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...

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 is now law and will provide an estimated $3.725 billion to New Mexico for highway improvements, bridge replacement and repairs, expanding connections to high-speed internet, improvements in water and wastewater systems, building energy infrastructure, and more.

As of right now we don’t have enough skilled construction workers to build these projects.

New Mexico’s construction employment has decreased steadily over the last decade and is now about 11 percent below its peak in 2006. From February 2020 to October 2021, our state ranked 38th in the nation in terms of construction employment growth.

Construction firms are struggling to...