Thanks to County Sheriff Kim Stewart

 Thanks, Sheriff Stewart!

Two consecutive Doña Ana County Sheriffs, law-enforcement veterans, listened to the wrong people and nearly destroyed DASO. I’ll spare you the details (see my columns on Todd Garrison [2014] and Kiki Vigil [2018]); but it was so extreme that numerous hardened law-enforcement veterans approached me secretly to complain.

Staff was demoralized, and fleeing. Good deputies with solid experience were retiring. At one time, a dozen DASO deputies had applied to LCPD, some taking pay cuts. LCPD’s then-chief, confirming that with me, kind of shook his head over DASO’s problems. Four years later, DASO is fully-staffed, while LCPD is having trouble recruiting enough good people.

Kim Stewart beat Vigil in the 2018 primary, then Garrison in the general.

Some of my conservative law-enforcement friends had their doubts. They had specific concerns, some sparked by campaign rhetoric against Stewart; and maybe she just didn’t seem right to them; but within a year or so, even they were praising her. Like me, they were hearing only good things about her from deputies in the trenches. When Stewart took over, 32 of the 127 deputy positions were empty.

Photo from KVIA

I’m still hearing good things. I’ve heard no complaints, except that she and County Manager Fernando Macias don’t play well together. They are both strong characters, highly capable, and progressive, with each ready to fight to see county affairs go as she or he thinks they should. Fernando’s management style isn’t universally loved at the County and wasn’t in Third Judicial District Court; and Kim has proven she’ll fight for her people. (She was treated so badly by a previous county administration that a jury awarded her compensation for her wrongful termination, so she may well be a little prickly.) Too, the historical anomaly of having county clerks, treasurers, and sheriff’s elected, but dependent on the central county administration for budgetary and personnel decisions, repeatedly engendered friction between Kim’s and Fernando’s predecessors.

Photo from LC Sun-News

Sheriff Stewart has done much that matters, that we don’t see. She’s updated policies and procedures, which is essential to holding people accountable. If DASO policies and procedures aren’t consistent, both internally and with county policies and changing laws, that creates loopholes. She’s also modernized aspects of academy training – notably, obtaining state approval to train deputies that if they see other deputies violating civil rights, they have a duty to speak up. We should all want that!

Stewart’s primary challenger, James Frietze, seems to be a good cop. Mutual friends speak well of him. During our radio interview, he said all the right things, very cogently, about how a cop should handle a mentally-troubled citizen. Stewart then pointed out that as sheriff, the challenge was to make sure all 137 deputies were capable of handling things right and trained to do so.

Stewart’s done all that, as Sheriff. Frietze hasn’t. He might be a fine candidate in four years. She’s a sure thing now, and deserves our gratitude for turning things around. She has that from deputies, along with the loyalty of most of them. On radio, Frietze was charming and homegrown; but he couldn’t articulate a reason we should replace our successful Kim Stewart with him.

I understand some folks think gender is relevant. Frietze looks more like Pat Garrett. But Sheriff Stewart’s getting it done, and then some – and is what we need in a 21^st Century sheriff. (Even Pat probably knew, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”)

                                               – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 29 May, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[It seems real simple: mismanagement (compounded, in each case, by getting kind of mesmerized by someone who wasn’t as good an influence as the sheriff imagined) made a terrible mess of DASO; underdog Stewart beat both those sheriffs in the 2018 election; then, against the odds and initially without great support, Sheriff Stewart brought DASO back from disaster to a functioning office with good morale and a full roster of deputies. Without a good reason, why oust her for someone else who would need to learn the ropes and might not do nearly as well as Stewart? Because she’s a woman? Because Fernando wants you to? Because James wants the job? The last two are reasonable for Fernando and James, but not reasons for voters to gamble.

What am I missing?]

