By PATRICK LOHMANN
Source New Mexico
The number of people living on the streets of New Mexico increased to the highest level since at least 2009, according to a new “point-in-time” survey released July 30 by the New Mexico Coalition to End Homelessness.
The survey sends volunteers out on a single night in January once a year to speak to people on the streets and collects data about people living in shelters across the state. The survey has many limitations but still likely represents a significant undercount of the total number of homeless people in the state, according to the report’s authors.
In Albuquerque on Jan. 29 of this year, 1,231 people were counted experiencing unsheltered homelessness. That’s a 14.5 percent increase over last year, when 977 people were counted.
In the rest of the state, 1,011 people were estimated to be living on the streets that same night. That’s a 62 percent increase from the 623 people counted during last year’s survey, according to the report.
There are a lot of moving parts to the “point-in-time” count, according to the authors, and the survey results vary based on how many people are willing to sit for a survey, how many volunteers the coalition could recruit and how responsive shelters are to survey requests. This year, for example, nearly half of 2,079 people contacted by the coalition refused surveys.
One factor that affected the Albuquerque count, according to the report, was the increasingly common sweeps of established homeless encampments.
“The city’s aggressive decommissioning policy leading up into the night of the count still caused surveyors to arrive in surveying zones, previously identified as having been heavily populated with unsheltered individuals, with no one to survey,” the authors wrote.
They noted, however, that surveyors reported that the number of police-led clearings of encampments did appear to be an improvement over last year, when more camps were cleared around the time of the count.
The surveyors asked respondents what types of property they lost after sweeps by police, and how often they occurred. Of 786 respondents, 497 said their encampment had been swept five or more times. A significant number responded “every day” or something similar to that, according to the survey.
Nearly 90 percent of respondents said they’d lost identification or a driver’s license in the sweeps. More than three-quarters lost a phone or tablet. More than 70 percent said they lost a personal or sentimental item. More than half said they lost prescription medications, according to the report.
Other methods for counting the number of homeless estimate that as many as 20,000 people are unhoused in New Mexico over the course of the year, a figure that appears to be increasing.
The survey cited a recent ProPublica article interviewing people about what they lost in sweeps. They said the ongoing clearings just make it harder for those experiencing homelessness to improve their situations.
“No one’s ability to exit homelessness is improved by repeatedly having their belongings stolen or thrown away,” the authors write. “The only lasting impact of such initiatives is to prolong episodes of homelessness and inflict additional suffering on an already extremely vulnerable population.”

By PATRICK LOHMANN
Source New Mexico
New Mexico’s respite from wildfires will likely continue through August, according to a new forecast, but experts warn the already long fire season here could stretch into September and October. 
The National Interagency Fire Center publishes monthly fire risk outlooks across the country. Early monsoon rains in early July blunted what forecasters had predicted would be elevated wildfire risk across the state, particularly in the central mountain chain and in southern New Mexico. 
But the new forecast released Aug. 1 shows that average temperatures and substantial precipitation mean New Mexico won’t have high fire risk for August, either. But that doesn’t mean New Mexico is out of the woods. 
“An uptick in large fire activity very well could re-emerge by late August or early September, then linger much longer than usual,” forecasters wrote in their predictions for the Southwest.
Fire season in the Southwest typically lasts until monsoon season. The forecasts this year have said hot, dry conditions might persist well into October, bucking that typical trend. 
At the moment in New Mexico, there are two active fires, according to the Southwest Coordination Center, including the Tanques Fire, which has burned about 6,500 acres. In the Gila National Forest, the Ridge Fire has burned about 4,200 acres. 
The forecast is released as major wildfires burn elsewhere in the West. There are 94 large, uncontained wildfires across the country, according to the NIFC.
Four fires that began last month in Oregon and California each have burned more than 100,000 acres, including the Park Fire in Northern California that has reached nearly 400,000 acres. That’s already bigger than New Mexico’s biggest-ever wildfire, which burned about 340,000 acres, and it’s just 24 percent contained, according to the NIFC. 

So far in New Mexico this year, 580 wildfires have been detected that burned more than 84,000 acres.

