Thoughts on our Emprty County Manager's Office

I was drafting this column to urge the County Commission to terminate County Manager Scott Andrews to comments, but now it thanks them for doing so.

I wish Andrews well. I wish Cari Neill well, too. Briefly the interim or deputy County Attorney, she lacked experience with public law and likely shouldn’t have been hired. But Andrews used her then abused her.

Most recently Andrews, busy seeking his next gig, hadn’t really been very present, and had removed personal items from his office, but hadn’t resigned, leaving staff asking, “Who’s running this place?”

That situation needed resolution, and the County resolved it. So where are we? First, the basic problems exposed by the recent state audit pre-dated Andrews and every current Commissioner; but neither Andrews nor Commissioners had eliminated them, although I gather there were some efforts. I thought Andrews, a friendly, bland, pleasant sort of fellow, wasn’t a great choice, but I didn’t know a lot about the range of choices the Commission had.

I do think he deserves some blame for the hasty, careless, and probably unwise commission approval of whatever the Project Jupiter proponents wanted. He and staff were secretly “negotiating” this thing for months before springing it on the commission so hurriedly that commissioners were told they had to approve everything rapidly, without even getting to see the actual contract. That ain’t right. (Staff also pushed commissioners to violate state transparency laws.) Andrews’s conduct doesn’t excuse the commissioners who took the bait. Commissioner Chaparro saw the approval was way too hasty, as did many community members. So did I.

Andrews, according to the audit, approved the lawsuit against the county sheriff without even a Commission vote. He and Neill also handled some other issues poorly. Notably, as I’ve complained and the audit found, the County hasn’t always followed the Inspection of Public Records law. Further, they trespassed and banned a citizen without even the least due process, which could ultimately cost us all if he sues; and after I pointed it out, they did it again. That was indefensible arrogance.  The state has now required the County to engage an independent fiscal agent to ensure proper use of state funds. That’s no badge of honor for anyone involved.

The audit noted the feeling among employees that they could get wrongly retaliated against. The County lost a couple of lawsuits over that, long before Andrews ever heard of Dona Ana County; but Andrews sure didn’t eliminate that. UnderSheriff Robert Parra publicly called for Andrews to be fired over alleged retaliation against people who cooperated with the state auditor, although they were required by law to do so.

The immediate future is uncertain. Commissioners say they’re working to repair things and impose more “Standard Operating Procedures,” and were doing so even before the audit. They will move slowly on Andrews’s permanent replacement, partly because November’s election will change some commission seats.

Let’s cooperate to fix this. It’s serious, but – as I think the state auditor stated to the Commission – “The County is not broken.” There have been deep-seated and long-term problems. The conflict with the sheriff’s department and now the state audit have shown us some of them. But I hope and trust county commissioners see these things clearly now, and share our concern.

I hope the Commissioners take an honest, if belated, look at whether the Project Jupiter folks’ promises warrant the damage we know they’ll do.

                                              – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared on the 26^th of July, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, and will be up soon on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[I guess I also hope the Commission makes a better choice of its chief executive this time. I never thought Mr. Andrews was a wonderful choice for this county, but I also really didn’t have a clear picture of the commissioners’ alternatives. I’d urge them to appoint a citizens advisory committee, and I volunteer to serve on it – and keep confidential personnel information confidential. (Ain’t likely to happen.)]

[I also hope the county management will stop viewing the county sheriff as The Enemy. She isn’t. Yeah, she sued you folks for bad personnel practices that led to her firing, which a court jury found to be wrongful, after a full and fair trial The Commission apparently relies too much on witnesses the jury didn’t appear to believe. Sheriff Stewart is not perfect, but she sure improved things at DASO. She is not the county’s enemy. That juries 10-12 years ago found against the county, that soon afterward a jury dinged you a bunch of money in an Inspection of Public Record lawsuit, New Mexico Foundation of Open Government asked me to handle, and the state audit criticized county management for some disguised or undisguised attacks on Kim, should carry some weight in your thinking, folks. I know I don’t count, but I wrote some of the same stuff the state has now written. Are we all smoking the wrong substances or trying to make political hay?]

