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Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced her support for a bill to rename the Human Services Department as the Health Care Authority Department.

The bill, SB 16, also changes HSD’s powers and duties as well as allows for transitions.

The bill’s goal is to establish “a single, unified department responsible for health care purchasing, regulation and policy,” a gubernatorial news release states.

SB 16 is sponsored by Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, and Rep. Elizabeth “Liz” Thomson, D-Albuquerque.

“My priority continues to be to deliver high quality health care for New Mexicans at an affordable price,”Lujan Grisham said in the news release. “Consolidating purchasing, oversight and health care policy in one department creates an exceptional opportunity to leverage the state’s purchasing power and other policy tools to make high quality health care affordable and more accessible to all.”

Divisions within HSD including Income Support Division and Child Support Enforcement Division would remain under the Health Care Authority Department according to the bill, if enacted.

The bill would also transfer the Health Improvement Division and Developmental Disabilities Division from the Department of Health and the State Health Benefits Division from the General Services Department to the Health Care Authority Department.

“The time has come to work on a Health Care Authority for New Mexico,” Stefanics said in the news release. “It is important to cover all New Mexicans with health care and to reduce health care costs in our state.”

A transition plan to identify further units would be redistributed either to or away from the Health Care Authority. The transition plan will also include any further statutory changes needed to bring about the transition by Nov. 1.

The bill calls for a final reorganizational report to be sent to the legislature by Jan. 1, 2024.

Author

Several bills focused on water or wildfire recovery passed the Senate Conservation Committee on Tuesday.

These bills include funds for acequia disaster response, creating a water protection permanent fund, establishing an acequia bureau within the Interstate Stream Commission and an exemption to the state procurement requirements for the State Forestry Division in certain circumstances.

Many of those bills are sponsored by Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas.

SB 176 would increase the funding available through the Acequia and Community Ditch Fund for disaster response, recovery, and hazard mitigation from $2.5 million to $5 million annually. This increase would come from the Irrigation Works Construction Fund. It also appropriates $5 million from the Irrigation Works Construction Fund for planning, engineering design or construction of infrastructure associated with restoration, repair, disaster response, recovery and hazard mitigation, irrigation efficiency or flood protection. This would also allow the acequias to use that funding to meet cost share requirements for state and federal programs.

Campos is sponsoring SB 176 along with senators Leo Jaramillo, D-Española, Liz Stefanics, D-Cerillos, Siah Correa Hemphill, D-Silver City, and Rep. Ambrose Castellano, D-Las Vegas.

New Mexico Acequia Association Executive Director Paula Garcia said damages in Grant and Hidalgo counties alone total almost $3 million. She said that the governor has the authority through executive order to make $750,000 available per county, which is not sufficient.

Because the federal government has taken responsibility for the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, Garcia said the federal government is covering 100 percent of the recovery costs in the areas impacted by that fire.

But other parts of the state, such as Grant County, have been impacted by fires that were not started by the federal government and that means the acequias in those areas must provide some local match, usually around 25 percent.

“There’s a need for a state cost-share and this program is well positioned to provide that cost-share to the existing disaster programs,” she said.

Coming up with the money to match the state or federal funding that is available after a disaster can be a challenge for acequias.

At the same time, the Interstate Stream Commission expressed concerns about relying on the Irrigation Works Construction Fund, which has been decreasing in recent years.

SB 176 passed the committee on a 8-0 vote.

The bill now heads to the Senate Finance Committee.

SB 195 would create a water protection permanent fund that would help address infrastructure needs such as dam repairs in New Mexico.

Campos also sponsored this bill, which passed the committee on a 8-0 vote.

Campos said the bill would essentially allocate $150 million from the state’s general fund to the water protection permanent fund for the state investment officer to invest. The money generated through investing this money could then be used for projects like dam repair.

Campos said the water system overall in New Mexico has been neglected.

“We have literally dozens of dams that are at high risk,” he said.

The bill also appropriates $8 million to the water protection permanent fund for the Interstate Stream Commission to administer. This funding could be used to hire staff and to help address infrastructure like dams, diversions and reservoirs.

