Will work to complete Tommy Nelson’s projects

Genevieve Jackson is back on the McKinley County Board of Commissioners.

The retired educator and administrator who has spent most of her life in the county had already served as one of three commissioners for two terms before she stepped aside for two years, as is required by state statute.

Then, late last year, a vacancy for the seat was created by the death of Commissioner Tommy Nelson. So Jackson said “[I] threw my scarf into the ring” and applied to fill the opening. Then, New Mexico’s governor chose her.

Jackson, a retired educator and administrator both with the Navajo Nation and Gallup-McKinley County Schools District, could not answer the question of how she felt about the appointment without reflecting on the circumstances.

“I’m very sad that he passed and I’m looking into what projects, what priorities he may have made or was in the process of completing, so I’m going to try to assist in that manner,” she said.

To her constituents, she pledged to continue the work she had been doing on county roads, as well as alcohol and drug addiction, while not forgetting the new priority: COVID-19.

Within the last month, the county commissioners borrowed and budgeted money from McKinley’s general fund for two grants awarded from the state: McKinley County CARES Act Local Government Grant ($16.1 million) and McKinley County Small Business Grant ($2.4 million).

But there’s so much more county commissioners can do to address the pandemic, Jackson said. This includes providing educational outreach to residents “who are hesitant” to receive the vaccines available; providing more support to COVID-19 vaccination sites; and making sure teachers get vaccinated, like health care workers.

School districts throughout the state, including GMCS, return to some in-person learning on Feb. 9.

Aside from tackling the coronavirus, Jackson’s top priorities include improving roads, about three-quarters of which are in “very poor condition.”

“Roads lead to everything: health [care], education, employment,” she said. “If there is a lack of roads, it makes it extremely hard for us.”

Speaking of roads, Jackson added, “rural addressing” is another priority of hers.

“Because we don’t have roads named, we’re not on the map,” she said. “I myself live in a very rural area over a mile from my house to the highway. I have to deal with the mud and snow and all of those things. If we need emergency services or law enforcement, many times they can’t find us, so we need that addressed.”

Counties can’t name roads; only states can. However, Jackson hopes to use her clout as a commissioner to jumpstart talks on the subject between McKinley County, the Navajo Nation and New Mexico.

Other issues Jackson would like to see “come to fruition” over the next two years are related to alcohol abuse and drug addiction. The county sponsors or is involved in some way with numerous programs related to those issues, be it Battered Families Services or the Hotel Wellness Program.

Though she did not name specific programs, the new commissioner would like to either pull them together or combine funding in one way or another. Jackson called the current approach “hit and miss” because “everyone is doing their own thing with their own program.”

Whatever the case, “We have to address the mental, the emotional and the physical needs of our people,” she said.

Jackson was born in Arizona, but considers Tse Bonito, N.M., where she currently resides, her life-long home.

With her appointment now official, she joins two other county commissioners: Billy Moore (Dist. 1) and Robert Baca (Dist. 3).

Moore applauded Jackson’s ascent to the commission, noting what it was like for the last three months without Nelson.

“Two commissioners could get things done, but it’s a lot more difficult,” he said.

Jackson will bring experience from her previous years of service on the board, which will “be a big plus,” according to Moore.

“A lot of things change,” over the years, he noted. “So you have to get back up to speed and move on. The key is all of us working together for the citizens of McKinley County.”

By Kevin Opsahl
Sun Correspondent

Schools to reopen to 50 percent capacity in February

“Every school district in the state will be able to welcome all ages of students safely back to the classroom on Feb. 8,” New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in her 2021 State of the State address, Jan. 26.

She spoke on the issues of grief, funding, economic growth, solar energy, recreational cannabis, and public education.

Proclaiming that there is no substitute for in-person learning, she said, her administration has worked with teachers, school support staff, superintendents, charter leaders, the department of health, the medical advisory team, and National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers to enhance the safety of school buildings and expand surveillance testing.

“Our state has developed a solid and epidemiologically-sound plan for a safe expansion of in-person learning for all age groups supported by union leadership,” the governor said.

What that means for the Gallup-McKinley County Schools District is that 50 percent of the students will be eligible to return to the classroom.

Superintendent Mike Hyatt says some students are already in GMCS classrooms, but beginning Feb. 9, he expects more.

“We’re excited that parents and students have more options to attend school. Our schools are safe and ready for students to reenter,” he emphasized. “Our staff has done a good job at getting schools ready for kids.”

The current plan is for children to attend classes in-person Monday through Thursday and spend Friday mornings online.