[By the way, for those who’ve forgotten or who’ve moved here since these events: toward the end of Sheriff Todd Garrison’s second term, he was strongly influenced by a gentleman named Seeburger. Things they did were impeding actual law enforcement and driving deputies crazy. Eventually the county fired Seeburger, who then sued everyone in sight, including me. His case went so badly that although he was the plaintiff, asking for a bundle of money, he ended up being ordered to pay the U.S. District Court. (I think he later ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in the El Paso area.) Some of that is recited in my columns / blog posts: "Questions about a Surprising Hire by the County Sheriff," 2March, 2014; "Sheriff Garrison and Mr. Seeburger," 9March2014; 4Nov2014 (“Our Republican former sheriff, Todd Garrison, seeks to regain the office he nearly destroyed during his Seeberger episode, while the thoughtful Democrat Kim Stewart has both experience and smart, modern ideas. (Allegations that Stewart would take away deputies' long rifles or disband the SWAT Team, are just plain false.) ”); "Further Thoughts on DASO," 6April2014; and "Laswuit against Many of us Crashes and Burns," 30Aug2018.

Kiki Vigil got elected in 2014. He seemed promising. I voted for him in the primary, largely because it seemed that Eddie Lerma, whom I respected, would be his undersheriff. Kiki’s term got off to an awkward start, and he was repeatedly at odds with County Manager Julia Smith and the County Commission. Deputies seemed to support him; but then he started listening to an ambitious officer who reportedly wanted mostly to settle scores with folks he didn’t care for. Vigil got rid of Eddie Lerma and installed Ken Roberts. There was also sex cases to which Kiki’s response was woefully inadequate. Soon the department was again an unbearable mess for serious law-enforcement folks. Again there was litigation. (For those sad times, search Ken Roberts or Kiki Vigil on my blog or the Sun-News site.) In 2018, Lerma seemed a promising alternative to Vigil in the Democratic Primary; and Lermas did get a few more votes than Vigil; but Kim Stewart, somewhat surprisingly, beat ‘em both. Then she whipped Garrison in the general election. ]

[I mentioned Stewart’s successful lawsuit against the County. For background, see "Jury Orders Dona Ana County to Pay $1.35 million to Kim Stewart" (17July2015) and "Counties Must Face the Music Juries Hear" (26 July 2015).]

 

Baca Tragedy Should Spark Improvement

The tragic shooting of Amelia Baca is the exclamation point to Las Cruces’s need for a Civilian Police Oversight Board.

Who sez? So far, the NAACP, LULAC, psychiatrist Dr. Ernest Flores, and many others. Several have personally seen nonfatal incidents as appalling as the Baca shooting. Pattie Hartman told the City Council Monday these situations are “social justice” issues, adding, “I’ve warned as many as I could not to call 9-1-1. Amelia Baca was not an isolated incident.”

It’s hard to defend the officer who shot Ms. Baca, based on the video. Yeah, she’s holding knives – but down at her side, not in a threatening manner. She’s in a doorway. He knows she’s mentally troubled. Her daughter and granddaughter keep reminding him. He repeatedly hollers, in English, “Drop the [____] knives!” In his defense, (a) he doesn’t know if she is a threat to someone else inside (or has hurt someone), and (b) she’s closer to him than the wide-angled lapel video might suggest. But he put himself that close. She didn’t approach him.

Hollering ain’t how to deal with someone in a mental health crisis. He doesn’t ask her family members if anyone is inside.” He doesn’t try speaking reassuringly, or ascertain whether she understands English. He could do so, while watching her closely and holding his gun. He’s supposedly had many hours of training. There are a dozen better approaches he should have learned in the first hour.

If this were an isolated incident, . . . but it’s not. How many responsible, respected, knowledgeable citizens need to tell the City Council about seeing several such incidents? How many citizens must die?

Yeah, we have a contract with some agency elsewhere. Dr. Earl Nissen reviewed their annual report. Basically, they summarized several complaints and how the LCPD resolved those. They suggested that “deescalation training” be more than a flier. How many citizen complainants did they call up and ask questions of? None. A key city employee pointed out that “they can only audit what’s submitted to them.” LCPD controls that. Nissen, 90, is so concerned that he’s driven up to Albuquerque monthly to attend meetings of their civilian oversight board. Police officials answer questions directly, in public, and the board can request documents.

A local board can investigate immediately. By contacting complainants (or hearing them at meetings), it can hear local accounts directly, respond personally, and be seen by the public to do that, yet keep sensitive personnel information confidential. As Nissen heard one Albuquerque citizen say at a meeting, “At least we know now who to contact. We have a channel of communication with the police.”

