New Mexico in Focus; 304; Health Care Reform, Stormwater, and ABQ Mayoral Race: Martin Chavez

Martin Chavez hopes to make history this October by winning an unprecedented fourth term as Albuquerque mayor. But what can he possibly have left to accomplish at City Hall? We'll find out when I sit down with Chavez, one-on-one. Plus the dangers of monsoon rains to our drinking water, finding common ground on healthcare reform, and debating a plan to cut down on drunk driving by keeping bars downtown open even later. New Mexico focuses informed, involved, and in-depth, and it all starts right now. It's a bold plan that has plenty of people talking, but we'll keep bars open later here

in Albuquerque, put a cork in some of the state's drunk driving problems. Now, their line panelists are ready to weigh in on that discussion, plus their takes on Congress and Martin Heinrichs, and the delegation's efforts to find a new mission for the tacos here, and that's in light of a U.S. Senate vote to ground or halt the building of more F-22 fighter jets. Also on tap, what each of us can do to protect our water supply this monsoon season, and two people on opposite ends of the healthcare reform spectrum, square off in search of common ground, or not. But at first, it's official. Martin Chavez is running for mayor. The three-term incumbent sat down recently with me here in the studio to talk about why he wants to run again, and what he hopes to accomplish if voters give him another four years in office. When Martin Chavez first took over as mayor of Albuquerque, Bill Clinton was still in the White House, and Gary Johnson was walking the halls of the Roundhouse in Santa Fe. And yet, the mayor says his work is far from finished. That's why he recently announced his plans to run for an unprecedented fourth-term in office. Here with us now to talk about what slept on his to-do list and other things is Martin Chavez himself. Thank you, mayor, for

joining us. What would you be with, David? Last Sunday, when you announced, I should say on July 12th, when you announced, the Albuquerque Journal had a really interesting story. Dan McKay's first line said, Martin Chavez has already spent more time in the mayor's office than anyone since World War II. You've been doing this job a lot. Why do you want to do it for more years? A whole lot of reasons. It's my hometown, and I love Albuquerque. And I'm really proud of what we've accomplished. But the best of Albuquerque is in our future. And if you look at what we've done as a predicate for the future, we've really got an exciting next four years in store for Albuquerque. And it's not just the next four years, but it's laying the foundation for 50 years down the road. Whether it be increasing public safety, adding more police officers, which I've already said I would do within the next 18 months, 100 new officers, or really starting to fully realize this green economy that is starting to blossom around us. I just announced here a couple of weeks ago a new program that will put solar panels on 500 rooftops across the city of Albuquerque. We have three marvelous solar companies here, but we've got more that we're working to bring here. And I want

to see the full realization of this green economy. And then you take that economy. You link that with Sandy and National Laboratories. You link that with our film industry. And then you really have, for our kids, a tremendous future in our hometown. If that's where the dreams take them. Now, 2005, when you won your current term, there was, there was a stroining Albuquerque journal that paraphrased. You didn't quote you paraphrased. You were saying this would be your last term. Did you change your mind since then? Did they misquote you in that story? No, I don't recall being quoted that this is my last term. I've got so much enthusiasm for this position more than before because I was out for a little bit. And I noticed like to sit on the sidelines and not be able to impact public policy when you're bursting with ideas for things that can be done. So I've valued every moment I have. And that's one of the difference between me, this last couple of terms. And my first term, that is, I don't waste time. It's constant motion, constant pushing. We had in one of the races somebody that said, you know, can't we just all get along? And when I'm done,

and everyone leaves eventually, it's not good. I don't want to look back and say, gee, we all got along. I want to look back and say, look what we did together. We transformed this community all working together. And as I said earlier, we're just starting. Now on the budget mayor, it seems like maybe one accomplishment that you could certainly point to is this year, no furloughs, no layoffs, no pay cuts. There have been actually fairly generous pay raises for police officers, fire. But there are critics out there that say the city can't afford those. And the economy certainly in not great shape. How do you respond to those critics that during this time, the city may be spending more than it can actually pay for? I've had the opportunity, David, to work at a national level with mayors. I'm on the board of trustees of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in talking with Shirley Franklin in Atlanta recently. They just laid off 400 rich daily in Chicago, 500. We know the challenge is a California is having. We work really hard during my tenure as mayor to

diversify the economy, so that we have some buffer from this recession. We have a recession here, anyone that's in real estate and construction knows we have a recession here, but we're doing much better than most cities in America for very specific reasons. One of them is the film industry, which 10 years ago, if you just set up, you would have the largest sound stage in America or North America. No one would have believed it. It's a reality today. The budget today is the same size as it was four years ago. I have been really, really tight with the dollar at City Hall. Indeed, we have fewer city employees today than we did eight years ago. So we've really reigned that spending in. And then when we saw the economy start to turn on us last October, we dramatically reduced. We stopped hiring even positions that were funded, and we tightened the belt. Government lives within its means. I'm really proud because we did that, that we were able to afford the pay raises. We had agreed to give the employees.

