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.
Responding to public pressure and the competitive rates featured by competitors, Bank of America is reconsidering its debit card fees, as rival Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase scrapped their versions of the highly unpopular new charge. More …
News the New Mexico Tourism Department laid off seven New Mexico Magazine employees Tuesday highlights the state as one of the many in the nation with a relatively fertile employment picture despite a decline in government jobs. More …
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its August jobs report Friday morning, finding that a small increase in private-sector employment of 17,000 jobs was exactly offset by a loss of 17,000 public-sector jobs. Unemployment remains unchanged at 9.1 percent. More …
The Food Research and Action Center released a report (pdf) Thursday on rates of food hardship over the year 2010, finding that 28.3 percent of New Mexico families with children had trouble getting food on the table in the past year.
New Mexico is one of four states, and the District of Columbia, that cut Temporary Assistance for Needy Family (TANF) block grant money, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The cuts “will carry a heavy human cost,” the policy organization reports. More …
Governor-elect Susana Martinez is altering how she talks about education and Medicaid, two programs she has repeatedly said would be protected from cuts, Heath Haussamen at NMPolitics.net reports.
Four local residents who contributed big to Martinez’s gubernatorial campaign were named to committees charged with identifying cabinet secretary candidates, according to the Farmington Daily-Times.
Also Martinez will make the final decision on whether the state of New Mexico proceeds with a land sale for a new “supercomplex” government office building south of Santa Fe, the New Mexican reports.
Alcohol is banned from the newly refurbished Pit and University of New Mexico’s stadium it appears, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Between Aug. 1 and Nov. 1, a high-risk pool set up under the nation’s new federal health care law for hard-to-insure individuals has added 133 New Mexicans to its rolls, state officials said Monday.
That’s a better rate than neighboring states like Texas and Arizona, a government fact sheet shows.
The numbers of residents enrolled in the newly created federal high-risk pool in New Mexico comes at a time when some are questioning how well the programs are working across the nation as a stopgap measure to help hard-to-insure individuals. More …
Republican congressional leaders made noise Wednesday about targeting the nation’s new federal health care law after winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives and adding a few more Republicans to the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, the Washington Post reports.
It’s no secret that the GOP made repealing the law one of the battle cries of the 2010 midterm congressional elections, a position that helped fueled what the Post called the largest Republican sweep in nearly half a century.
But the GOP has few easy paths to repealing the health care law, the Associated Press writes in an analysis published earlier this morning. More …
We thought it was just New Mexico. But it’s also Illinois, California, Nevada.
New Mexico’s next governor faces several challenges once she takes office, but none is bigger than the state budget. But with one day to go in a negative gubernatorial election neither Republican Susana Martinez nor Democrat Diane Denish has presented exactly what can be called a comprehensive, detailed plan to address the challenge. Instead they’ve made vague promises: no raising taxes during the first year, no cuts to K-12 education or Medicaid, programs that represent more than half the state budget.
Turns out, New Mexico isn’t unique. Candidates running for governor in several states, including those mentioned above, are adopting similar strategies, according to the Associated Press. More …
A prominent Republican on Friday accused Democrat Diane Denish of misquoting facts to score political points.
Hal Stratton‘s denunciation of Denish came a day after the Democratic nominee for governor accused her Republican opponent, Susana Martinez, of being too cozy with out-of-state businesses and corporations.
To make her point during Thursday night’s final gubernatorial debate, Denish used an e-mail the former state attorney general and Bush administration official had sent to encourage a potential contributor to attend a fundraiser for Martinez.
The fundraiser wasn’t hosted by payday lenders as Denish made it sound, Stratton said. Denish also misquoted the e-mail he sent, substituting the phrase “predatory lending” for “consumer lending,” he said.
“You don’t see predatory lending in there, do you?” he said.
Here’s an excerpt of the e-mail Stratton sent:
As you know we have a governor’s race on here in New Mexico. The Democrat, Diane Denish, is out to end consumer lending. The Republican, Susana Martinez, we are assured is not for ending or further limiting consumer lending. Fortunately, Susana is ahead and is going to win.”
“The facts speak for themselves,” Stratton told The Independent on Friday.
The Denish campaign on Friday, however, defended the Democratic lieutenant governor’s decision to trade out “consumer lending” for “predatory lending” because “the lobbyists who are there have represented the payday industry. They can call it what they want to call it. At the end of the day they are talking payday loans.”
Stratton’s use of the phrase “consumer lending” in the e-mail is a bit misleading. Stratton acknowledged to the Independent on Friday that the phrase “consumer lending” in the e-mail refers to “payday and installment loans.”