[Bottom line: our county government problems were here before Scott Andrews.  He didn't create them.  But I'm not aware of any he eliminated.  And I'm glad for him he doesn't have to face whatever punishment a majority of county residents would impose, if they had a vote, for his role in the Project Jupiter fiasco.]

The True Trump Derangement Syndrome

I’m not much of an America Firster. (I do say “United States,” showing respect for America’s 35 sovereign nations.)

But I love our country enough to be amazed that so many decent folks suffer a Trump Derangement Syndrome that suspends their normal wisdom and critical thinking when He speaks.

I don’t believe anybody completely. Not even my doctor. Surely not politicians and presidents. Nor, necessarily, men who have repeatedly gulled folks into huge investments that went bankrupt, then took his profits to the bank in a Brinks Truck while investors wept.

We all know other practical things in our day-to-day lives. If you managed a small company, and one person repeatedly quarreled with others, one-on-one, and told you those people were all “completely incompetent and dishonest – Lightweights,” would you can them all or start forming doubts about that guy? Since grade school, when I heard another kid repeatedly explain to us that he was “the best” at everything, and related numerous tales in which he was the heroic savior, I kind of looked for other kids to play with. Among lawyers it was the same. We also learned that someone who just cursed everybody out and said how much richer he was usually wasn’t much fun.

I also had a friend named George who envied Bud and me our facility with language. As we drank, he’d use bigger and bigger words that he understood less and less. We weren’t terribly impressed, but George was a great guy. Dirt-biking, he put us to shame and could read desert terrain that looked as confusing as New York City blocks turned out to be for George. We’re all good at something. Few of us are absolutely great at everything. Trumpists have likely noticed that too, but forget it fast when the Pied Piper tunes up his flute.

So who cares? How does this clown harm our country? Aside from starting a costly and unnecessary war without a clue what might happen? Or acting like a schoolyard bully, as if leaders of other nations wouldn’t know the basic stuff we know about liars and braggarts? (Well, they’re dumb foreigners.)

Throughout history, a technology gives a country an edge they then have to spend so much on protecting that they fall behind the folks who develop the next technology. We had a greatness that looked like it might survive that pattern: we spoke the world’s most-used language, had a fine educational system, and welcomed students from elsewhere. That was our nest egg. (Almost all our great scientific advances were made by immigrants or immigrants’ kids. Some clown made war on our educational institutions, tries to censor science and history that undermined his prejudices or profits, and – in the guise of trying to protect us from too many unlawful immigrants – scared the butts off potential foreign students. Foreign enrollments are down radically.

Meanwhile, even if you’re not fully sold on global climate craziness, the world clearly must move, and is moving, away from coal and oil toward renewables. DJT keeps his head in the sand so as to keep netting big campaign contributions from oil and gas. He’s handing our “enemy,” China, free rein to take the lead in those fields, from electric vehicles to solar homes. Not wise.

So he’s sabotaging us in places that will hurt all of us; but he’s gonna put them trans people, intellectuals, and welfare cheats in their place.

                                           – 30 --

 

 [The above column appeared on the 19^th of July, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and will be up soon on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

Are We All Crazy?

Are we all crazy?

Our state finance department has ordered our county government to hire an independent fiscal agent as a watchdog over any state funds we get, because of “systemic, pervasive, and long-standing failures in the county’s management of public funds.” (Wonder how they’re managing our tax funds.)

One commissioner saying the recent audit was “politics” didn’t inspire confidence. The state auditor is a fellow Democrat; some the problems I’d written about in columns, over a dozen years, and when you ran for your position I suggested folks vote for you; and stuff like the county manager suing the sheriff without even getting you commissioners to sign off on it, or rushing like lemmings to enact a questionable project Jupiter deal without all the facts or meaningful public discussion, just aren’t competent governing.

