I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Interim state Insurance Superintendent Craig Dunbar will be asked to step down Thursday, following inquiries by The Independent regarding Dunbar’s residential history, PRC Chairman David King confirmed Wednesday.
State law requires insurance superintendents to have been New Mexico residents for three years.
Dunbar went to high school in Albuquerque, college in Portales, and worked throughout the 1970s and 1980s at title insurance companies here in New Mexico. He moved back to the state from Kelly, Texas in 2009, and has a New Mexico driver’s license and voter registration.
Although the law does not explicitly require superintendents to have lived in the state for three consecutive years immediately prior to appointment to the position, commissioners were concerned Dunbar’s appointment wouldn’t survive a court challenge.
“With the (threatened) Blue Cross lawsuit, we just didn’t want to risk it,” King said.
Dunbar will be made a deputy insurance superintendent, a position carrying no statutory residence requirements, King said.
Dunbar will likely be replaced as interim insurance superintendent by outgoing PRC chief of staff Johnny Montoya, King said.
Montoya will be the third acting insurance superintendent appointed since Morris “Mo” Chavez resigned May 4 in the face of public outrage over a controversial weekend Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Mexico rate hike settlement agreement.
Deputy Superintendent Tom Rushton took the helm as interim superintendent until he resigned May 14, after being ordered to vacate Chavez’s approval of the Blue Cross rate hike, which Rushton had helped negotiate.
Craig Dunbar, previously King’s executive secretary, was appointed May 20 to replace Rushton.
The Insurance Division has approved Blue Cross rate hikes every year since 2004, without requiring supporting documentation for the insurer’s claimed losses and expenses, The Independent found.