I work with police officers. Many are fine individuals who show real concern for the public. Seems some aren’t. Or get overly excited under pressure. Overall, the record now demands action, and the most constructive action available is an oversight board that can help resolve complaints, improve training, facilitate communications, ensure bad apples are trained better or tossed, clear up misunderstandings, and help build trust between officers and citizens. Members should neither believe everything said by officers nor be biased against them. (Paying police more might help, too.)

In many cities, such boards have made great improvements. For a small fraction of what Las Cruces [we] will pay Sam Bregman and the Bacas.

We all must stop seeing mentally-troubled citizens as “other.” Amelia Baca was much more than her final moments.

                                                          --  30  --

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 22 May, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[While I obviously think it’s important to hold police accountable, I also think it important to see events from the officer’s point-of-view, if at all possible. Here, he was first on the scene to a call in which [and I have not yet heard the 9-1-1 call] the caller was in fear of Ms. Baca, who had knives and was stabbing the floor in anger. Although he could see she was small, and knew she was mentally troubled, a knife is a knife, and conventional wisdom among cops is that even if you have a gun, you may well get stabbed if the knife-wielder is within ten feet. Yes, watching the video we feel like he shouldn’t have shot, or could have wounded her; but we don’t know what he was trained to do or how it felt to be him in that moment. That’s why, although I tend to hope he’s not a cop much longer, I express no opinion on a criminal charge. Exercises run by DASO a few years back to educate us on how vulnerable a cop could be in various circumstances were effective; and an early experience with LCPD more than 45 years ago was instructive. In that situation, a cop nearly shot an innocent man, but under the circumstances (the man suddenly appearing in a house neighbors had thought was being burglarized, unaware the man had the owner’s permission to stay there) it would have been hard for me to say the officer would have been wrong. But I’m not sure a video would have captured how the moment felt. It’s easy for us to say the shooter of Amelia Baca didn’t have to shoot; but we weren’t there. Conviction of most relevant crimes includes proving (beyond any reasonable doubt) intent. For that and other reasons, I don’t feel comfortable commenting (particularly without all the evidence) on whether or not he should be charged, or with what.

The more important point is that we need a police oversight board. We are killing too many folks we shouldn’t. We could improve training, investigate cases, andhelp build or rebuild trust between community and cops. That’s what has happened elsewhere.

But the nature and authority of the board are important issues the city council needs to consider carefully. It can’t be merely advisory. It must be able to ask for documents and witnesses. It should have some law-enforcement presence, but not too much: above all, we need balanced, thoughtful, experienced people, including perhaps lawyers, psychiatrists, and others. Failure to exercise real care in wording the ordinance and selecting the members would result in failure, and this matter is too important. (Albuquerque’s Police Oversight Board includes nine at large members, meant to be culturally and otherwise diverse, who have not worked for law-enforcement for at least one year, pass a background check, have not engaged in a pattern of unsubstantiated complaints against the police, have “a demonstrated ability to engage in mature, impartial decision-making,” and are committed to “transparency ant impartial decision making.”

We need folks who can understand the police officer’s situation, without automatically criticizing police or automatically accepting their actions – folks who’ll judge each case on facts and evidence, patiently and with concern for all the players.

 

The Leaked Alito Draft Decision

Our Constitution, written by men who owed allegiance to no King, Kaiser, or Emperor, was a marvel in 1781.

But it was written by men. White men. Prosperous white men, mostly Christian, many slaveholders. They did a great service – for white men.

Our history is various jagged lines moving toward equality for all: blacks, tribes, women, Asians, Jews, LGBTQ+, and others the Founders never considered.

The leaked draft decision reviving states’ control over women’s bodies, if issued, will be a major step backward. It could foreshadow more backward leaps, returning many to second-class citizenship or worse.

Symbolic of the Court’s blind arrogance is Alito’s citation of 17^th Century English jurist Sir Matthew Hale, who believed women were subservient beings God had fashioned from Adam’s rib. Married women were property. There was no such thing as marital rape, Hale wrote: a husband owned a wife’s body, and could do as he liked with it. Including beating her.

Alito gleefully asserts that the Constitution never mentions abortion. It never mentions women. It wasn’t written for them. Or by them.

Denying abortions isn’t about “life,” or the backward states would let women abort health-impairing pregnancies, and wouldn’t be denying women a safe procedure, relegating them to backstreets and basements. This isn’t about kids: Justice Barrett at least walks the walk; but most anti-choicers scream about protecting fetuses yet don’t adopt unwanted babies. Conservatives say folks should sink or swim without much government help, and that businesses’ profits shouldn’t be diminished by requirements designed to preserve kids’ health and environment.

