Mary Ellen Pellington, the affable and studious Octavia Fellin Public Library director is set to retire in the coming weeks.

Pellington, who hails from New Jersey, but whose career adventures readily dot a U.S. map, sat down with the Gallup Sun to reminisce on her library career in Gallup. She arrived in 2009, to the water-scarce region after spending decades near sandy beaches and flowing waterways – even living in Florida for two decades.

“I lived all over,” she said, adding that she earned her Master’s degree in 1973, before “Post-It Notes” were invented and during the dawn of liquid white-out.

Pellington explained that when she arrived in Gallup, she had the goal...

SANTA FE – Attorney General Hector Balderas announced that he has filed a lawsuit against Presbyterian Health Plan, Presbyterian Network, and Presbyterian Insurance Co. July 11, for fraud based on the systematic, deliberate underpayment of taxes on premiums received or written.

The Office of the Attorney General’s complaint alleges that between 2001 and 2015, Presbyterian routinely filed false claims for premium tax deductions and credits, thereby defrauding the people of New Mexico and evading its legal duty to pay these taxes.

The Presbyterian lawsuit is the first action brought by the Attorney General as part of his independent civil and criminal review, which is ongoing, and...

There is a list in which New Mexico doesn’t rank near the bottom: How much energy costs residents in the state.

The website WalletHub ranked New Mexico as the eighth-cheapest place in the United States for energy. The website ranked the average monthly energy bills in each state and Washington D.C. New Mexico’s total average monthly energy bills came out to $256, sandwiched between Nebraska and California.

New Mexico’s electricity rank is cheapest in the country, at just $90 per month. New Mexico is also one of 21 states with no average monthly home heating oil costs. The states with heating-oil costs are largely in the northeastern part of the country.

New Mexico is one of the...

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  U.S. Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich introduced bipartisan legislation to improve patient access to podiatrists in Medicaid and improve care for patients with diabetes who need therapeutic shoes via Medicare.

The Helping Ensure Life- and Limb-Saving Access to Podiatric Physicians Act would recognize podiatrists as physicians under Medicaid as they are defined under Medicare. The bill would bring Medicaid in line with Medicare and a majority of U.S. health-care delivery systems, and ensure that Medicaid patients have access to a range of options presented by the physicians who are best trained for the foot and ankle care they seek.

In New Mexico, more than...