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.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) took no action against former Farmington District manager Steve Henke after the U.S. Interior Department’s inspector general found Henke had sought and accepted unreported gifts and donations from oil companies…
Legislators have drafted a constitutional amendment and companion legislation that would abolish the controversial Public Regulation Commission (PRC), New Mexico’s most powerful regulatory agency. The move came as a surprise to commissioners.
Sharp divisions surfaced on renewable energy and insurance rate regulation between Public Regulation Commission (PRC) candidates at an industry-sponsored candidates’ forum Wednesday, with District 4 Republican candidate Gary Montoya defending the use of coal-burning power plants while his opponent, Democrat Theresa Becenti-Aguilar, advocated more use of solar power.
Blaming competing demands like college midterms and the Balloon Fiesta, UNM organizers acknowledged a smaller-than-expected turnout for Sunday’s 10/10/10 “Take the Next Step” climate policy summit.
Despite live reggae and jazz music, and vendors offering pastries and locally-grown organic…
Stephanie DuBois has worked as a dog trainer, bookkeeper and waitress, and managed the Deming Chamber of Commerce for three years. Outgoing Land Commissioner Pat Lyons is a former legislator who has overseen the state Land Office for the past eight years. The two are competing for a seat on New Mexico’s most powerful regulatory agency, the Public Regulation Commission. And each has a different vision on how the agency should be run.
Secretary of State Mary Herrera’s decision to add a space to November ballots for a write-in candidate for governor was legal, Assistant Attorney General Tania Maestas wrote Thursday in letters to Herrera and state Sen. Howie C. Morales, D-Silver City.…
Public Regulation Commission (PRC) Commissioner Sandy Jones’s quest to identify and fire the employee he believed leaked an audit report that was published Friday by The Independent is legally dubious, according to New Mexico…
The Public Regulation Commission (PRC)’s Tuesday meeting erupted into a heated debate overa national auditors’ report that was sharply critical of the agency’s Division of Insurance. Although the report was released after a public records request, the agency announced that a new, more restrictive PRC-wide policy about employee contact with news reporters is being drafted.
The Public Regulation Commission doesn’t want to have a public discussion of a critical audit of the state Division of Insurance, PRC Commissioner Jason Marks charged Tuesday.
“They’re trying to cover it all up and keep it from…
Secretary of State Mary Herrera has approved Bloomfield Republican and self-described tea party supporter Kenneth A. Gomez’s registration as a write-in candidate for governor in the November general elections, according to state Elections Manager Don Francisco Trujillo.…
Auditors for a national accrediting organization reviewing the New Mexico Division of Insurance this spring found an inexperienced, marginally trained staff often incapable of performing in-depth analysis of insurance filings, according to a June 24 draft report obtained by The Independent.
The auditors from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) also were sharply critical of how New Mexico regulators have overseen the insurance industry, the report shows.
The findings resulted from visits NAIC auditors paid to the New Mexico insurance division this spring as part of a regular every-five-year re-accreditation process for state insurance regulation agencies.
New Mexico’s insurance division won accreditation in August, but auditors placed the division on “probationary status” pending completion of a corrective action plan to address problems identified during their visits to Santa Fe, Superintendent of Insurance John Franchini acknowledged Thursday.
According to the report obtained by The Independent, auditors found:
The auditors also noted that the division’s financial analysts frequently resorted to surface-level reporting without analyzing underlying factors, when reviewing insurance filings. Their reports frequently identified what happened, but not why, the report states.
The division’s financial surveillance staff suffered significant turnover during the past two years, the NAIC auditors also noted.
The auditors recommended the division provide ongoing training to its financial analysts in, among other things, insurance operations, reinsurance, reserves and other areas to bulk up their expertise in reviewing insurance company filings.
Finding echoes earlier warning
The NAIC’s finding that Division reviews of documents submitted by insurance companies are insufficient appears consistent with similar assessments by an independent insurance rates expert hired by the state Attorney General’s office to review a controversial Blue Cross Blue Shield N.M. rate hike earlier this year.
The draft report did not focus just on insufficiencies, although that appears to have dominated the report. NAIC auditors noted areas of improvement at the division.
The division’s new chief examiner, hired in 2009, had provided “significant oversight,” auditors found. But financial examinations of insurance companies conducted by division contractors prior to the new chief examiner’s arrival frequently contained “no evidence of any involvement by division personnel on the examination.”
Commission might review report in secret
The Public Regulation Commission (PRC), which oversees the insurance division, had scheduled Franchini to present the corrective action plan to commissioners Tuesday. But that presentation was rescheduled for Thursday.
Division officials had learned Tuesday morning that The Independent had obtained a copy of the NAIC report.
At Thursday morning’s public Commission meeting, Franchini asked commissioners for a second delay, saying the corrective action plan would be ready next week. He also suggested the PRC allow him to present the NAIC auditors’ findings and the division’s response in a secret, closed-session meeting, alluding to sensitive personnel matters supposedly discussed in the reports.
But the June 24 version of the NAIC report obtained by The Independent doesn’t name any employees or even specify division staff positions, other than to compliment the division’s chief examiner for improving oversight issues.
“The law is clear,” N.M. Foundation for Open Government director Sarah Welsh told The Independent Thursday. “They can only go behind closed doors to discuss personnel actions, complaints or charges ‘against any individual public employee.’ That means actual people, with names. If they’re discussing some larger departmental issue and they realize they need to fire the department head, fine, they can go talk about that in closed session. But they should specify which limited personnel matter they’re talking about, whether it’s hiring, demotion, dismissal or the investigation of specific charges against a specific person.”