By LEAH ROMERO
Source New Mexico
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed House Bill 1 Tuesday, which will provide $100 million in monetary relief for the Ruidoso areas devastated by fires and floods in June.
The bill was the only legislation to come out of the five hour special session that Lujan Grisham convened on July 18. Lawmakers rejected all public safety proposals but used the time to get money for South Fork and Salt fire destruction, and the damage from subsequent floods.
Lujan Grisham took nearly two weeks to sign the piece of legislation, known as the Feed Bill, because it also covers costs for operations at the Roundhouse. When questioned about the delay during a public safety town hall in Las Cruces last week, the governor said she did not want to “punish” victims of the natural disasters.
“The Legislature’s failure to prioritize public safety for New Mexicans during the special session is deeply disappointing,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement announcing the bill signing. “However, I am relieved that we managed to secure aid for critical recovery efforts in communities damaged by fire and flooding.” 
The $100 million will go to multiple entities including $30 million split $10 million each to the Mescalero Apache Tribe, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department and the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Local governments will also be eligible for loan payments from the remaining $70 million approved with the legislation.
The $70 million will go toward zero-interest loans for political subdivisions of the state, which could mean local governments like Ruidoso and its surrounding villages. That money is only available for those that qualify during the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, according to the text signed by the governor.
Political subdivisions must also qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency relief before getting any state loans. The goal here for lawmakers and the governor was to get money to local governments for repair faster than FEMA. It is modeled in part by a loan program for the 2022 Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.
House Bill 1 also appropriated $3 million to fund assisted outpatient treatment programs and competency diversion pilot programs in the state during the current fiscal year.
Lawmakers said this was a concession for a bill the governor wanted out of the special session that would have further expanded assisted outpatient treatment options statewide.

By LEAH ROMERO
Source New Mexico
LAS CRUCES — Hundreds of southern New Mexicans packed into the Las Cruces Convention Center on Thursday evening for more than five hours of public discussion on public safety. 
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham held the first in a series of town halls to hear from community members who live in the southern part of the state. She heard stories about inadequate police responses, theft at local businesses and poor or absent infrastructure services in Doña Ana County colonias.
“We need a place for kids to have fun, not to go kill themselves,” America Terrazas told the governor.
Terrazas explained that she lives in a Doña Ana County colonia where there is a need for streetlights, paved roads and other infrastructure to improve safety for residents and access to emergency services. She pointed to instances of children finding hypodermic needles and drug paraphernalia in public areas in her community. 
The governor quickly started committing her office and other state agencies to look into specific situations that attendees like the one Terrazas shared. She also offered more support for issues that prompted the town hall tour, like people arrested for crimes and reoffending, services for unhoused people and those with behavioral health issues.
So far, Las Cruces is the only stop in southern New Mexico for such discussions by the Lujan Grisham administration.
The convention center ballroom where the event started at 5:30 p.m. quickly filled up with advocates, the governor’s staff and the public. Event staff had to open room dividers and pull out more chairs. The standing room only event went late into the evening.
Lujan Grisham was joined by Third Judicial District Attorney Gerald Beyers, Las Cruces Police Chief Jeremy Story, Doña Ana County Health and Human Services Director Jamie Michael and New Mexico Department of Health Secretary Patrick Allen.
Lujan Grisham noted that infrastructure issues Terrazas brought up are in the works for downtown Albuquerque and committed executive funding to Doña Ana County colonias and rural communities throughout the state for similar projects.
Edward Howell said he believes many of the public safety issues southern New Mexico faces start with bills being drafted with Santa Fe and Albuquerque in mind. Legislation then does not translate to every other community. 
Several people brought up frequent experiences with retail crime and property damage to businesses. 
Patricia Jimenez, the owner of the Little Shop, said she was pushed out of Las Cruces to La Mesa because of repeated physical threats and property damage.
Las Cruces Police Chief Story pointed to Operation Not in Vain, which will begin in August and last through the end of the year. The effort was organized in honor of officer Jonah Hernandez with the Las Cruces Police Department, who was killed while on duty last year. 
He explained the operation will target a wide range of crimes, but will include a team working on retail theft. 
Lujan Grisham added that there is still a need for more officers across the state, including in Las Cruces, which will expand the capacity for the department to respond to calls. 
Several people questioned the humanity of the governor’s proposed legislation addressing competency and assisted outpatient treatment. She stood behind the proposals, emphasizing the need for connecting people with mental illness with treatment and removing dangerous criminals from communities. 
A couple of community members realized that their stances on these topics were actually in line with the governor’s proposals.
Around 50 attendees stayed at the convention center for over five hours waiting for their turn to talk, and Lujan Grisham committed to staying as long as she needed to to hear everyone out. The town hall ended after 10 p.m.
Thursday was just the first in a series of three town halls planned so far. A panel will be in Albuquerque on Monday, July 29, and in Española on Tuesday, July 30.