Alito and his ilk would force women, no matter the circumstances, to give birth and take full responsibility for “their” children, but vote against measures to help families give the resulting kids a really nurturing childhood. While forcing women to bring unwanted pregnancies to term, Mississippi threatens also to outlaw contraceptives!

The draft mocks stare decisis, a major prop of our Anglo-American judicial system. A final decision along these lines would dissipate public respect for the Court. Alito says “originalism;” but pre-quickening abortion was legal in all states in 1789, as under British common law. Overturning Roe would be without precedential authority or popular support.

Our Constitution and Bill of Rights promised personal freedom. Obviously the Constitution couldn’t name every human problem or eventuality; but it stated clearly that we should live free from unnecessary interference. “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Powers not specifically delegated to the United States “are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.” Whom we love and/or sleep with, whether or not we eat healthy food or get exercise, and (within broad limits) what we do and say in our own homes are in that latter category. So should be our personal health decisions, including pregnancy. Nor did any of the Founders ever suggest otherwise.

Justice Alito, where in the f*ing constitution does it say that the states can legislate such personal matters?

Steve Pearce, how can y’all oppose cities requiring their employees to be vaccinated in a pandemic, yet shout from the rooftops that government can force health choices on women, whose condition isn’t infectious at all?

Peter Goodman, what right do you have to pontificate, when your gender and age guarantee you won’t face this particular health choice?

With all due respect to the Court, women deserve much, much better.

                                – 30 –

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 15 May, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[One should recall that the leaked decision is a draft. Often when justices take their initial vote on how they are all leaning on a case, the majority votes for a certain result but on varied grounds. The Chief Justice then assigns someone in the majority to write the opinion. A first draft may be the writer’s particular exposition of the reasons, and others in the majority may object to certain language. As they can decide to concur in the result but write their own concurring opinion, possibly without joining in the majority opinion, compromises often occur. (A “majority” opinion in which no one joined, accompanied by four concurrences agreeing on the result but not the rationale, and four dissents, would be problematic not only for Alito’s ego but for other courts trying to decide related but somewhat different cases, since they could be understandably uncertain about how the Supreme Court would rule.) For example, in Brown v. Board of Education (1953), Chief Justice Earl Warren, knowing it flatly overruled the pro-segregation decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1897), worked hard to adjust the language so that the vote was unanimous, leaving no ground for segregationist state officials to doubt the decision.]

A key paragraph of the Alito’s decision is:

He goes on to write that abortion doesn’t fall within that category. The same argument could apply to integration, despite post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments; until 1965, despite those, many states still had laws forbidding marriage between a white person and a Black person. Certainly integrated schools, let alone marriages, were not “deeply rooted in our country’s history and traditions.”

Even more certainly, conduct that does not conform to the narrow Christian sexual mores is not deeply rooted in our country’s traditions. Thus Alito’s basic rationale could apply to a variety of other Supreme Court decisions over the past century that have recognized rights implicit in our Constitution. He does attempt to distinguish those, by noting that abortion differs in that in also implicates a possible human life; but it would be hard to trust that this court (including recent employees who lied to Republican senators about their view of Roe v Wade as “settled law”) to hold to that distinction if they decided states should still be able to arrest gay folks, or fire gay state employees for being different.]

[One other point.  Someone leaked this.  That's contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court's history and traditions, and either illegal (if someone used illegal means to acquire it) or contrary to the leaker's contract (if a Court employee leaked it).  If an employee leaked this, it's a breach of trust for which someone normally should be fired.  Leaking would not, however, be a crime.  The leaker should be fired, but calls for a criminal investigation are Republican politicians' efforts to control their political damage by distracting from the content of the leak.   

It doesn't matter "which side" the leaker is on, or what his or her intentions were.  S/he should be fired.  My first assumption was that the leaker was opposed to the decision and wanted it our there to galvanize progressive voters.  I'm now hearing that the better-informed speculation is that it was a conservative Alito ally who wanted to make it tougher for a justice to change his or her vote, as the Chief Justice undoubtedly wishes someone would.  Either possibility is plausible.  It doesn't matter.  The leaker should be fired, but to those of us not working for the court the content should be far more important than how it reached us.]