State Engineer Mike Hamman said the Dam Safety Bureau has identified more than 70 dams statewide that are in need of repair.

The bill now heads to the Senate Finance Committee.

Campos also sponsored SB 239, which would create a new acequia bureau within the Interstate Stream Commission and appropriates $300,000 from the state’s general fund for that purpose. It passed on a 7-0 vote and now heads to the Senate Finance Committee.

SB 206, sponsored by Senators Carrie Hamblen, D-Las Cruces, and Pat Woods, R-Broadview, as well as Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo, would create an exemption allowing the State Forestry Division to bypass the procurement process when distributing federal funding to nonprofits that have already been awarded the money through the federal procurement process.

The bill passed on a 7-1 vote and now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The committee also passed bills that would raise hunting and fishing license fees, allow horse rescues to have the right of first refusal of seized and abandoned equines and a bill banning single-use plastic grocery bags in stores.

The hunting and fishing license fees have not increased in about 17 years, according to New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Director Michael Sloane.

The department receives most of its funding from the sales of hunting and fishing licenses.

The average increase for resident licenses would be $7.78 while the highest increase for New Mexico residents would be $25. Nonresidents would see larger increases with an average increase of $80.45 and a maximum increase of $255.

SB 254, increasing the license fees, is sponsored by Campos as well as Sen. Steve Neville, R-Farmington. It passed on a 5-2 vote.

“This is really the only funding source for all wildlife in New Mexico,” Sloane said.

He said the department works with deer, elk and bass as well as animals that are not hunted or fished such as the Jemez Mountains salamander.

SB 254 now heads to the Senate Finance Committee.

Hamblen is sponsoring HB 271, the equine definition bill. She said it defines equine more clearly and makes it easier for horse rescues to bring the equines into their facilities without having to go through the auction process when the animals are in New Mexico Livestock Board custody.

When the state Livestock Board confiscates equines or when an equine is found roaming and is not reclaimed, the current law requires the animal be sold to the highest bidder, according to the fiscal impact report.

The bill expands the definition to include donkeys, ponies, hinnies and mules as well as horses.

Susan Hemmerle, the executive director of the Horse Shelter, said that it’s in the best interest of the animals if they are sent to a shelter that has the expertise and veterinarians on call to care for them. In many cases, she said, the equines are severely emaciated and it can take up to six months for the horses to recover. At that point, she said, the animals can be placed up for adoption and a nominal adoption fee is charged.

The bill passed on an 8-0 vote and now heads to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Finally, the single-use plastic bag ban, SB 243, follows bans enacted by cities like Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Silver City.

It is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces. He said the bill would prevent 500 million bags annually from entering New Mexico’s environment.

Eight states including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Vermont have passed similar bans on single-use plastic bags.

The Senate Conservation Committee voted 6-1 in support of the bill. It now heads to the Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee.

Author

The daughter of a successful Hollywood songwriter, Eliza Gilkyson was born and raised in Los Angeles. Yet, Gilkyson, who has followed in her dad’s songwriting and travel footsteps, has become a New Mexico expert.

She recently sold her home in Austin, Texas, and moved full-time to a “rambling 100-plus-year-old adobe” in Taos. In the past, she also lived in New Mexico in Santa Fe, Cerrillos and Lamy.

“I have been going to and from New Mexico since I was a little girl,” says Gilkyson, whose father, Terry, was a Hollywood songwriter-folk singer best known for writing "Bare Necessities" for Walt Disney Productions’ 1967 animated film The Jungle Book. “In the early visits, it was mostly dirt roads and a small art community, but it has now grown to an international destination, a market for Western/Native American art and a retirement mecca.”

Gilkyson’s new album, Songs From the River Wind, is a nod to her love for New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado. She lives in Taos at the foot of Pueblo Peak, an inspiration for her song “At the Foot of the Mountain.”

“I now find myself at the foot of this beautiful mountain,” she says, “appreciating its magnificent benevolence as our big snow and rain catcher that feeds the water systems that make this part of the West so beautiful and lush.”