But it’s okay. I hear this voice from Turkey droning on, telling me that everything is wonder, the speaker is our greatest president ever, and everyone loves him.

Jupiter advocates are proving all our worst suspicions about them. Creating a huge, and hugely polluting, power grid, they claim they’ve answered our concerns by using newfangled fuel cells. Assuming they work, in such a large installation, those will trim the extra pollution by just 30%. Jupiter proponents mostly omit that percentage. If you handed me a glass of poison and answered my complaint by telling me I only had to drink 70%, I’d not be thrilled.

Seeing many citizens file objections to Jupiter’s application for Environmental Department approval, the Jupiter folks naturally paid people $25 per hour to find folks to say they liked it. If you declined, they obtained your email so as to send further information. Then you were surprised to discover that you’d emailed the NMED how much you loved Jupiter’s pollution.

Fraud, forgery, and identity theft are crimes; but rich folks doubt the New Mexico AG will come after them. If he does, they’ll blame those overzealous third-party contractors. “We knew nothing about it. Didn’t notice those news stories.” (Here’s hoping you stand up for us, Raul!)

Meanwhile that voice drones on, explaining that manufacturing in the U.S. is the best ever, he’s even better than he thought he was, and he fixed our steel problem, then the next administration had no idea what they were doing, so he’s fixed it again. (Aren’t economists predicting a world-wide slowdown because he’s prevented the world from transporting oil?)

I thought Graham Platner was getting wrongly attacked. The latest complaint, by a specific woman he dated who utters persuasive details publicly, and can prove she told her therapist and next boy friend, long before Planer’s political run, says otherwise. He should split and let Maine Democrats replace him. Immediately! Although he’s not guilty of rape unless and until proven so, (a) the circumstances tend to support her account and (b) a man who raped a woman shouldn’t be a Senator. Down East voters will be unlikely to vote for him. Further, while the campaign should be about Collins, and Trump, it will now (if he stays in) be about Platner.

Yeah, it’s ironic that he gets ushered off stage for a rape allegation but we elect as president a guy whom a civil jury found guilty of forcing himself on a woman he didn’t even know?

But he’s the greatest national leader in recorded history. I just heard so on the radio.

                                                        – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared on the 12^th of July, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and will be(presently) on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[Thanks for reading this. ]

New Mexico's Republicans are Right that One-Party Governemnt is Dangerous; but they should Abandon Trumpsim and Give Folks an Alternative

New Mexico’s Republican Party is in disarray.

Its Chair, Amy Barela, is gone by court-order, after blatant misconduct. A meeting to select a replacement lacked a quorum. Then Republican State Treasurer Kimberly Skaggs, a three-time candidate for the state legislature and former county chair here, was rapidly erased from the party’s we                                                                      bsite as she faced unrelated criminal charges.

Barela got tossed after party members accused her of using her position to benefit her own campaign in Republican primary for the Otero County Commission. The court held that Barela couldn’t both serve as party chair and run in a primary for the party’s nomination as Otero County Commissioner. Doesn’t that seem pretty obvious? Repeated Republican efforts to toss Duke Rodriguez off the ballot triggered a lawsuit, with plaintiffs claiming Rodriguez couldn’t legally run for governor; but the New Mexico Supreme Court held unanimously that he could. None of this speaks well of state Republican leadership.

Republicans, this is a time to reexamine how and why you’re doing what you do, and perhaps improve your chances.

Maybe you could revive the party by returning to Republican ideals and abandoning Trump-worship. Here, he is the elephant every Republican in every room must address. During our affordability crisis, he reports income for 2024 of about $600 million, but for 2025, as president, $2.2 billion, much of that from cryptocurrency investments by the United Arab Emirates. He’s driven some prominent state Republicans DTS.