We didn't lay anybody off. Folks realistically ought not to expect any expansion in government services next year. Outside of public service or safety, that's the bottom line with projected zero growth. The zero growth in a city hall around America today is a high five. Two sound is negative six percent. Each one of those percentages is three to four million dollars. And so we're doing well, but it's been very tight physical management. Our credit ratings are the highest in the history of the city. And that's Wall Street looking at our financial planning, our physical management and saying, you're doing okay for the future. One follow-up question may are on the budget. Your opponents have criticized you for transferring over millions from the capital budget to the operating budget. That's probably part of the story why there were no layoffs or service cutbacks or significant service cutbacks this year. They charged that was irresponsible, maybe playing toward the election. I imagine you disagree with that. Well, the alternative would have been a layoffs in about 400 employees. And imagine the shock waves that would have sent through

the local economy to the private sector. The reduction in service. Those employees aren't just sitting around. They're working providing service and maintaining parks. They're doing all types of things that are senior centers, our community centers. And so I respectfully disagree with them. It was a budget that was passed unanimously by the Avakirky City Council. So obviously the council agrees with me as well. There's no denying these are difficult times. And I think our capital program needs to be as robust as possible. But the bottom line is, if you build a park and you don't have anyone to maintain it, you're not going to have a park for long. And that's what not transferring those money sort of done over the next few years as the economy recovers. And I believe it will. I think we all have to believe it will as Americans. Then we'll start to move more money back into the capital programs because they're part of a growing vibrant city. One issue that's also come up in the race we alluded to in the intro is term limits. As viewers may know, you challenged the provision in the city charter that provided for term limits.

The courts agreed and said it was not constitutional. But what do you make of the argument that we need fresh leadership? That the president is term limited to two terms. The governor is term limited to two terms. Mayor Avakirky, the voters when they approved the charter, it was term limited, but that of course is no more. What do you make of that argument for term limits? The state constitution is what it is. And the Supreme Court didn't have any problems making the call. It was very, very clear. And we have an opportunity for term limits come October every election. If you don't like the elected official toss them out, I notice that both of my opponents who are calling now for term limits, they've been almost 20 years together in legislature collectively had never proposed term limits. And I have yet to hear what I'm saying. Hey, you know what? I'm self-imposing a term limit on my state representative seat. I think this call that comes three months to call. I think when it comes three months before the election, that maybe, just maybe there might be some power. One other issue I wanted to see if you would respond to mayor is on this show, your opponent

Richard Romero said that the ranks of the political appointees, the example of employees at the city has grown a lot under your watch. He said on this show from 34 under your predecessor Jim Bockers watch in 2001 to over 100 today. Is that accurate? No, he simply didn't have the facts right. There are fewer exempt employees today than there were in Jim Bockers administration. There are overall fewer employees today than there were in Jim Bockers administration. And when you look at the people I brought in to office, Ed Adams, the CAO, career city employee, civil engineer, built isotope stadium, Montagno Bridge, he's a great, great administrator. Look, Ann Lamberson who just left us, PhD in economics. We've got Irene Garcia, her master's degree in public finance. She's a chief operating officer, Pete Denelli, jurist doctorate, former judge, former chief deputy district attorney. These are people of extraordinary high quality. That's why they'll make more than the mayor. As a matter of public record

mayor, you're currently a defendant in a lawsuit filed by a gentleman named John Bodie Bodie. Hey David, I'm the defendant in a lot of lawsuits. Mayor gets sued every single day. This is one that's been reported on. It was filed back in March. I wanted to ask you that I should say for those who haven't followed the nitty gritty here, the contractor alleges that you're some of your staffers pressured him to offer free or reduced air travel for you to Mexico between 0406 and in 07 to Las Cruces and maybe Carl's bad. Did you instruct any city staffers to pressure him for free or reduced air travel? No, it's absolute garbage. So let's understand what's going on. This is a city contractor. They're out at double legal. The operator. The operator. And what they want is a no bid long term contract to service out there. I said no, they're not going to have it. They have to bid like everyone else. If they win like everyone, win, then so be it. But you don't get long term no bid contracts in my administration. This is a problem that we uncovered out at

the Sunport and the double legal to his part of that. And this is some guys with, you know, hey, I'm a big boy and it's a rough business. But you know, for 150 bucks in a lawyer, you can say anything you want. And that's all it's happened here. As a matter of fact, in this particular litigation, the court of appeals has already proposed summary reversal. It's just bull. But let's air it out. Only 30 seconds left, Mayor. Looking forward, taking a step back. Are there one or two specific proposals that you can leave our viewers with in terms of what you would do if elected to a fourth term? I'm going to grow this advocate police department within 18 months, another 100. I'm going to continue to work with the schools. I'm going to green this economy. My advocate in student math and science, which I started had to sue the schools to get just at its first graduating class. Every single senior is going to the university. First time in history of New Mexico. That's just a predicate for the future. This city is going to be the first city to emerge from the recession. I'm going to guide it there. I provide leadership, vision, and I've