By AUSTIN FISHER
Source New Mexico
President Joe Biden handily won New Mexico’s primary election earlier this year, and most of the state’s delegates who were pledged to him are starting to coalesce around Vice President Kamala Harris to take the top of the ticket.
New Mexico’s presidential delegates will represent the state at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month. They will elect the next Democratic nominee for U.S. president and vice president, and determine the national party’s platform when the DNC takes place Aug. 19-22.
New Mexico has 45 delegates and three alternates.
In the 24 hours following Biden’s announcement Sunday that he won’t seek reelection, high-ranking elected officials in the Democratic Party of New Mexico released statements backing his endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.
New Mexico’s 11 automatic delegates, according to party rules, include DNC members who live in the state, and any Democrats elected to be U.S. president, vice president, governor, members of Congress and other distinguished party leaders.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham joined every Democratic governor in the U.S. and endorsed Harris on Monday morning, calling her the “party’s most effective voice in the fight to restore reproductive health care rights.”
“A former prosecutor, Vice President Harris is best equipped to make the case against convicted felon Donald Trump,” Lujan Grisham said.
New Mexico’s entire congressional delegation endorsed Harris on Sunday afternoon.
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez said Harris “will bring renewed energy, unity and vibrancy to this race.”
“She will get the job done,” Fernandez said of Harris.
DPNM Chair Jessica Velasquez and Vice Chair Manny Crespin endorsed Harris on Sunday evening.
“From attorney general of California, U.S. senator, and vice president, Kamala Harris’ résumé speaks volumes to her qualifications,” they wrote in a news release. “New Mexico Democrats believe our Party’s best days are ahead of us and are thrilled to do our part to make Kamala Harris the first woman and Asian-American president of the United States.”
With Biden watching, Harris on Monday gave a speech from Wilmington, Del., to staff to kick off the run, setting the tone she will take on against Trump.
“They lead to inequality and economic injustice; we are not going back,” Harris said.
She also said she wants to pass gun safety measures like red-flag laws and mandatory background checks for new gun purchases. Reproductive health measures in her speech offered a stark contrast to Trump.
“The government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body,” Harris said.
“In the next 106 days we have work to do, we have doors to knock on, we have phone calls to make, and we have an election to win,” she said.

Running mate
not yet known
Twenty-three of New Mexico’s delegates were elected at three district-level party conventions in June.
John Dyrcz of Albuquerque is a delegate for Congressional District 1. He is supporting Harris. He said he doesn’t have a preference for a vice-presidential running mate but said, “we need somebody who can blunt the things that J.D. Vance might bring to the Republican ticket.”
He suggested someone from a Rust Belt or Appalachian state, like North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper or Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, for example.
Augustine Montoya, of Torrance County, is a delegate for the same congressional district. He is supporting Harris. He said he has no opinion on a vice-presidential nominee, but he trusts Harris to pick one.
Montoya said LGBTQ+ rights are essential to any platform, and he wants to bring that message to the DNC in Chicago and back to rural New Mexico.
CD3 delegate Isaac Dakota Casados of Santa Fe is also the New Mexico Democratic Party secretary. He endorsed Harris along with the party’s other executive officers.
New Mexico’s seven at-large delegates, along with the three alternates, are determined by the results of the statewide primary vote, and were elected by county-level delegates at the DPNM post-primary state convention in June.
At-large delegate Rayellen Smith of Albuquerque is also the state party’s treasurer, and she endorsed Harris along with the party’s other officers.
New Mexico’s four pledged party leaders and elected official delegates, according to party rules, include big city mayors and statewide elected officials, state legislative leaders, state lawmakers and other elected officials and party leaders at the state and local levels.
One of them is Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, a former state senator.
“I look forward to the opportunity to play a role in this historic and important process,” he said. “With so much on the line for our families, I’m grateful for the opportunity to help shape the direction of our country at this critical moment.”

Source New Mexico Editor Shaun Griswold contributed reporting to this story.