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Gilkyson, whose songs are mostly folk, rock, blues or New Age, says she hadn’t expected that her full-time move to Taos would be so fulfilling.

“I had no idea that the door to my past would open for me just by living here again — so many memories flooding in of the years when I wandered the West as a traveling musician and even farther back to my childhood adventures in Wyoming and New Mexico,” she says. “I was overwhelmed with the recollections of the iconic characters and loved ones — now gone — who influenced me early on, and the sweeping landscape that had always been my sanctuary. I wanted to make a record that captured this feeling.”

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Gilkyson says “there’s a joy and a sort of bitter sweetness” in the new album that everyone feels when they come home.

Among other places, Gilkyson sings on the new record about Wyoming’s Wind River and the Colorado Trail.

“The Wind River is a wild, scenic river that is born in the Wind River range and comes down through Dubois to Lander,” she says. “I spent my childhood summers at a ranch in that part of the world, and it hooked me on the Old West. The Colorado Trail was a south-to-north cattle trail in the old days of the open West and range lands, and the song was an old cowboy love song that I rewrote a bit to be more from a woman's point of view, which was rare in music back then. I wrote it late one night after a show. I was driving a Colorado back road with the white line stretching ahead of me, a late-night moon coming in through the windshield and a broken heart.”

Her heart and mind have lately been filled with the magnificence of Taos, where she bought her adobe home nine years ago and rented it until the COVID-19 pandemic struck. She recommends various sights for visitors.

“There's so much to see and do here,” Gilkyson says. “The Columbine Trail on the way to Red River is a nice gradual climb along a lovely creek with easy crossings that actually goes all the way up Lobo Mountain if you have the wind power. There are also the trails to Williams Lake or the falls in El Salto. If you come the second weekend of September, you can hit Michael Hearne's Big Barn Dance. It has turned into a really special outdoor music festival with a place to sit down under a big tent, listen to the best singer-songwriters and musicians and dance on a dance floor. Visitors must go to Taos Pueblo, a feat of architecture and history. The Millicent Rogers Museum is my favorite, because the Native American art collection is first-rate, and the touring exhibits are world-class. Whitewater rafting on the Rio Grande is fun, and you have to try the blue corn enchiladas at Orlando's New Mexican Cafe.”

When Gilkyson first left home in Los Angles in the late 1960s, she rented an old wooden boxcar that sat atop cinder blocks next to train tracks in Lamy. It’s a tiny depot town about 18 miles south of Santa Fe with a population of about 210 residents.

“There's a song on the new record, ‘Hill Behind This Town,’ about that place and time,” Gilkyson says. “It seemed to fit with all these other songs about the West.”

Besides New Mexico and the West, Gilkyson looks fondly at Switzerland and Europe. She lived “off and on” for nearly two years in Switzerland where she wrote and toured with the Swiss harpist Andreas Vollenweider for his 1993 Eolian Minstrel record.

“That was an education!” Gilkyson exclaims. “Other than trips to Mexico, I had never been outside the USA before and was plunged into an alternate culture in a tiny country with such dramatic beauty and wonderful people. We toured Europe in grand style, and I had fun being a chanteuse in the crack band he put together. It was an entry into a whole other world of music, style and geography. We took trains that turned into cable cars and went up over the Swiss Alps. We looked out at the little mountain villages that had been there since Roman times and then played at night in fabulous, old European music halls where Mozart and others had played.”

Gilkyson says there’s “a special place in my heart” for the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland.

“There’s such lush beauty and historic architecture — all so connected to the past,” she says. “It's a songwriter’s dream over there with lots of support for the kind of music I make.”

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Liam Mohan-Litchfield twisted and manipulated his tiny hands, using sign language to read before a white miniature horse named Thor.

He was one of eight students from the New Mexico School for the Deaf who traveled to My Little Horse Listener therapy facility in Los Cerrillos on Thursday to improve their reading skills while meeting a group of pint-sized equines.

“I just really want all of them to have positive experiences with reading,” their teacher, Kim Burkholder, said during an interview. “For the kids who are completely deaf, reading in English is their second language, and it’s a struggle for many of them. And so the more positive experiences they can have with reading, the better.”

