Truth or Consequences City Commissioner Merry Jo Fahl sponsored a broad and vague resolution supporting the “collaboration” of the city’s police department with other local and state and federal law enforcement.
A crowd of constituents attending the Dec. 17 meeting said the resolution could “open the door to ICE,” the acronym for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
Fahl did not seek reelection and this was to be her last meeting, but her husband’s recent surgery had her by his bedside and she was unable to attend to explain why she floated the resolution during such perilous times in which people of color are being “disappeared.”
Alice Hutchins, who put the word out about the resolution, exchanged text messages with Fahl in which Fahl seemed unaware her resolution would kick over a hornet’s nest.
Such tone-deafness to the national and local zeitgeist is hard to fathom. For the year Trump has been in office, the media has been rife with images showing masked ICE agents brutally tackling and cuffing people of color with no due process. The massive “No Kings” rallies, the last one attended by an estimated 7 million, with about 100 or more locals demonstrating at “Peace Park,” were incited mostly by ICE action.
According to a Gallup poll, 55 percent of the U.S. populace wanted stronger immigration control when Trump took office, but now only 30 percent do–a 25 percent drop. The Gallup poll showed a “record-high 79 percent now consider immigration good for the country.”
The city chambers were packed at the Dec. 17 city commission meeting, unequaled over my seven consecutive years of attendance, although two meetings on putting a vehicular bridge across the Rio Grande in order to get water and sewer to a proposed housing development brought out a similarly sized crowd to stop it.
About 20 people spoke–all of them vehemently against the resolution–criticizing the vagueness of the resolution’s language that could invite ICE and compel the city’s police force to help them.
Once-Mayor and City Commissioner Steve Green, who served for 12 years, asked the city commission to consider, “What’s your legacy going to be? If you can’t vote no, then postpone it and hold a town hall,” which Green predicted would rouse even greater attendance in opposition to the resolution.
City Chief of Police Luis Tavizon said Fahl discussed the resolution with him and “she wanted her legacy to be that she supports law enforcement,” her family containing several who serve or had served.
One comment bothered me, by local business owner and Chamber of Commerce leader Gordon Edelheit. He misrepresented locals as being supportive of local law enforcement because they bought the PNC Bank for them as the new police building.
Yes, most of the people who spoke pointed out they supported local law enforcement and many of them revealed they and family members were or had been officers.
But the people put together a successful referendum petition and then voted down the purchase of a police building. Then, about four months later, the city commission announced after the fact that it had purchased the PNC Bank as the new police building. That too launched a successful referendum that was set to go to a vote, but the city commission withdrew the ordinance being put to a vote that set up the loan to buy the building using local tax money– the police department’s designated portion of city gross receipts taxes. The city commission used the public’s cash instead of financing it over time, sidestepping their vote and denigrating the difficult process of launching a referendum.
Referendums are grassroots legislative vetoes or approvals. Historically the city commissions have done everything they can to discourage the people using that power.
The city commission’s campaign, before they killed the referendum, equated purchasing the police a new building as equivalent to supporting them, and a “no” vote as not supporting the police. Lack of public transparency and due process and the larger need to spend money on emergency repairs to water infrastructure were disregarded by the city commission as contingency concerns they should have addressed. Edelheit took up their reductive sloganeering, making the same sweeping assumptions about what the people think and what’s good for them. That’s what kings do, not representatives of the people.
I too spoke, since I was concerned that even if the city commission voted “no,” that would raise the ire of the Trump administration, which has targeted “sanctuary” cities and states whose leaders have opposed his use of the National Guard and ICE agents by claiming states of emergency top-down. States and local governments are supposed to declare states of emergency grassroots-up and to ask for the National Guard’s help as a safeguard from junta takeover.
Trump has also withheld federal funding from local and state governments that have opposed him and favored those that support his use of autocratic executive power. New Mexico receives the most federal subsidies per capita in the Union. Funding for two of Truth or Consequences’ USDA water projects were delayed by unusual red-tape and then temporarily halted during the seven-week government shutdown. The funding has since been approved, but the delays could have been the prelude to a worse outcome.
I asked the city commission to somehow make the resolution “disappear,” instead of making their position on beckoning or rejecting ICE clear by approving or disapproving its passage. Maybe they could “table it forever,” I suggested.
Mayor Rolf Hechler said he didn’t want to leave the issue hanging by tabling it.
City Manager Gary Whitehead came up with the perfect solution. The city conducts its meetings, as most do, using Robert’s Rules of Order. If none of the city commissioners made a motion to take up a vote on the resolution, it would die.
And that’s what happened. Fahl’s unintended bang ended with a whimper.
Thanks for the update, Ms. Sloan. WHEW!
Just off the top of my head, isn’t ironic the correct term for when the state/county that receives amongst the most in taxpayer subsidies to be supportive of illegal aliens, approximately 20 million in number, who are also straining the taxpayer funded medical, education and social services. What do those actually paying for all the local developments and illegals have to say? On the other hand according to the national debt clock, our country simply can’t afford everything and those who vote for more spending will be roundly cursed by their grandchildren who are left holding the empty bag.
Only .4 percent, or less than one-half of a percent, of nationwide emergency medicaid costs were paid out to take care of illegal immigrants, according to an AI Google search. The Republicans are misinforming the people about the real source of high, high, medical costs to get you to look away from the insurance and managed healthcare and pharmacy companies.
I’m sure the other education and social services’ costs have similarly low percentages going to illegal aliens.
Our local ag economy depends on them. You want to ruin the county’s economy, start arresting illegal aliens working for farmers and ranchers.
It’s inequality under the law for Trump’s immigration policy to target urban people of color, but who is going to raise their hand and say…”hey, we have illegal immigrants working in Sierra County….come here and arrest them.” Are you raising that hand, since you appear to believe they are costing local taxpayers, not contributing to the local economy?
About 15 years ago, I remember when they arrested and deported tons of illegals around Arrey. The Arrey elementary school was emptied out. I don’t know what the effect was on the local economy or school…That was another reporter’s beat, not mine. I was told that it was short-lived and ICE has looked the other way ever since after they saw the economic devastation and took heat from the ranchers, who, ya know, rule around here.
Whew #2! Near miss.
Appreciate our wonderful citizens; appreciate your excellent reporting and comments to the city commission.
Thank you.
Thanks for fleshing out the resolution, and its dissolution, with some nuance. Thanks to Alice Hutchins, who got the word out, along with helpful pointers to keep on-message.