Mr. Trump was known to be a racist long before he ran for public office. Racism cannot be a good basic theme for a political party in a state where “non-Hispanic whites make up only 36 per cent of the population. Here, bowing to a racist leader guarantees permanent minority status.

Republicans know this. Some current Republican candidates have re-tuned their campaign pitches to highlight the undesirability of a one-party state political system, rather than details of their plans or ideologies.

As many Republicans [Pence, the Cheneys and Bushes, Adam Kinzinger, Bill Cassidy, Thomas Massie, ThomTillis, and Tucker Carlson ]have recognized (and many other prominent Republicans said before saying it became so dangerous) – the demented narcissist in the White House is a broken and angry human being deciding everything solely on what’s good for him, with little interest in our nation or its ideals. He’s endangering our democratic values, prosperity, rule of law, and national security, all of which Republicans traditionally value.

Following him, as his declining poll numbers suggest, is quite like following the Hamelin Pied Piper. Or your fellow lemmings. Personal anger and revenge are not a promising long-term political approach.

You Republicans had a consistent political program with which I largely disagreed: what’s good for our top businesses is good for us; the government should do less to protect people from business fraud, environmental degradation, and climate craziness; not to bother with universal heath care, as all civilized nations do; our widening financial gap between the wealthiest and us is no problem; zealous attention to fiscal responsIbility (not spending fortunes on ballrooms or unnecessary wars; and probably more emphasis on national security than I’d suggest, although Trump/Hegseth undermine national security.

Most of you know, in your hearts, that you have followed a beguiling but wrong path that has endangered our country, our democratic values, and your own political future. Changing course will not be as simple as retracing your steps when lost in a forest; but it’s essential.

                                                                  – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared on the 4^th of July, 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's s website and will be(presently) on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[ The Skaggs news saddens me. Logically, I likely should chortle that someone I had criticized is no longer in power. Less logically, I feel sad – obviously for her bicyclist victim, first, but also that someone I had spoken to, and even lunched with, is sitting in jail. Sure, she acted wrongly and dangerously. But I never forget that as fast and drunk as I consistently drove in my youth, I am lucky I didn’t kill someone too. That discourages judging others. ]

[ The basic point, that New Mexico Republicans need to disown Mr. Trump and get back to business, seems abundantly sensible. And Mr. Trump makes it all the more so each day. ]

  

(Political) Parties Make me Dizzy

The morning headlines celebrated Congress’s bipartisan passing of the big affordable housing bill – and the much narrower win for the War Powers Act resolution seeking to rein in Donald Trump’s costly and useless Iran War.

Political parties – and our sclerotic hyper-partisonship – were already on my mind. Fresh news included the probable end to former Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagashima’s bid to run for governor as an independent and the jockeying for position by folks seeking our state’s Democratic nomination for lieutenant-governor.

We should discuss more often whether our two huge political parties, neither contemplated by our Constitution nor welcomed by George Washington, now do more harm than good; and, if so, what the hell can we do about it?

Mayor Ken, a political moderate, had little chance in a primary against Deb Haaland. He started gathering petitions to run as an Independent. (I signed, because he asked, although with mixed feelings generated by my concern that his candidacy might distract voters from making the best choice between Haaland and Hull.) Now, a state judge has declined to issue an order based on Ken’s lawsuit arguing that it’s unfair to make an Independent gather way more petition signatures to run than a Democrat or Republican would have to. Based on precedent, I thought Ken would lose, but he raised an interesting fairness issue. One argument against change is that we could end up with way too many candidates; but so what? Our two-party system yielded Donald Trump. If we’d had six candidates, and ranked-choice voting, he’d still be bankrupting casinos and stiffing sub-contractors.

Also on my mind was the Democrats’ odd situation regarding a nominee for lieutenant-governor. Days after Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s primary victory over Harold Pope, she announced that a health issue is forcing her to back away. Legally, the Democratic Central Committee will nominate a replacement candidate. Practically, gubernatorial nominee Haaland will interview and vet Democrats interested in the nomination and select someone the Central Committee will nominate.

