Majors sends letter to Senate Majority Leader

December 15, 2021
Hon. Peter Wirth 
Majority Leader
New Mexico Senate 490 Old Santa Fe Trail Santa Fe, NM 87501

Dear Senator Wirth,

Transparency is at the heart of everything we do at the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government (FOG). The New Mexico’s Legislature actions during this past special session show they do not share this value.

For months this summer the Legislature-mandated Redistricting Committee held public meetings and gathered public comment to create fair, equitable maps outlining congressional, state senate and state representative districts. It seems much of their work has been done in vain.

Surveys show that...

New Mexico Ethics Watch filed a lawsuit against the New Mexico Legislative Council Service – the legislative branch’s records custodian – and the New Mexico Legislature for withholding documents related to identifying the legislators responsible for specific appropriation requests in major appropriations bills from this year’s regular session.

To identify individual legislators and their requested appropriations, NMEW requested all memoranda and reports generated by the House Appropriation and Finance Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and their subcommittees concerning House Bill 2 – the general appropriation act funding the government – prior to the final vote on...

Last Friday’s top headline from another local paper declared “CEO: Rehoboth McKinley Improves to 3-star quality rating,” and went on to describe a surprising improvement in the CMS hospital star rating.

The fact is: RMCH still has a one-star CMS hospital rating, and that has not changed.  These ratings are determined once a year, and will not be announced until next spring. Mr. Smithburg [Don Smithburg RMCHCS interim-CEO] in reporting a “3 star rating” was likely referring to the HCAHPS score, a patient survey used at the time of hospital discharge, for which results are reported on a quarterly basis. Measures from this survey comprise one-fifth of the CMS score. It is...

New Mexico Voices for Children is calling on Congress to act on the Interior Department’s New “Report on the Federal Oil and Gas Leasing Program” which it says will help to protect public lands and state revenues.

The report recommends reforms to federal leasing and permitting practices for oil and natural gas extraction on public lands.

James Jimenez, the executive director of N.M. Voices for Children issued this statement in support of the reforms.

“For too long, the antiqued federal oil and gas leasing program has allowed oil and gas companies to litter our public lands with orphaned wells while working New Mexicans are forced to foot the bill to clean them up. The reforms...