Net proceeds to the city were $26.1 million, with another $4.2 million in additional escrow funds for a total of $30.3 million, according to the city’s website.
The Telshor Fund was created by the city in 2004 to bank its share of the revenue from the 40-year lease on Memorial Medical Center to Lifepoint Health, a corporation with 62 hospitals in 16 states.
Net proceeds to the city were $26.1 million, with another $4.2 million in additional escrow funds for a total of $30.3 million, according to the city’s website. A recent town hall meeting in Las Cruces hosted by the Foundation for Open Government focused on the need for greater transparency at the Legislature during the budget-making process.
There is, perhaps, no process at the Legislature that is more secretive and less transparent than the special session about to begin on Thursday, July 18. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wants legislation passed dealing with panhandling, criminal defendants judged to be incompetent to stand trial and felons in possession of guns. For the past five decades or longer, the state Legislature has been planning for what we will do when the oil runs out. We’ve set up permanent funds to ensure we’ll be able to keep our schools open and provide other essential services, tucking away money that is needed now.
We haven’t planned nearly as well for the depletion of an even more precious resource - water. Expectations were sky high in 2005 when British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson inked a 20-year lease on a new spaceport that had yet to be built in Southern New Mexico.
The lease called for Virgin Galactic to pay $1 million a year for the first five years, with payments after that dependent on the company’s success in developing an industry for space tourism. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham flew to Washington D.C. last week so she could stand behind President Joe Biden as he announced a new crackdown on asylum seekers, just in time for the election.
“As a border state governor and former chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, I’m encouraged by President Biden’s plan to rein in illegal border crossers and help our nation’s immigration officers manage this challenge,” she said in a prepared statement. Let’s start with this, the city budget will never be large enough to address all of its needs. And so, it’s not surprising that public support for a proposed increase in the Gross Receipts Tax goes up when people learn how the money could be used.
A recent survey conducted by the city found that 63 percent of residents support an increase in the GRT. If the issue goes to a vote, which appears likely, I’ll be stunned if the actual support is anywhere near that high. The U.S. Supreme Court has just stripped away the final protections against gerrymandering.
With a series of rulings in the 1960s, the court established that the 14th Amendment required political districts to be redrawn so that, “the vote of any citizen is approximately equal in weight to that of any other citizen in the state.” The problem with presidential debates is they don’t have a scoreboard.
We treat them as if they were a football game, with clear winners and losers. President Joe Biden sent out a taunting video last week in which he claimed, “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020.” State Sen. Siah Correa Hemphill, D-Silver City, missed almost as many votes as she cast this past session.
Of the 86 recorded votes on the Senate floor, Hemphill only cast an up or down ballot on 49 of them. She was marked “Excused” on 29 votes and “Absent” on eight votes. And now she has announced that she will not seek re-election in November. While mental illness isn’t a crime, it’s also not a permission slip to excuse crimes.
Yet that’s what happens in New Mexico once a defendant has been found by the court to be mentally incompetent to stand trial. It’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for future crimes. That freedom from accountability has allowed a small number of offenders to act with increasing brazenness against both property owners and police. |
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