Burkholder explained that the students’ conditions vary, with some being able to hear with the help of a hearing aid while others are completely deaf.

She said many of the students are also late language learners, meaning they didn’t learn to sign until later in their lives.

My Little Horse Listener is a nonprofit equine therapy organization that uses horses and other hoofed mammals to connect with people through activities that strengthen relationship-building skills.

It offers a few different types of services, from an overnight stay with their animals, to domestic violence recovery sessions, where victims learn to regain trust.

Liz Delfs, the organization’s founder and executive director, said she also works with families that have been torn apart by drug abuse, helping parents and children form new bonds.

Delfs said over 500 kids have taken part in the organization’s various programs, including some with hearing impairments. She soon realized deaf children were able to make connections with these animals that also rely on gestures to communicate.

“Horses kind of live in a nonverbal world, and they’re really dependent on hand signals and so forth,” Delf said during an interview. “It’s kind of fascinating how the horses and the children interact.

“The kids are just so excited when they see the horses, and it really is about the relationship the child forms with the horse. It actually showed us they were capable of doing so much more for people,” she added.

Delfs said the organization also teach what she likes to call “horse wisdom,” or lessons about the animals and how they can help people.

During the program, Delfs introduced the students to their four hoofed counselors: Serafina the miniature donkey, Mellie the mule, and the miniature horses Hot Dog and Thor.

She taught students, whose ages ranged from 6 to 8 years old, how to pet the equines and how they communicate with people without using words.

“They use their bodies to tell us what they want,” Delfs told the students. “It’s our job to always be looking at their bodies and trying to figure out what they want.”

She taught them how each of the animals has their own unique personality.

Thor is the leader of the herd, who always looks over his pals. Serafina is the gentlest of the bunch, while Mellie was a bit of a wild card with a penchant for chewing on paper. His handlers called Hot Dog the comedian, who was undoubtedly the favorite of the bunch.

Curious students asked questions about the animals, like “How much do they poop?”

After reading their books, the young pupils gathered for snacks and drew pictures of their new equine friends.

Izzy said she plans to ask her parents to bring her back to My Little Horse Listener, even though she lives very far away.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Don Bullis

Did you ever wonder about the town of Waldo? For many years, there was a well-marked turn-off to Waldo on Interstate-25, south of Santa Fe. You can still follow an unpaved road to reach the locale, which is located a couple of miles northwest of Cerrillos in Santa Fe County. Keep your eyes open, though. If you blink, you’ll miss it. Joyce Smith Walker lived there from 1937 to 1942. She wrote the following: “The Santa Fe Railroad was advancing westward across New Mexico by 1879. Coal deposits at Waldo Gulch and other nearby areas were checked as possible sources of fuel for the Santa Fe Railroad locomotives. “But the Waldo coal was anthracite (hard) coal and could not be used for that purpose. The tracks were laid on past Waldo in 1880. “In 1892, a spur line from Waldo Station to the coal-mining town of Madrid was laid. They were mining both bituminous (soft) and anthracite coal there. “Several years later, 15 coke ovens were built along the track at Waldo, which processed a high quality of smelting coke. The mines at Waldo Gulch were closed down in 1906, but the town continued to exist. …” Coke is a kind of fuel that burns hotter than either bituminous or anthracite coal. “In October 1916, a Pennsylvania corporation bought the town of Waldo and some surrounding area and built a zinc floation (sic) plant. They owned the place until Daddy (R.D. Smith) bought it in 1937.” R.D. Smith spent about five years dismantling the town and hauling it away to sell as scrap. Today there is only a cement foundation left. The town was named for Henry L. Waldo, a New Mexico territorial jurist. As the story goes, Judge Waldo and New Mexico historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell were aboard a train that passed through the new settlement, which smelled strongly of the stock pens there. Waldo noted a sign that read “Twitchell,” and he commented that Twitchell was a good name for bull pens. Twitchell, though, had the last laugh: He used his political influence to have the name of the place changed to Waldo, which stuck. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a tongue-in-cheek group in Albuquerque that called itself the New Mexico Undevelopment Commission. It held its annual meeting and picnic at Waldo. The group, like the town of Waldo, no longer exists. (Don Bullis is a Rio Rancho resident, New Mexico centennial historian and award-winning author. He was named the Best Local Author in the 2018 and 2019 Rio Rancho Observer Readers’ Choice contests. “Ellos Pasaron por Aqui” is translated as “They Passed by Here.”) Don Bullis’s latest book, “New Mexico Historical Chronology,” is available from riograndebooks.com.