Consumer lending usually is a phrase employed as a catch-all for many types of loans that are not to businesses, including, say, a home equity loan. Neither Denish nor her campaign has talked of ending consumer lending. Rather, she has taken aim at lenders who engage in predatory lending that critics often associate with the payday and installment loan industries.
Stratton defended payday and installment loan lenders, saying those types of loans are not in and of themselves predatory by nature. How they are administered determines whether they fall into that category, he said.
“Predatory refers to how you make the loan, not which loan it is, not the nature of the loan, not whether it’s a small loan or a big loan,” Stratton said.
The rise of predatory lending as an issue in the gubernatorial race comes as consumer advocates say the 2007 law New Mexico passed to curtail predatory lending hasn’t lived up to its potential.
The 2007 law was supposed to limit payday lenders but critics such as Denish have accused payday lenders of exploiting loopholes to charge exorbitant fees. Attorney General Gary King sued two payday lenders in June 2009 for charging “extremely high rates, in some cases, more than 1,000 percent.”
One of King’s lawsuits says that a New Mexico man borrowed $100, which was due to be repaid with 26 bi-weekly installments of $40.16 each, plus a final installment of $55.34. In other words, the man had to pay $100 and $999 in interest, the AG’s office said.
When asked whether the interest rates involved in King’s cases qualified as predatory lending, Stratton said he didn’t know. Stratton responded similarly when asked if there were loans generally that met the threshold of predatory lending.
“I’m not qualified to respond to that,” he said.
Martinez has not made predatory lending a marquee issue in the gubernatorial campaign like Denish has, but in a statement last month she said that she supported “strong consumer protections” such as caps on interest rates.
“Further, we must ensure that terms for each and every loan are fully disclosed to the consumer and I support strengthening penalties for companies that take advantage of consumers,” Martinez was quoted as saying in that statement.
The Martinez campaign did not respond to questions from the Independent about Thursday’s gubernatorial debate or about Wednesday’s fundraiser.
The one-hour fundraiser at the Albuquerque Country Club scheduled for midday Wednesday attracted 75 to 80 people from all walks of life, Stratton said.
“I think we did pretty well,” he said. “We must have had 11 Democrat lobbyists there with their clients who were non financial,” Stratton told The Independent.
The National Republican Campaign Committee is committing money to put ads attacking incumbent Democrat Harry Teague in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District. The national Republican committee tasked with electing Republicans reported spending nearly $160,000 on the ads in the 2nd Congressional District, attacking Teague on his vote for a cap-and-trade bill.
More …
One in four New Mexico children lived in poverty during 2009, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The Census’ American Community Survey found that 25.3 percent of New Mexicans under the age of 18 lived in poverty during 2009, an increase from 2008, the Associated Press reported.
In addition, the Census Bureau found that 21.4 percent of New Mexico families with related children under 18 lived in poverty last year. More …
Nearly $2.5 million in federal stimulus money will go to boost children’s programs facing budget cuts, Gov. Bill Richardson announced today.
Most of the new money — $2 million – will help thousands of children stay in childcare services administered by the New Mexico Children, Youth & Families Department for a couple of more months, according to a news release Richardson’s office issued Wednesday.
But Voices for Children New Mexico, while applauding Richardson’s decision, said his action ”amounts to using an aspirin when what’s needed is a transfusion.” More …
Howard Dean speaks in support of the One Nation Working Together Rally.
In response to last month’s Glenn Beck-hosted “Restoring Honor” summit, hundreds of thousands plan to descend on Washington for a rally by the Lincoln Memorial next weekend. On Saturday, liberal groups are hosting the “One Nation Working Together” event, making a case for activism for progressive legislation to a middle class that increasingly seems to be withdrawing support from Democratic candidates.
The groups attending include civil rights, gay rights, economic justice, peace and labor activists. The AFL-CIO, National Council of La Raza and dozens of others are busing in participants, and more than 200,000 are set to attend.
“Despite having such evidence of what we can accomplish together, we have seen voter participation rates plummet — from Shelby County, Tennessee to Alameda County, California,” said Ben Jealous, the head of the NAACP. “Simultaneously, far-right extremists have found their way back into the nation’s political discourse and helped re-energize a retrograde agenda that includes attacks on every pillar of our civil rights protections from the Voting Rights Act to the Civil Rights Act to the 14th Amendment itself. Now is the time to get everyone off the sidelines and back on to the battlefield.”
And one of the groups storming that battlefield will be a new, targeted umbrella organization for the 99ers, the American 99ers Union. Just a few weeks old, the union represent 17 groups that in turn represent workers who have exhausted the maximum weeks of unemployment benefits. Its stated goal is supporting fading legislation to help the long-term unemployed, given the high unemployment rate and congressional intransigence and to raise awareness.
