Who's funding Albuquerque businessman Jeff Apodaca's new PAC, whose mission is to support pro-business moderate candidates for the New Mexico legislature?
It has been a year since City Manager Angela Gonzales took the reins and just as it was a mystery why she was hired over other applicants it is a mystery what the city commission thinks of her performance.
In a head-spinning cover story about Donald Trump's dreams of an imperial presidency, Time magazine reports that the biggest mistake Trump says he made in his first term was to be too nice. Mass immigrant deportations and judicial retribution for political opponents and others who he believes have wronged him are at the top of his to-do list, should he win a second term.
Rubber-stamping is expensive. The Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan is soon to be adopted by the city commission using its same low-information process. Is it any wonder we have infrastructure that is 60 and more years old and emergency repairs that cost twice as much as planned projects?
Recent studies finding "forever" chemicals and plutonium in New Mexico's rivers and groundwaters indicate that our water pollution problem has reached crisis proportions.
Why did Las Cruces Democrat Nathan Small receive a windfall of political donations last year, and what other patterns can be discerned from the recently disclosed campaign contributions made to New Mexico legislators in the final quarter of 2023?
We don't know how the first $790,000 tranche was used and now the second tranche is to be issued. There was talk that the G. O. bond money would only be used to "leverage" or match grant/loan requirements. No reports, no follow-up.
In 447 BC, when the Parthenon was built, they knew the value of fiduciary transparency in government. Athena's dress was made of gold, in sections, so they could be regularly weighed and recorded, since it was part of the city's treasury that was kept in the public's eye.
The federal government now has new tools to protect public lands and cultural treasurers from depredation. The New Mexico Legislature will again consider unpassed crime bills at a special legislative session to be held in July.
Good news and bad news for New Mexico's precious water sources.
The great artist Diego Velazquez painted royalty as they were, often blank-eyed and taken up with amusing themselves with court jesters instead of serious matters of state. There are Velazquez-like parallels with the supposedly democratic T or C city commission.
Another four years of 'on-call' contracts that short-circuit city commission and public oversight of capital projects. Department heads have carte blanche to hire architects and engineers behind closed doors.