 

A Bump in the Road toward Municipal Transparency?

 A police officer killed Amelia Baca. Maybe he had to. Maybe not.

LCPD knows his bodycam footage would help the public (and the family) start understanding this tragedy. LCPD knows state law requires it to give us copies of that footage as soon as possible after requests, and certainly within 15 days. LCPD is playing games to delay that.

Showing us this video is “an essential function of a representative government and an integral part of the routine duties” of City employees. The New Mexico Supreme Court recently reiterated, in a police-shooting case, that IPRA requires “prompt and scrupulous compliance.”

By law, giving requestors this video is a high-priority task. The Sun-News asked for it April 19. The City said it needed 15 days. On May 4, the City said it needed 15 more. (Without labeling the request “unduly burdensome,” the City has no legal right to such delay.)

LCPD, fortunately, hasn’t claimed it can withhold the video because there’s an investigation. The City has provided seventeen related videos, some devoid of content, some showing post-shooting interviews of witnesses, including police officers (though not the shooter). One, in which a woman describes repeatedly begging the officer not to shoot her mentally “off” Grandma, is extremely saddening. My heart goes out to her.

The City has redacted witnesses’ birth dates and young children’s names. The City has also redacted, probably improperly, the shooter’s name. (IF officials answered my phone calls, they’d probably claim he’s been “accused but not charged” of a crime.)

Releasing selected footage from the bodycam video to affect public opinion makes this willful delay worse. First, it’s unfair and misleading. It also establishes that city officials have watched the video. (For some, not watching it would be incompetence.) If they had time to edit it, which was not required, they have time to release it, as the law commands. With redactions if necessary.

IPRA provides a narrow law-enforcement exception for “confidential sources, methods, and information.” Here, a demented female holding knives approaches a police officer and gets shot. Was she a confidential source? Did he fire his gun in some confidential way? (If he used some secret LCPD method of calming her, it tragically failed.) The law protects innocent witnesses or victims; but is LCPD protecting them from grandmother’s ghost or from the officer who shot the video?

This is a matter of great public interest. The City’s conduct is arrogant and illegal. It’s also unwise, compounding the tragedy. It’s unfair to the officer, who deserves a fair and impartial review of what happened. Rigging an inept dog-and-pony show to “defend” him undermines the credibility of whatever cogent points he may offer in his defense.

Even the video can’t put us in the officer’s shoes, confronting Ms. Baca in real time. The very wide angle of body cameras distorts distances, and thus speed. Folks should factor that in. But the law requires LCPD to give citizens that opportunity forthwith, not when it’s more convenient. People see LCPD violating the law to protect an employee who may have committed a crime or performed his duties negligently. Those duties are sufficiently challenging that the brass oughtn’t to complicate them by squandering community members’ trust.

Here’s one more reason we need a review board. And I’m disappointed the City is not only playing games but declining to discuss the issues – presumably because LCPD lacks plausible answers to our many questions.

                                        – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 8 May, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[One should note that the City’s position is an improvement over its response to other such situations, and acknowledges the law more accurately. For years (as was done elsewhere in the case I mention, Jones v. NM Dept. of Public Safety), law-enforcement entities ignored the language of IPRA and asserted a broad law-enforcement exception covering ongoing investigations. The law didn’t authorize that, but police departments kept saying it. The 2019 amendment made the limited nature of the exception (copied in below) unmistakably clear: it’s to protect “confidential sources, methods, and information” and names of folks “accused but not charged with crime,” and to make sure malefactors aren’t handed information to help find vulnerable witnesses and victims of certain crimes. Jones then confirmed that. Instead of such a broad assertion, LCPD here said it needed the more time to scrub the videos of confidential information. Basically LCPD seems to have silenced-out mentions of the shooter’s name, anyone’s birthdate, and the names of a couple of small children. LCPD has not deigned to state why it contends that IPRA permits it not to release the officer’s name. The best I can come up with for them is that he’s “an individual accused but not charged with a crime,” which raises interesting questions. Has he been accused of a crime? By whom?]