By AUSTIN FISHER,
PATRICK LOHMANN
and DANIELLE PROKOP
Source New Mexico
Closed-door disagreements about the special legislative session on crime spilled into public view Monday, with the governor and top legislative leaders hosting dueling press conferences blaming each other for an impasse just days before lawmakers are set to convene.
At a Roundhouse conference room, lawmakers accused the governor of presenting half-baked half-measures to the state’s long-standing problems at the intersection of mental health care, drugs and crime.
“We do not believe these concerns can be effectively remedied in a very condensed special legislative session,” said House Speaker Javier Martínez, a Democrat from Albuquerque.
Meanwhile, about 60 miles south of the Roundhouse, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham used a homeless encampment in Albuquerque as a backdrop for an impromptu news conference. She urged residents to call lawmakers and tell them to introduce her legislation at the special session.
“They were never serious about supporting any of these issues in the first place, and my message for them on behalf of the business owners and the people living here is: shame on you,” the governor said.
Martínez said legislative leaders are serious, but they have deep concerns about the proposals’ potential to harm people facing mental health crises.
“We are not afraid of hard work,” he said. “We’re also not afraid of standing up for what is right, right now, and potentially rushing these bills is not right for New Mexico.”
The governor’s agenda would make it easier for police to involuntarily commit people with psychiatric diagnoses or for courts to hold them in jail. It would also ban loitering on certain medians across the state and raise penalties for having a gun if someone has a prior felony conviction.
Standing near First Street and Arvada Avenue near Albuquerque’s downtown, the governor said leaders at the Legislature told her Friday they wouldn’t work on any bills and that their members hadn’t read her proposals. She said lawmakers also canceled a meeting with the governor at her residence. And lawmakers canceled hearings on proposed legislation at an interim committee meeting set for Monday morning.
“We ought to be coming together as a state,” Lujan Grisham said. “We can be compassionate. We can provide tough love. We can solve affordability issues, but we have to do that collectively as a state. We have to get off this merry-go-round.”
Amid the legislative gridlock, a spokesperson for the governor said Lujan Grisham is seeking a Republican sponsor for one bill cracking down on organized crime.
In a statement to Source New Mexico, spokesperson Jodi McGinnis Porter said the governor’s team had “conversations with Republican leaders about potentially strengthening the state’s RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] laws during the special session.”
Spokespersons for House and Senate Republicans did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday afternoon. New Mexico Republicans have also been critical of Lujan Grisham’s plans for the special session.

Gov would entertain ‘modest changes’
High-ranking lawmakers from both chambers said Monday they have not been able to reach a consensus on Lujan Grisham’s legislative agenda.
The New Mexico Constitution requires special sessions only address what the governor lays out in a proclamation. The proclamation isn’t set for release until Thursday morning before the session’s noon start, according to members of the Governor’s Office.
But there’s little control after the proclamation is issued. The rules committees in each chamber decide whether a bill is “germane,” and there’s no means to appeal those decisions.
Still, Lujan Grisham could veto any bill introduced and passed at the session that isn’t one she endorsed. McGinnis Porter said that the governor is “open to good ideas about how we can make New Mexico safer.”
She also said Lujan Grisham would be “willing to listen to lawmakers who may propose modest changes to bills she has already proposed.”
But lawmakers don’t like the bills the governor has already proposed, Martínez said at the news conference.
“Unfortunately, what several weeks of meetings and conversations have also shown us is that the proposed policies are not the kind of meaningful solutions we need right now,” Martínez said.
Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, a Democrat from Santa Fe, said special sessions “only work when the bills are cooked.”
“We’re not saying we disagree with making changes; we need more time,” Wirth said.
Wirth said there was initial support when Lujan Grisham first announced the session, but that soured.
The areas of law the governor wants to change are “extraordinarily complex,” said Wirth, who is an attorney in his private life.
Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart, a Democrat from Albuquerque, said special sessions are only effective when proposals are vetted in advance, so lawmakers can walk into the chambers with confidence that the laws they’re about to pass would be good for New Mexicans.
“It would be irresponsible of us, as legislators, to ignore this very real fact,” she said.
Critical voices still need to be consulted, Stewart said, pointing to last week’s letter to the governor by mental health care providers and advocates which asked her to call off the special session.
“We respect their expertise in these matters, and agree that more thoughtful and rigorous work needs to happen before we enact any new laws,” Stewart said.