Nationally, long-term unemployment remains one of the most prevalent and pressing results of the recession. There are about 6.6 million workers who have been out of a job for more than six months and approximately one million who have exhausted their jobless benefits. Long-term joblessness results in everything from worse health outcomes to increased use of safety-net programs such as disability insurance — and studies show the longer a worker is unemployed, the harder it is for her to find a job.
Gregg Rosen, host of the BlogTalk radio show Unemployment Roundtable, and Michael White of the Unemployed Workers Action Group started the umbrella group. It represents about 40,000 workers, most of whom connect via the Internet. “99ers and 99er groups are banding together,” explains LaDona King, one of the most prominent 99er activists on the Web and a member of the new union. “And they are coming in one by one for strength and for consistency. The idea is that we have a consistent message, not a bunch of stories of woe and terror. And the message is that Americans need legislation to stay afloat. Workers are really hurting.”
The union is intently focused on pressuring legislators to move forward on two bills to give additional weeks of benefits to jobless workers. One bill, by Reps. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), grants 20 more weeks of benefits to workers in states where the unemployment rate is above 10 percent.
“Right now, there are more long-term jobless Americans than we’ve ever had on record, and we can’t just let them all fall off a cliff,” McDermott said, introducing the legislation. “I don’t believe how we can cut and run from helping unemployed workers when there are five of them competing for every available job. You only have to hear from a few unemployed workers to know how hard they are looking for work and to feel their sheer sense of desperation. Are we really prepared to just stand by and watch them sink into abject poverty?”
The second bill — fuller legislation that is therefore the subject of more 99er activism — is Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-Mich.) Americans Want to Work Act. That legislation the maximum number of weeks to 119 in states with unemployment rates above 7.5 percent, meaning 34 states and the District of Columbia would currently qualify. It also extends a tax credit to companies that hire workers who have been unemployed for more than two months.
The union held its first major push for the bills last week, having members fax in a letter to Congressional offices, urging action on the bill. Sites informed jobless workers how to use free websites to send two faxes a day, some Congressional offices reported hundreds coming in. Additionally, the 99ers union is working to bring workers to the One Nation Working Together rally.
Thus far, there are no clear signs of movement on either piece of legislation, though Stabenow’s office has indicated it will try to get the Senate Finance Committee to move forward on her bill. (It needs committee approval before a floor debate.) Congressional aides say it is highly unlikely for a vote on either bill before the November election — after which, Congress will need to take up an extension of current benefits, meaning Tier V legislation might fall by the wayside.
But the activists remain galvanized by their new coordination. “We’re fired up and we’re not giving up,” King says. Thousands of jobless workers are using the new 99er group to find free or reduce rides to the rally, a chance to press again for the cause, she says.
“If Obama said the word ‘99er’ once, if he recognized this problem, I would put all my energy into campaigning for a Democratic win this November,” she notes.
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 …
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 …
More than three-quarters of children in New Mexico (78.6 percent) live below 200 percent of the poverty level, and the state has the 7th highest percentage of uninsured children, according to a new report (Uninsured Children: Who Are They and Where Do They Live?) from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. That’s despite a 20-year trend in increasing rates of health care coverage for kids. More …
The liberal London daily Morning Star cited New Mexico’s cuts in Medicaid services as a cautionary tale Tuesday for proposed English health system cutbacks, arguing that New Mexico and other states are trying to balance state budgets by slashing medical services for the poor.
“New Mexico is expected to eliminate a number of Medicaid services that are not stipulated by federal law — including dental services, spectacles, emergency hospital services and inpatient psychiatric care,” The Star reported Tuesday. “In the US … the grim consequences are starting to emerge of the cutbacks driven by the recession which has left public-sector budgets drained even as it has made more low-paid and unemployed US citizens dependent on public support.”
New Mexico is not alone in cutting services for its most vulnerable populations, according to an August report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. More …
Republicans across the country are savoring their coming opportunity to literally “remake the political map” with anticipated electoral gains that will put them in the driver’s seat during the legislative redistricting process, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The 2010 elections will determine which party controls legislative redistricting in light of data from the 2010 census. Governors play a central role in redistricting, the AP reports — and more than half of the 37 governorships up for election this year are open seats. Democrats are defending 19 of those seats, during hard economic times and mid-term elections, which traditionally disfavor the party in power.
“We are now tasked with remaking the political map,” the Republican Governors Association website recently declared. The RGA plans to spend an estimated $65 million on this year’s election races, according to the AP, compared to $50 million in planned spending by Democrats. More …