The AFT and AFT New Mexico responded to the governor’s announcement by crediting science and the prioritization of educator and student health and safety.

“We are extremely pleased to see this plan’s embrace of continued COVID-safe practices, among them the strong efforts to safely accommodate high-risk educators, ventilation and classroom air filtration, on-going surveillance testing, sanitation protocols, adequate personal protective equipment, and transportation and isolation protocols. Coupled with local control, [there are now more] options for families to choose what is best for their student.”

OTHER EDUCATION-RELATED ISSUES

The governor announced plans to enact an equity-first budget for public education. This budget will ensure that money reaches students and schools in proportion to the socio-economic needs of families and the community. She said this work will create a path to a public education system that truly delivers for students now and a hundred years from now, no matter their zip code, their family’s circumstances, or the color of their skin.

“We will tackle reforms in and special education beginning with a new ombudsman office, focused squarely on the needs of differently-abled New Mexico students and their families,” she said.

Lujan Grisham said this year New Mexico will move forward with a constitutional amendment to invest a portion of the state’s wealth in early childhood education and wellbeing.

This will be the opportunity to make a generational investment in New Mexico’s children.

We will deploy funding to realize free higher education for all New Mexicans.

With seed money from the legislature in 2020, Lujan Grisham said it was possible to reach almost 5,000 students with the Opportunity Scholarship, fully covering their tuition costs and fees at two-year institutions.

She went on to call on the New Mexico Legislature to commit the full $22 million in funding she is requesting this year, which she believes will allow 30,000 more New Mexicans access to higher education in two-year institutions, without worrying about tuition and fees.

“New Mexico institutions of higher learning had the nation’s largest decrease in returning students last year,” she said. “New Mexico should once again lead the nation in college opportunity.”

“This funding is a vote of confidence in New Mexicans — a proclamation of faith in their potential. In colleges all across N. M., we must enact any and every strategy to improve educational outcomes for New Mexicans, particularly those that connect young learners and adults directly to the workforce.”

By Beth Blakeman
Associate Editor

Gallup senator cheers vaccination distribution

After publicly decrying Gov. Michelle Lynn Lujan Grisham for her coronavirus vaccine strategy, a local lawmaker now says the state is doing a much better job getting the shots to one of the cities hit hardest by the pandemic.

Sen. George K. Muñoz, D-Gallup, made the comments to the Gallup Sun earlier this week, saying the situation has “immensely improved.”

“Our death rate was actually triple what it was of everybody else,” Muñoz said. “They were giving out vaccines based on population, so it wasn’t quite fair. We were more vulnerable than other people. That’s why, I think, we needed to get it there.”

When he became aware of the discrepancy, Muñoz asked Grisham’s office for help. But he claims he got the runaround.

“Everyone said, ‘I’ll call you back.’ Nobody did,” Muñoz said. “At some point, you have to make sure they realize what you’re talking about, and that’s when the press release went out.”

His office sent out a statement to the media and he was interviewed by print and television outlets about his concerns.

But Muñoz told the Gallup Sun that he learned soon after that one of the reasons vaccine supply in his area was low, was because Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital lacked the ultra-low temperature storage needed to store the shots.

According to the FDA, the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine must be stored in a freezer between -80 degrees and -60 degrees Celsius. If the freezer is not available, the thermal dry ice containers the vaccines come in may be used as temporary storage.

“The freezers that they had weren’t going to the 80 below temperatures,” Muñoz said, referring to RMCH. “Once they admitted the freezers weren’t working, then that explains why we weren’t getting enough shots.”

Hospital spokeswoman Ina Burmeister disputed the claims.

“Before the vaccine, we didn’t have that [ultra-cold] refrigerator, but ordered it as soon as we knew that’s what was needed.”

RMCH ordered the freezer back in October, due to “high demand,” and it arrived at the hospital on Jan. 5, she said. Officials tested the freezer for seven days before storing the vaccines.

But that’s where Muñoz’s claim about the hospital not getting enough vaccines falls flat, Burmeister said.

“When we got the vaccine, we had initially ordered a large amount. However, we changed that to a smaller amount, because we were testing the freezer to make sure that the temperature would stay the same,” she said. “Our pharmacist did not want to waste any vaccine; he wanted to make sure the fridge was staying at the temperature it needed to stay at before we ordered a big dose.”

The pharmacist called the state and changed the vaccine order to a smaller amount — from 975 doses to 450, according to Burmeister.