Commissioners Sandy Jones, David King and Jerome Block, Jr., voiced support for a closed-door discussion of the report.
Commissioners Jason Marks and Theresa Becenti-Aguilar both questioned the need for secrecy. But they appeared outnumbered.
“It’s already been on the agenda (for Tuesday), and has to be discussed publicly,” Becenti-Aguilar said. “This is our new way of open communication and transparency.”
Becenti-Aguilar and PRC Chief of Staff Michael Rivera both took Franchini to task for failing to communicate with commissioners and for delays in the division’s preparation of the corrective action plan, which was originally due this week.
“When we have a deadline from an oversight agency like this, we need to make much effort to meet those deadlines,” said Rivera. “It has been about three weeks since we received notification (from NAIC) and we’ve asked (the NAIC) for an additional week to respond. Mr. Franchini has assured me we will get this done. Part of the reason for the delay was I found out the commissioners were unaware of the situation.”
‘No attempt to hide anything’
Franchini said he had not intentionally kept the audit findings from commissioners.
“There was never an attempt to hide anything – that wasn’t my intent,” Franchini told commissioners. “I’m new at this stuff, just getting my feet wet. But we almost have that plan complete. We’d like to present that to you at a closed hearing. We can do that early next week.”
Commissioners expressed concern to The Independent in July regarding Franchini’s ability to lead the Division. But only Marks voted against Franchini’s appointment.
Jones suggested staffers should have stayed in Santa Fe to continue preparing the corrective action plan rather than take an August trip to the NAIC annual meeting in Seattle, Washington.
“Maybe they shouldn’t have gone to Seattle,” Jones said.
But the purpose of the Seattle trip was for division employees to seek re-accreditation before the NAIC Financial Regulation Standards and Accreditation Committee, staff have said.
Jones acknowledged that he had had the opportunity to read the NAIC report, but had not done so.
“I was offered a copy and said I didn’t want it,” Jones said. He did not elaborate.
The Independent filed a public records request Aug. 17 to inspect all division correspondence with the NAIC. However, the Division has not yet disclosed the final NAIC report and probationary status notice letter, or other related documents.
Asked if the Division’s probationary status was unusual, Franchini could name no other states currently on probation with the NAIC. But two other states, Nevada and New York, had been through the probationary process in recent years, Franchini said.
In the New York case, the problems had to do with insurance regulators’ statutory power, rather than under-staffing or lax oversight, Franchini acknowledged.
NAIC officials could not be reached for comment Thursday.
New Mexico Independent’s previous reporting on this issue:
‘Typo’ was cited as support for Blue Cross N.M. rate hike
Insurance Division approved Blue Cross rate hike without documentation of claimed losses: Regulators are ‘insufficiently skeptical’
‘Musical chairs’ at state Insurance Division: Blue Cross rate hike fight claims three superintendents in two months
Fired Insurance Division compliance director’s lawsuit alleges illegal, improper conduct at PRC
Fireworks over Blue Cross Blue Shield NM rate hike settlement
Starting in October, up to 11,000 impoverished refugees admitted to the U.S. because of persecution in their home countries will lose access to federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments, according to a report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
More than 5,000 refugees will be removed from the SSI rolls Oct. 1, as a temporary SSI eligibility extension for refugees passed by Congress in 2008 begins to run out, according to the report. More …
Former Republican state legislator Ben Hall and former Democratic Doña Ana County commissioner Bill McCamley both want to clean up the powerful and scandal-plagued state Public Regulation Commission. The men, who are fighting over outgoing Commissioner Sandy Jones’s District 5 seat, both told The Independent they want to see increased PRC scrutiny of utility and insurance companies’ rate hikes, and increased accountability at the PRC’s semi-autonomous Division of Insurance. But the candidates differed on how they would achieve those goals.
A New Mexico oil refinery has been fined $707,000 after state investigators found the company knowingly failed to correct safety problems before a deadly March 2 storage tank explosion and fire at the company’s plant in Artesia, N.M.
Just a week after a deadly pipeline blast in California, officials from Mountainair were disappointed to find PRC commissioners reluctant to approve what they had expected to be a routine regulatory waiver.
“There’s this pattern of companies doing something but not doing enough, not taking things seriously enough,” Commissioner Marks said. “It’s not that they don’t care. The problem is that the responses aren’t sufficiently large, given the scale of the dangers.”
Despite having one of the worst childhood poverty rates in the U.S., only 81.1 percent of New Mexico children who qualify for the Medicaid State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) were enrolled in the program in 2009, according to a new report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
That’s below the national average of 81.9 percent enrollment—but most of New Mexico’s neighboring states have lower rates. Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Texas had all enrolled fewer than 79.2 percent of eligible children in SCHIP, according to the 2009 data. Oklahoma enrolled 81.4 percent of eligible children, roughly matching New Mexico’s enrollment.
SCHIP was established by Congress in 1997 to provide health insurance to children in families at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. More …
Between 50 and 150 New Mexicans’ deaths each year in San Juan County are caused by air pollution from coal-fired power plant emissions, according to estimates in a study released Thursday by the Clean Air Task Force…
In the midst of a fight with New Mexico regulators over a proposed 20 percent electricity rate hike, PNM Resources is also seeking a 10.9 percent rate increase on its customers in Texas.
The company is asking the…
U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján spotlighted post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a public forum in Rio Rancho Wednesday, and he is scheduled to meet Thursday with owners of the “Horses for Heroes” PTSD therapy program just north of Santa…
Funding for Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories helped New Mexico bring in more federal dollars per person than all but four other states, federal databases show for fiscal year 2009. Only Alaska, Hawaii, Maryland and Virgina received more money…
