Guaranteed income push comes as NM’s poverty endures

Increased job security. More stable housing. Better educational outcomes. These are some of the results reported yesterday by advocacy groups following an 18-month Guaranteed Income (GI) pilot program aimed at addressing poverty and economic security for “low-income, mixed-status families and workers in New Mexico.” The New Mexico Economic Relief Working Group, a consortium of local advocacy groups that organized in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, says it specifically targeted immigrant families ineligible for federal stimulus relief money. New Mexico should fund a long-term guaranteed basic income program to help immigrant families, those groups said yesterday during a news conference presenting the report’s findings. New Mexico Voices for Children Senior Research and Policy Javier Rojo tells SFR concerns about GI programs often include the misperception low-income recipients will mis-spend money allocated with “no strings attached.” In fact, he says, “our data and other reports across the country prove that when people actually receive money, they use it intelligently.” The City of Santa Fe used a grant from the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, along with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act for a similar program at Santa Fe Community College. “Poverty is a policy choice,” UpTogether Senior Director of Partnerships Ivanna Neri said during yesterday’s news conference. “Through this pilot, we’re making a case for systemic change.” The push for GI comes amid a new legislative progress report evaluating the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid programs that says despite large investments in both, New Mexico’s “poverty levels have remained stubbornly high”—the highest in the US last year and, since at least 2000, “New Mexico has persistently ranked as one of the poorest states in the country.”

Councilor-elect Faulkner seeks anonymous critic’s identity

At its meeting tomorrow, the city’s Ethics and Campaign Review Board will tackle several pending complaints stemming from the Nov. 7 local election. Those complaints, as SFR reported last month, come from retired state employee Arcy Baca against former City Attorney Geno Zamora, who ran and lost in District 1; Planning Commissioner and bike activist Phil Lucero, who ran and lost in District 2; and Pilar Faulkner, who won the race in District 3. Each complaint alleges the same violation: the candidate’s campaign finance report submitted to the city “did not adhere to the stipulation of segregating individual expenses as mandated by the regulation.” Now Faulkner has a complaint of her own before the ECRB. She charges that “Jay Baker,” a pseudonymous social media account critical of Mayor Alan Webber’s administration, purchased digital ads critical of her and Lucero, while failing to properly adhere to campaign finance disclosure rules. Moreover, Faulkner’s complaint alleges Baca knows Baker’s identity and requests the ECRB subpoena him and Facebook to reveal who is behind the account. Baker denies involvement with the ads to the Santa Fe New Mexican and, on Facebook, says Faulkner “has shown her hand as being one of [the mayor’s] sycophants.” Meanwhile, former City Councilor JoAnne Vigil Coppler, who ran in a three-way mayoral race against Webber in 2021, contributed comments to the New Mexican’s story on the Faulkner/Baker matter, calling the complaint “laughable.” She writes: “The Jay Bakers in this city applaud all of us Jay Bakers—we live in the streets, in the filthy parks, under bridges, in expensive rentals, in substandard houses, in adobe houses, in gated communities, in millionaire mansions and everywhere else. Some of us work for the city, in restaurants, at gas stations, state government, are retired or have no job at all. Rest assured, we are not stupid. Let the Jay Bakers rejoice and continue to call out an administration that doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about its constituents.”

Fitch rates City of Santa Fe bonds A++, but notes audit delays

As Santa Fe city officials recently emphasized in an FAQ regarding its ongoing late audits, while “timely and accurate financial reporting is an important element of the city’s financial well-being…there are other pieces to the larger financial picture that help evaluate a city’s finances, including bond ratings and revenue collection. ” Regarding the bond ratings, the city yesterday reported two recent actions from Independent rating agency Fitch Ratings: “AA+” ratings for the city’s water utility and wastewater bond ratings revenues. The Fitch ratings include each system’s Standalone Credit Profile (both aa+), approximately $31.2 million in water utility system refunding revenue bonds and approximately $13.6 million in wastewater utility system/environmental services gross receipts taxes improvement revenue bonds. “This is great news for the city,” Finance Director Emily Oster says in a statement. “These ratings are independent validation of the strong and stable financial position of the city’s utility programs.” Indeed, Fitch’s notice on the city’s ratings describes the ” ‘AA+’ wastewater utility revenue bond rating and ‘aa+’ SCP” as reflective of “the system’s ‘exceptionally strong’ financial profile, yet are constrained at the current rating given historical volatility in financial performance.” Fitch also notes the city’s late audits for 2021 and 2022 and writes that the agency anticipates the city’s 2023 audit also will be late and “continue presenting an asymmetric risk for the short- to intermediate-term.” Submission of the city’s fiscal 2023 audit to the Office of the State Auditor beyond mid calendar year 2024…may lead to the withdrawal of Fitch’s ratings,” the agency writes. “Consistent timely delivery of clean audits” could improve the wastewater utility ratings, but the water utility ratings are unlikely to increase, Fitch writes, due to “high operating cost burden, elevated investment needs with weak capital investment.”