‘Enough is enough’
The governor’s staff found two business owners nearby who spoke at the street corner news conference about their daily challenges and fears for their safety near the encampment.
Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller also spoke and said the stretch of Arvada Avenue where he stood had been swept twice a week for months, only to see criminal activity and the encampments return each time. He said he urgently needed the state’s help to end that cycle.
The governor said there simply isn’t enough time to wait.
“If these individuals will not seek care, and break laws and come right back to the streets, there is nothing we can do to interrupt this chaos,” Lujan Grisham said. “Shame on us if we’re not going to come together and find solutions to make our businesses safer and, more importantly, our families safer.”
Speaking in front of press and television cameras, a member of her staff read out the office phone numbers of House and Senate Democratic leadership, urging the public to call on them to move forward with her agenda.
“I apologize for the amount of time this has taken all of us to get right here on the ground and say ‘enough is enough,’” Lujan Grisham said.
The issues Lujan Grisham has raised are urgent and important, Martínez said. He said people in Ruidoso and in northern New Mexico, who are dealing with the aftermath of wildfires, have “other urgent and pressing needs as well.”
“Our caucuses are ready to step up and help,” Martínez said.
One piece of legislation that could be introduced at the session would provide aid to those affected by the South Fork and Salt fires, according to the Governor’s Office, potentially in the form of zero-interest loans to local governments who are dealing with the ongoing disaster.

Public meeting
canceled
The Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee was scheduled to meet with the governor’s staff on Monday morning, but the meeting was canceled because “we were at a place where we didn’t feel it would be a productive exchange,” said Chair Christine Chandler, a Democrat from Los Alamos.
“We’ve seen the draft bills, we’ve given feedback on the draft bills, and I think it’s fair to say there will not be consensus in the committee to move forward on the bills,” she said.
On July 11, Chandler told Source New Mexico that language in the bills around civil commitment and criminal competency was “not tight enough” to prevent being overly broad and punitive. 
“We’re talking about liberty interests, right? And that means they have to be very tightly drafted and clear,” she said. “Because we do not want any unintended consequences where people who should not be committed are being committed. That’s a big deal.”
Chandler is also concerned the median safety bill, which would make it a crime for pedestrians to loiter on medians fewer than 36 inches wide on fast-moving streets across the state, is too blunt a tool to reduce pedestrian deaths.
She said the Governor’s Office needs to present data showing that the bill would survive a First Amendment lawsuit by being narrowly-tailored enough to reduce deaths without unnecessarily limiting speech.
Her panel will reconvene on Tuesday and Wednesday to hear the rest of their pending agenda, she said at the news conference in Santa Fe. But there is one major change, according to the agenda: The Governor’s Office is no longer scheduled for a “potential follow-up” presentation Tuesday afternoon.
Committee Vice Chair Joseph Cervantes, a Democrat from Las Cruces, crashed another legislative meeting on Monday morning in Socorro on his way up to Santa Fe.
Chandler and Cervantes both chair the judiciary committees in their respective chambers, meaning any legislation amending criminal statutes would likely have to clear their committees to have any chance of becoming law.
Cervantes questioned whether the governor’s initiatives make sense at a statewide level. He also pointed to the governor’s median safety bill, widely seen as an effort to reduce panhandling, as an example of where a state law would make little sense in small towns such as Lordsburg.
“Is it a statewide problem, or a Bernalillo County problem?” Cervantes said.
Cervantes also noted that one of the governor’s requests is to increase prison time for people convicted of possessing a gun after having previously been convicted of a felony, saying that effort is ineffective in deterring crime.
“The people that’ll be advocating for that — increasing it again — will be the first ones to tell you it has not made one bit of difference,” he said.
The governor, at her news conference in Albuquerque, defended the panhandling bill as one way to make a dent in the state’s rate of pedestrian fatalities — the nation’s highest.
“This is a way to start to manage these high-traffic areas, keep more New Mexicans safe, keep the person on the median safe,” she told reporters. “If I wait for everything to be … perfect, we won’t do anything.”

Proposed solutions
Analysts wrote a simple solution would be for the PED to clarify how teachers should take attendance and set up a statewide student information system to regulate the collection of data, as directed by the Attendance for Success Act.
One suggestion was to make changes to the academic calendar on a school-to-school basis to address the needs of chronically absent students. Providing extra schooling to these students would allow them to gain back instructional time. Analysts looked at a study done in North Carolina which showed improvements in academic performance when students spent more time in instruction.
Another suggestion in the report was to extend the school day or even the school year. 
New Mexico lawmakers passed the K-12 Plus Program law in 2023, incentivizing school districts to extend the school year and changed the academic calendar to be based on instructional hours rather than days.
However, the New Mexico School Superintendents Association and officials from various districts and schools throughout the state filed a civil case asking the court for an injunction earlier this year to legally halt the bill from being enacted. The case is still being considered in court.