Internet traffic debated whether Pope should win it because he ran for it. That has a certain appeal – although an opponent could argue that Oliver’s big victory margin undermines that idea. (It’s such an obscure position I was jokingly asking who remembered that nice guy from Silver City [our current lieutenant-governor, Howie Morales]? Haaland will choose. Pope definitely deserves some credit for having run. Since she’ll have to run with and work with [if they win] the nominee, who will be only as prominent as she allows, letting her choose makes some sense. If she doesn’t choose Pope, Republicans will attack her for it.

The two parties unofficially do a lot of work we’d have to figure out some other way to do if we didn’t have them; but they also interfere with government and are now interfering with life in the U.S. Political thought gets reduced to rooting for Ohio State or Michigan, and letting your team’s coach molest all the children he wants, while screaming bloody murder if their coach breaks wind.

Hours later, headlines said Trump had canceled signing ceremony for that great housing bill, passed by huge margins. He won’t sign until Republicans swallow their consciences and judgment and vote in the Save the Republicans Bill, making voting harder for normal people, which Trump [reasonably] thinks is the only chance they have in November. Another stunning win for partisanship over the good of the people.

                                                              – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 28 June 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper’s website and (presently) on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[Further developments: Between my writing this Wednesday and posting it here Sunday, Haaland chose Richard as the candidate for lieutenant-governor, and the central committee will quite certainly follow her lead. Richard is a fine choice, as Pope would also have been. Ironically, Richard had announced for the race, then had to back away because of her husband’s health. He’s apparently better now.

[Meanwhile, in a pretty shocking development. Kim Skaggs, Republican state party treasurer and a third-time candidate for State Representative, District 36, against Nathan Small. That, frankly, saddened me personally. Although I’ve disagreed with Kim about a lot, and although I sympathize above all with the victim, I’m saddened for Kim to see her in this situation. One can reasonably say “She deserves it,” but many of us“deserve” lots of bad things that, mostly through luck, don’t actually hit us. I sure have.  That discourages judging others.

Politically, it'll be interesting to see what the Republicans do.  Nathan has been a strong environmentalist and popular in his district.  However, his involvement in pushing Jupiter, and its sly enabling legislation, down our throats hasn't increased his popularity.  Note that one County Commissioner who rushed to vote Jupiter in decided not to run for re-election, and neither of the candidates seeking to replace him likes Jupiter a whole lot; a second resigned to run for county assessor and came in third; and the Jupiter candidate challenging State Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena got trounced. If Skaggs quits the race, or already has, the Republicans have until 25August, I think, to name a replacement candidate.]

[Also, Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy reversed positions on the War Powers Act, after his shouting match with Trump over not having been briefed quickly netted him a briefing. Whatever he heard, or the respect he was given, changed his vote.]

[Finally, a new disclaimer I should include: I speak (and write) for myself only.  Although the Sun-News publishes these columns, and although I host a radio show on Las Cruces Community Radio, what I say, I say as one very old man, not as part of anything or as anything's spokesman.] 

Let's Never Get Used to This!

What amazes me is the sheer number of things the record clearly confirms Mr. Trump has done which would have been unthinkable in any other president.

Imagine Obama making himself chair of the appropriate committee and slapping the name “Obama-Kennedy Center” on that building. Or demolishing half the White House for a huge ballroom, undoubtedly ornate and tasteless, at great cost.

Inspectors-General in federal departments, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Senate Parliamentarian are all independent for important reasons. Congress created inspectors-general to watch administrative departments for corruption, illegality, and waste, and required presidents who fire them to report reasons to Congress. Trump has fired dozens, Obama none. The Fed exists so independent savvy financial people can make the best financial decisions for our nation, rather than whatever is most convenient politically for passing presidents. Imagine Biden pressuring the bank and starting spurious criminal investigations to extort the Bank to act imprudently to reduce inflation before the 2024 election. The neutral Senate Parliamentarian, an impartial internal referee and rules expert, advises the Senate on what’s lawful. That neutral advice is so important to the Senate’s functioning that the posterior-osculating Republican senators have actually resisted Trump’s demand to fire her, when they resist little else.

