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. ]