[The actual exception is stated in Chapter 14, Article 2, Section 1 as:

D.  portions of law enforcement records that reveal:

(1)       confidential sources, methods or information; or

(2)       before charges are filed, names, address, contact information, or protected personal identifier information as defined in this Act of individuals who are:

(a) accused but not charged with a crime; or

(b) victims of or non-law-enforcement witnesses to an alleged crime of:  1) assault with intent to commit a violent felony pursuant to Section 30-3-3 NMSA 1978 when the violent felony is criminal sexual penetration; 2) assault against a household member with intent to commit a violent felony pursuant to Section 30-3-14 NMSA 1978 when the violent felony is criminal sexual penetration; 3) stalking pursuant to Section 30-3A-3 NMSA 1978; 4) aggravated stalking pursuant to Section 30-3A-3.1 NMSA 1978; 5) criminal sexual penetration pursuant to Section 30-9-11 NMSA 1978; or 6) criminal sexual contact pursuant to Section 30-9-12 NMSA 1978.

Law enforcement records include evidence in any form received or compiled in connection with a criminal investigation or prosecution by a law enforcement or prosecuting agency, including inactive matters or closed investigations to the extent that they contain the information listed in this subsection; provided that the presence of such information on a law enforcement record does not exempt the record from inspection; ]

Thanks, Green Chamber! Thanks, Phil!

In April, the City approved a natural gas rate-hike. The backstory is a small example of how community involvement should work.

The City is strongly committed to sustainability. Natural gas is a fading energy source. The City Council has made clear that it will get out of that business over time.

Las Cruces Utilities had spent years trying to grow its operation, serving more customers. Expansion was a major goal. Changing directions in one’s life’s work can be challenging.

The original rate-hike proposal would have upped monthly small business gas bills 75% to pay for largely questionable expenses. These included building new gas lines that would violate City environmental policy and were obviously a poor business idea.

LCU is expanding into Talavera, where evidence indicates few residents will hook up. (Why would they, knowing natural gas is on the way out?) Further, many of the parcels LCU counted on are vacant. They could stay vacant, or builders might avoid natural gas. (See my 29 August 2021 column.) LCU wanted to extend lines to other outlying areas. Using more natural gas would release more greenhouse gases. The extensions would also create annualized debt service that would cost existing customers, often folks without much money, an extra $935,000 annually for twenty years. With time, as builders and more prosperous homeowners choose renewable energy sources, the imbalance will grow ugly.

The increase would have come on top of a significant Winter Storm Uri surcharge, just when pandemic and pandemic precautions had weakened small businesses.

The Las Cruces Green Chamber of Commerce hired consultant Phil Simpson, who reported much of this and articulated it at LCU Board meetings. Simpson, the Green Chamber, the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce, and a few citizens argued strenuously against the plan. Utility Board meetings were a cultural collision, with gas-utility folks coming to face the inevitability of cutting, rather than expanding, service.

LCU wanted to go forward, but soon agreed to abandon line extension and the costly debt-service increase, lowering the total by about a third. Green Chamber pressure also obtained a delay, so the increase would start after the winter storm rider ended. That would be far less disruptive to small businesses. Further, Simpson successfully argued that if rates had to jump, it should be done more gradually. That’ll happen in three phases, over three years. Ultimately, the proposed rate increase shrunk from a $2.4 million total to $1.5 million. The 9.2% (residential) and $42.76% (small businesses) increases became 3.76% and $33%, respectively.

Eventually, LCU gave City Council a much more reasonable proposal, backed by more realistic figures. As one observer put it, “LCU really upped its game once there was real scrutiny.” (“Real scrutiny” used to be an automatic part of the process, under consumer-watchdog procedures the City abandoned in 2016.)

We’re fortunate the Green Chamber got Simpson involved to crunch the numbers and show that LCU’s plans were economically unwise as well as environmentally harmful. They saved many of you money, and helped bring LCU into line with the Mayor’s and City Council’s expressed commitment. The folks who opposed the increase are determined that the City’s Energy Transition Plan and Roadmap will be robust enough to move us meaningfully toward decarbonization, and not be mere greenwashing.

Now, if we can only get LCPD to follow the public records law regarding police shootings of civilians. There’s no sense in compounding those tragedies.

                                      – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 1 May, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[The City Council is genuinely concerned about the environment; but lest I get too cheerful about how things are going, this morning, as a copy of the newspaper column blew past an extremely thirsty tree on city property, the tree hollered at me, “Are you sure?”]

 

© Peter Goodman