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.
New Mexico collected $115.4 million in child support payments, a record, for the fiscal year that just ended June 30, including $8.2 million from unemployment checks, the Santa Fe New Mexican is reporting.
A majority of the $115.4 million, about 60 percent, was gotten through withheld wages, according to the paper.
The striking figure here is the amount of money the state took in from unemployment checks. The state’s net of $8.2 million from unemployment checks easily bested collections through that method in the previous fiscal year — $3.8 million — and $1.2 million in the fiscal year before that, the paper quoted a spokeswoman for the state’s Human Services Department as saying.
A department official told the paper that taking a portion of an individual’s unemployment check to pay for child support might appear uncaring, but custodial parents often rely on the monthly allotments to survive financially.
“While it may seem insensitive to collect from unemployment benefits knowing that the non-custodial parent is unemployed, it is even more difficult to know that these collections often don’t cover the full amount of the monthly support obligation,” Stephen Klump, acting division director said in a statement. “That, often times, causes the non-custodial parents to fall behind in their payments and leaves custodial parents short of their monthly support obligation.”