Robert + Claudia

Party animals

N love

“We always paled in comparison to Cool ‘Disco’ Dan, but we were pretty clever, man,” said Robert, 64, on the phone from Cerrillos, N.M., where he and Claudia, 65, recently celebrated their 38th anniversary.

After a reader wrote in with memories of seeing that graffito, I put out a request in my Tuesday column in search of the person responsible. It turns out, a lot of people remember Robert and Claudia, who were a sort of It couple in those new wave days.

Robert was bartending at the Childe Harold near Dupont Circle when Claudia walked in one day in 1979.

“Suddenly this door opens and all this light flooded into a very dark room,” said Robert. “There was this silhouette and in walked this beautiful young woman.”

Claudia had just moved to D.C. from New Mexico.

“She ordered a drink and stole my heart,” said Robert.

They were friends at first, then more than friends.

Claudia was a legal secretary. Robert bartended and booked bands.

“It was a [really] great time back then,” Robert said. “On any given night there must have been 20 good local bands, I mean really good bands. We’d get off work and go to Desperadoes, the Wax Museum, d.c. space and 9:30 Club — even Madam’s Organ.

“Claudia and I were out at a show every night and dancing. In fact, dude, we would say to the bouncer, ‘Let us in free and we’ll have everybody dancing and drinking in 10 minutes.’ All it takes is one couple.”

The pair would bring something with them on their nocturnal rambles.

“We always carried spray paint around,” Robert said. “Our bag was never defacing things. It was finding things that were gonna be torn down. … When F Street was all boarded up, and 17th Street, there were canvases everywhere. I should say temporary canvases were everywhere. Oliver Carr was rebuilding all of downtown so plywood was everywhere. I wasn’t into, like, vandalism.”

As for that concrete overpass — which they later amended to Robert + Claudia/Party animals/N gaged — it was just too inviting a spot.

“It was very spontaneous,” Robert said. “I'm a big believer in the world needs more joy. And remember, these were the Reagan years. D.C. needed something that was more positive.”

There was something else Washington needed and it came to Robert when he and Claudia were organizing their wedding. They lived in Georgetown at the time. Most of the neighborhood’s churches were expensive. But the pastor at Grace Episcopal Church on Wisconsin Avenue NW near the Whitehurst Freeway charged a token amount — around $100 — and made a request: Perhaps they could volunteer on the church’s food truck, serving people experiencing homelessness.

The community service changed their lives.

“Here we were in front of the World Bank and the White House serving people outside in the rain,” Robert said. “I just thought, ‘Man, this is messed up.’ Going back to those punk rock roots, I thought there’s no justice in this.”

All his life, Robert had wanted to open a nightclub. Now, he wanted to do something else: Open a cooking school for the homeless. Working in bars and restaurants — and with friends in catering — he knew how much food got thrown away every day, food that could go to hungry people.

In 1989, Robert launched D.C. Central Kitchen, using ingredients left over from George H.W. Bush’s inauguration to teach people the skills they’d need for a job in food preparation. The charity is still going strong. Among the chefs who would eventually stop by to check out the operation was José Andrés. Robert serves on the board of the globe-trotting chef’s World Central Kitchen.

In 2012, the Eggers left Washington and moved to Los Angeles, where Robert launched a similar operation. In 2018 they moved to Cerrillos, N.M., a town between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. They have an adult daughter, Julia.

“Just the other day we had our wedding album out,” Robert said. “The reception was at the Elks Lodge in Old Town Alexandria. The room was decorated with a big banner.”

And spray-painted across the banner was “Party animals in love.”

Are they still? “Forever, dude,” said Robert.