Imagine Obama appointing Montel Williams as defense secretary because he’d served in the Navy and Marine Corps.

Imagine Joe Biden sending Hunter to negotiate a Middle East peace agreement while Hunter’s capital investment firm was receiving huge investments from Saudi Arabia. Imagine him making Michael Cohen Attorney-General because he liked Cohen’s testimony against Donald Trump.

Forget the numerous people 47 has had our government try [and fail ludicrously] to jail for doing their jobs or speaking up against the Great Leader. Obviously these discourage dissent. They also waste judicial and legal resources, including wasted of precious dollars when we can’t guarantee folks health and Trump threatens to destroy Social Security.

When did Presidential pardons become a personal profit center? Presidents 43, 44, 45, and 46 pardoned 80 to 212 convicted criminals each. Number 47, in one year, has pardoned 1700 – close to 200 individually, usually with a healthy political donation from the convict’s family, PLUS about 1500 in the mass pardon of the nice folks who attacked cops and defaced Congress, threatening to hang the vice-president, for love of Trump.

President Biden didn’t try to jail David Weiss for investigating his son, or appoint as AG Michael Cohen because he liked that lawyer’s testimony about Trump.

And suppose Obama had removed all reference to the Declaration of Independence from a museum honoring a slave-holding signatory? We’d howl, because both his patriotism and his slave-holding are historically important facts. Like each of us, our historical leaders were inherently imperfect and self-contradictory human beings.

Suppose Obama appointed as HHS Secretary a man with no medical training or health management or administrative leadership experience, and watched quietly while measles and other “extinct” diseases reawakened and spread. Almost all Defense Secretaries have deep experience running large defense institutions or national-security bureaucracies. Pete Hegseth has run nothing except his mouth.

Trump-defenders excused his many personal and political bad acts by saying he’d keep our finances in order and avoid unnecessary foreign wars. Polls show few now trust him fiscally, and an unnecessary and inflationary foreign war is spending vast fortunes and Iranian civilian lives to get us back to where we were under the agreement Mr. Obama had negotiated without war.

– 30 –

 

 

 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 21 June 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and (presently) on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[Stupidities mount daily. We just spent zillions on paint that’s already cracking from the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, and we did nothing to solve the algae problem. Hegseth made vaccines optional, for ideological reasons, and scores of real-world U.S. soldiers quickly got sick. Wonder if he’s stupid enough to be surprised?

[And at G7, where allied leaders try to treat him especially nicely, he offends Italy by saying it’s leader “begged for a photo with me.” I mean, like, man, WTF? Well, why, anyway. Any of us would know that would offend. Any of us know it would be a small hindrance to maintaining a military alliance. Any of us know that although there could be sane reasons for our nation to cross allies, bolstering one person’s ego wouldn’t be one. Not for the first time, he is showing us his lack of self-control and his desperate need for praise and glory. Yet again, in a small example this time, we see clearly from his own conduct that bolstering his ego is a higher priority than we are. Yet again, a third of us refuse to see it, or say, but he beefed up border protection.

[To put it another way, will someone tell the Narcissist-in-Chief that people have their pictures taken with clowns, dead fish, and monkeys, too?]

[Trump is far more competent in corruption. He claims he can’t be accused of insider trading because his sons manage the family’s investments. But when it comes to monetizing ties to a U.S. President, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. leave Hunter Biden deep in the shade.

