrolled in and seeking federal benefits and lie to their superiors about it.

Now, the advocacy organization representing plaintiffs in a decades-long lawsuit against HSD is asking a judge to impose monetary sanctions on HSD and its...

Potholes, bad spots a thing of the past

 

Milling and inlaying are being done to a short stretch of U.S. Highway 491 as it goes out of Gallup and near the east and west exit points to Shiprock and Window Rock — and at a cost of $3.2 million, officials said.

The work is not connected to the bigger and more than $150 million four-laning project of U.S. 491 that goes from Shiprock to Gallup.

“This is maintenance with that the department planned,” Delane Baros, public information officer with the state Department of Transportation, said of the milling and inlaying work. “We are making a lot of progress with the project.”

Baros said the milling and inlaying work started on...

The Gallup City Council unanimously followed up on a joint resolution at its June 13 regular meeting that pertains to the fiscal 2018 distribution off liquor excise revenue. City Manager Maryann Ustick told council members that an estimated $1.6 million rests in a liquor excise tax fund, setting the stage for the for the council to go about the business of deciding how the funds would be allocated.

Ustick said some $800,000 is earmarked for the Gallup Detox Center. The city owns the Boyd Avenue building that houses the center and the company that administers services at Gallup Detox is called Na’Nihzhoozhi Center, Inc., commonly called NCI.

“It’s greatly appreciated,” Ustick...

Tourism, marketing main point of trip

Officials from the city of Gallup and the Gallup-McKinley County Chamber of Commerce travelled to Washington, D.C., earlier this month to attend the annual IPW — known within the tourism industry as the International Pow Wow.

The event, which was locally attended by Bill Lee, executive director at the chamber, and Jennifer Lazarz, Gallup tourism and marketing director, is billed as the largest tourism trade show in North America. It is the travel industry’s premier international marketplace and the largest generator of travel to the United States.

The trip went from June 4 through June 7 for Lee and Lazarz. The chamber has a long-standing...