ECECD seeks budget increase for “forward momentum”

New Mexico’s efforts to create universal pre-K and free childcare have garnered national attention multiple times since creating the Early Childhood Education and Care Department in 2019, and passing a constitutional amendment last year to help fund that commitment. Now, early childhood leaders and advocates hope state lawmakers will approve close to a $150 million increase in general funds for the FY25 budget, as well as $23.5 million in special appropriations for a total operating budget of just over $818 million. The department presented its budget to the Legislative Finance Committee yesterday. “Because of bold investments by our state Legislature and strong leadership from our governor, New Mexico has shot to the front of the pack in early childhood education and care,” ECECD Cabinet Secretary Elizabeth Groginsky says in a statement. “Families across the state are feeling the benefits, and this budget solidifies those gains and maintains our forward momentum.” Increases from the general fund include approximately $75 million to maintain the state’s expanded income eligibility for child care assistance at 400% of the federal poverty level. Special initiatives include $12 million to pilot home visiting incentives and per child payments, as well as create an intake/referral system for home visiting.

Listen up

Española Humane Director of Community Engagement Murad Kirdar and Bobbi Heller, executive director of Felines & Friends New Mexico, talk on the most recent episode of the Pet Chat radio program with Jared Lyons, co-founder of Turquoise Trail Veterinary Urgent Care, about the new model of pet health care the organization will provide in 2024. Pet Chat airs at 9 am Saturdays and 3 pm on local radio Talk 1260 KTRC and FM 103.7. Email the hosts at petchat@santafe.com

Books for all tastes

Forbes magazine surveys the “best beer books” of 2023, naming in first place Ted Mack and America’s First Black-Owned Brewery: The Rise and Fall of Peoples Beer by New Mexico State University Assistant English Professor Clint Lanier, which Forbes describes as “extensively researched and beautifully written.” As described by the publisher, Lanier’s book tells the story of Theodore A. (Ted) Mack, Sr., born a sharecropper in Alabama in 1930, who eventually bought the Peoples Brewing Company of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, despite “the subtle bigotry of Middle America, the corruption of the beer industry and the failures of the federal government.” Writes Forbes: “This is a book as much about overcoming hardship and entrepreneurism as it is about beer.” Scientific American also includes a New Mexico-connected book in its end-of-the-year recommendations, the decidedly not-scientific but fun rom/com/sci-fi mash-up The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis (SFR included the alien invasion/ road-trip novel in its fall reading edition as well). And Civil Eats offers a “food and farming holiday book gift guide,” which includes in its ranks Corn Dance: Inspired First American Cuisine by Loretta Barrett Oden with Beth Dooley. Oden (Potawatomi), Civil Eats writes, “is regarded as a Native American culinary trailblazer, whose work predates today’s robust Indigenous foodways revitalization efforts.” Those efforts include the former Corn Dance Café in Santa Fe, which she and her son founded in 1993, “the first restaurant in the United States to shine a spotlight on local, Indigenous ingredients.”

Trippy putting

CNET Editor at Large Scott Stein takes Meow Wolf’s new virtual reality mini-golf—available as of last week—out for a spin, in a review that begins thusly: “I look into the chirping, beeping, glowing mouth of a deep cave. A jungle world. Something flies overhead, wings fluttering. A tall-legged beast walks carefully across a giant pond…and I see the reflection beneath. But I can also, I think, move through the reflection. I fall through. I’m in another world. Wait, where’s my golf ball?” Meow Wolf’s first VR venture, Stein details, is an add-on course for the Walkabout Mini-Golf, and it both sounds and looks like Meow Wolf, he concludes. As described by Mighty Coconut, Walkabout Mini-Golf’s creators, the course includes “18 easy mode and 18 hard mode holes, collectible golf balls to seek out in-game, a commemorative putter, Meow Wolf-themed avatars for dressing up in the course and anywhere in Walkabout Mini Golf, and is teeming with familiar and new Meow Wolf creatures, colorful flora, mysterious portals, and more gameplay mechanics than any other course to date.” Stein also talks with Meow Wolf co-founder and Creative Director Caity Kennedy, Mighty Coconut Director and Executive Producer Lucas Martell and Walkabout Mini Golf’s Senior Art Director Don Carson about the VR collaboration, with Kennedy confirming the mini-golf environment and characters are based on Meow Wolf’s Denver installation, Convergence Station, but animated in ways not feasible in the physical world. “We had all these limitations in our art that would be so much fun to break,” Kennedy says. “Like having to accommodate hundreds of guests—you kind of need a floor, you have to have railings. Down…needs to be down. Breaking those rules right away was the obvious first step. And then the second one was movement.”

Something soggy this way blows

The National Weather Service forecasts a windy, mostly cloudy day with a 70% chance of precipitation: rain and snow this morning, followed by likely rain and a chance for thunderstorms this evening. That wind? East 20 to 30 mph with a chance for gusts up to 40 mph. If for some reason you are on a lake today, the NWS advises caution. Look for high temperatures in the low 40s. Chances for precipitation tonight rise to 100%, albeit of the freezing rain variety, with little snow accumulation expected down here, but plenty nearby with snowfall forecast through Friday.

Thanks for reading! The Word has enjoyed all the poems Guest Editor Claudia Rankine has chosen thus far in December for the Poem-A-Day series, particularly Juliana Spahr’s “Ode to a Goby.”