Along with the family of Steven Witcoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, they started a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial. The oil-rich kingdom of the United Arab Emirates, invested $2 million. Two weeks later, the Emirates struck a deal with the Trump administration — the first of its kind — giving them access to advanced U.S. AI chips.   “Watch our dust, Hunter!” ]

[ Meanwhile, Moody’s Analytics estimates that the Iran fiasco has cost U.S. consumers and taxpayers about $132 billion, with the meter still running. That’s a lot of health care, but who’s counting? ]

Citizens Call out Project Jupiter's "Bait-and-Switch" Tactic

Water and truth are each scarce, and highly-valued, out here.

Citizens concerned about water and extreme air pollution) balked last September when our county commission rushed to approve a huge data center that would have a disproportionately bad impact on our climate and air quality.

Recently, citizens pleaded for a town hall where commissioners and developers would answer questions. After the commission finally agreed, the project pulled a bait-and-switch: citizens sought a meaningful open public discussion. The developer now plans a combination job fair and “open house,” at which folks can visit “stations,” and ask questions.

At a town hall, when Jupiter Minion #293 solemnly promises that Jupiter will cool its huge turbines with non-potable water, a hydrologist could ask a cogent follow-up question, everyone could watch #293 look for a hole in the floor. At an open house station, not so.

Living in a desert, even idiots like me understand that when a deep aquifer contains a lot of water too salty or mineral-laden to drink, if my neighbor pumps out a lot of that bad water, that could draw freshwater downward, leaving my shallow well dry. His plea, “But I only took non-potable water,” won’t keep my tomatoes alive. The issue isn't simply whether the water is drinkable. The issue is whether it is part of a limited regional water resource. Non-potable is a current description that doesn’t tell us about the future. As technically true but misleading as a politician saying, “Who cares what that kid thinks? Sixteen-year-olds can’t vote.”

These Jupiter folks say stupid things. Here are three:

, 1. It’s not a problem because this is non-potable water, promised a pro-Jupiter newspaper op-ed by Julia Robin. Living in a desert, even I know that’s pretty meaningless.

At best, it describes a quality of the water at present. A temporary quality. With a bit longer drought, we might want to spend the bucks to make that water drinkable. Or, since in our huge aquifer there’s a thin layer of fresh water above the brackish, if you pump non-potable water below the potable, the potable falls too – and likely mixes.

2. “If you like protecting the air, you like Project Jupiter” read a weekend ad in the Albuquerque Journal. Hunnh? Jupiter, before the switch to fuel cells, which would improve things a little, planned to toss up greenhouse gasses at least equivalent to what Albuquerque and Las Cruces do now. Possibly forever, because they bought exemption from the Energy Transition Act. Reasonable people can argue that the jobs to be created are important enough to warrant screwing up our air that way; but no one would call constructing those huge turbines would “protecting the air.”

3. Our surface wells will pump just 10,000 acre-feet, so no worries. Wait. The US. Supreme Court just decided that to help Texas this region has to reduce ground-water pumping by 18,000 acre feet. That’s will be tough on farms, families, and villages. Well, now it’s 28,000, assuming Jupiter’s wells are hydrologically connected.

Tuesday, many citizens criticized that “bait-and-switch,” in a tense atmosphere. Chairman Manny Sanchez directed security to empty the left half of that audience. People refused. We almost had a few private security folks struggling to remove scores of adults. Hours later – to their credit, – the commissioners decided to re-open discussion and have the factual, expert-aided conversation that should have preceded approval.

Credit commissioners’ resilience. And citizens’ passions.

                                            – 30 – 

 

[The above column appeared Sunday, 14 June 2026, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and (presently) on KRWG’s website. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version of this Sunday column will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM / ]

[ Jupiter folks are flooding our newsprint and Internet with pretty ads. Even if I didn’t know something about this situation, seeing people spend that heavily to make me like them would tend to create a little distrust. ]

[ So far, it looks likely that four county commissioners' names will live in infamy in our county, as we live with this loud, ugly, air-polluting .data center they did not even seriously try to control the damage from, and as broken promises and failed promises come home to roost.  But who knows? ]