“Which we used up within the timeframe you could use it, because these were doses that were thawed,” she said.

The Gallup Sun reached out to Muñoz and his office about the hospital’s response to his claims, but the senator did not immediately respond.

Based on what Muñoz observed in the community over the weekend, vaccine distribution and clinics have increased.

“This weekend, they had mass vaccinations all over Gallup and [McKinley] County and they began to roll them out,” he said.

Muñoz emphasized the disparity between the number of shots given to his community vs. the actual death rate.

“If we’re dying at a higher rate, and they’re saying, ‘oh, because they have more population, we’re giving them more doses — don’t you want to split some of that off and get your death rate lower?” the senator said. “I’m not a physician or anything, but it seems to me …. If you have the highest death rate in the state, that’s where you would target [the vaccines] and not say, ‘well, it’s population-based, so you’re not going to get as many.’”

In response to questions from the Gallup Sun, Matt Bieber, a spokesman for the New Mexico Department of Health, wrote in an email his agency is “working to onboard providers into the state’s vaccination distribution system as quickly as possible.”

“The goal remains the same: to distribute vaccines to those who are most exposed to COVID and most vulnerable to its effects,” Bieber wrote. “Doing so involves working closely with providers and weighing a range of factors.”

Those factors include population size in New Mexico’s cities and counties, provider capacity, ultra-low temperature storage capacity and the number of orders placed for vaccines.

Pressed specifically by the Gallup Sun on whether it was contradictory to have a strategy that targeted both population size and need, Bieber said no.

“We’re distributing vaccines to those who are at greatest risk of COVID-related disease and death – but of course, we have to ensure that we have providers capable of distributing those doses, cold storage facilities capable of storing them, etc.,” he wrote.

According to the NMDOH’s “vaccine dashboard,” which provides up-to-date statistics on the vaccines and the locations where people can get them, there are 530,124 people who have registered, 266,025 doses received and 225,496 doses given as of the evening of Jan. 27.

Local vaccine providers in Gallup/McKinley County include Walmart, RMCH, and the DOH Public Health Office. DOH also administers clinics in partnership with other organizations, Bieber said.

By Kevin Opsahl
Sun Correspondent

A series of economic recovery bills was passed in the Senate Finance Committee Feb. 4. The bills offer relief to working families and New Mexico’s hard-hit restaurant industry and represent part of the overall recovery package aimed at lifting the state out of the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate Bill 1 (Sponsored by Senators Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe,  Jacob Candelaria, D-Bernalillo, Siah Correa Hemphill, D-Silver City, and Rep. Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque) allows certain restaurants and bars to keep the state gross receipts taxes they collect for the period between March 1 through June 30. It also creates a new $600 income tax credit for individuals earning up to $31,200 who claim the working families tax credit. Since the bill was first introduced it has been amended to include heads of households, surviving spouses or married filing jointly with adjusted gross income of $39,000 or less.

“Our restaurants deserve a lot of credit for finding innovative ways to serve their customers during the pandemic. Many of them have been surviving on take-out and other limited services,”  bill sponsor Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth said. “The temporary GRT savings provision in this bill will provide our restaurants, food trucks, craft distilleries, small breweries and wineries an economic boost to get them to the other side of these unprecedented times.”

“Many New Mexico families continue struggling to make ends meet as we work together to end the COVID-19 pandemic,”  bill co-sponsor  Hemphill said. “Providing this relief to our hard-working families, many of whom have been on the front lines keeping their neighbors healthy and fed, is one way of acknowledging the efforts and sacrifices of our lower-wage earning workers. I am proud to co-sponsor this bill.”

Senate Bill 2 (Sponsored by Senators Liz Stefanics,D-Cerrillos, Jacob Candelaria, D-Bernalillo, Brenda G. McKenna, D-Corrales, and Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Santa Fe) waives the fees for all liquor licenses issued by the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division of the Regulation and Licensing Department for one year.

“Waiving the annual liquor license fees is a fair and simple action we can take to help our struggling food and beverage industry,” bill sponsor Stefanics said. “Many have been limited in offering the services the licenses provide, or in some cases they’ve been closed and unable to serve at all. Every bit of relief we can provide will help. I am grateful to see this bill get through committee and look forward to getting it passed and enacted into law.”

The above-referenced bills  go to the Senate Floor for debate next. Due to health and safety concerns, the State Capitol Building is closed to the general public. Session committee meetings and floor sessions can be viewed at nmlegis.gov (under “Webcast”). Committee Schedules and Floor Calendars are posted under the “What’s Happening” tab.