got a history of doing what I say I will do. On that note, we're going to have to end this conversation. Mayor Martin Chavez, thank you. Thank you, David. If you missed any of the interview of this interview, or want to watch it again, just head to our website at Newmexiconfocus.org. While you're there, you can also watch our interviews with the other two mayoral candidates, Richard Romero and Richard Berry. Sorry. All right, thank you for helping us get to know all three of those mayoral candidates. David, really appreciate that over here. Now, we should mention the Avakurky mayor election, of course, scheduled for October 6th. So, look for much more coverage right here of the candidates and the issues as we get closer to voting day. Now, we want to get to know some things going on in this end of the world. Let's start with introducing our guest for this week. Starting with Whitney Wei Cheshire. She is a regular panelist, of course, a long time political consultant and strategist. James Garantino, he's a radio host, 15.50 AM Kiva, K-I-B-A. He used to be K-Joy, now Kiva. I love that. And he's also with the Avakurky Journal, Marga Montoya, current Haywood Burns Chair and Civil Rights for the C-1Y Law School in New York. In the summer

senior adviser to executive vice president Paul Roth in the UNM Health Sciences Center and Teresa Cordova. She's our guest panelist for the summer and she's a former Bernalio County commissioner, of course, and director of community and regional planning at the UNM School of Law. Listen to me. School of Architecture and Planning. You have enough on your plate. All right. We've been tackling drunk driving and alcoholism and other things here pretty regularly on this show. In a very interesting situation has happened. We've got a situation where our state folks are looking at the idea of allowing people to have a bar open, remain open for extra time. Last call right now is 2 AM. We can go 90 minutes past that the idea of Whitney is to basically give people time to sober up, eat, have some coffee, whatever. But I'm getting a lot of interesting feedback about this. Meaning, our messages have been anything else but that. Meaning, if you pound a couple of extra drinks at closing, let's just have an example. For the idea that you could like chase that

girl across the bar because they have an extra 90 minutes to hang out at the bar, what are we really solving here? You get what I'm saying here? It seems like the cure is not quite the fix here in some way. Well, I think up front, the one thing I'd want to say is that if you want a business and you want to stay up until 4 or 5 AM, you ought to be able to stay open until 4 or 5 AM. I mean, I understand the liquor laws would shut down the time that you're allowed to serve alcohol and that's fine. But if the businesses themselves want to stay open in additional 90 minutes to allow their patrons, sober up, take some time, find a cab, maybe call somebody to come pick them up instead of having to sit out on the curb. I think they absolutely should be allowed to do it. Do I think it's going to curb drunk driving incidences? No, I think it's another one of those things that we toss out there as a possibility. But at the end of the day, if people aren't responsible for their own actions, it's going to be very difficult for little things like this to kind of etch away at it. And Margaret, part of the problem is, you know, this, I don't want to pick on downtown here, so there's a lot of bars around Elbuquerque. But just as a point of reference, downtown, the scene outside of bars where kids are

spilling out for an extra amount of time, the feedback I'm getting from bar owners down there is like, all right, great, we just extended the time. People can be milling around the streets by an extra hour and a half when they should be going home, for God's sake. There's another aspect to this and that has to do with binge drinking. There's some research to show that young people, I guess my daughter's included at some point in there, get there about midnight. So this isn't that, you know, sort of old folks who arrive out, you know, after a movie or whatever, this is that their evening begins very late. So that if these 20-somethings, that's the age group that engages in binge drinking, right, arrive there at midnight and have until two in the morning. And what happens is that last call is usually at 130, you know, and so does this now mean that last call will be at two? Does it mean, and the amount of drinking that then takes place in those two

hours? And then there's the reaction time, really, the, you know, the metabolizing of the alcohol. So does the hour solve anything? Because that's really, we're not even talking 90 minutes, we're talking 60 minutes. So there are, I think, a lot of problems. The other thing is that the studies that have been done here in Bernalillo County show that unlike drug arrests, which really are a daytime phenomenon, DUI is really between midnight and 6 a.m. And so I don't think that this, if this is intended to solve either of those problems, binge drinking or driving while impaired, I don't get it. I don't see that this is in fact going to. Interesting point there because you're right. It does. If you're downtown, Jim, say about 11, there's a market difference in that next hour about suddenly it's like this throng of people are all over the place. That's a very key point. The other point is to the, I heard the mayor mentioned that if a bar shows to

serve food, you know, well, that's not the easiest thing in the world. You can't just start serving food. You have to be licensed to do that, right? You also have to pay your staff to say that other 90 minutes. And how many food orders are you going to make in the next 90 minutes? If people who are drinking to the last minute downtown want a cup of coffee and want to eat, you know, they roll up the road to, you know, to the frontier. No, they don't. They don't though. That's the thing. Because they're closed. They don't close like they don't. Why? Because it was sick and being a bar. Oh, okay, there we go. It was a crazy scene. My point is that the people are at, how have a two point, you know, a two point. Oh, you know, alcohol content in their body. I'm going to be thinking, well, I'm going to sit here for 90 minutes and sober up because in 90 minutes, they're not going to be below 0.8. That's right. Well, I think there's still going to be true. There's a message. You know, the point about driving drunk is that people, how many times have you said to somebody, you know, are you okay to drive? And they say, Oh, yeah, I'm okay. That does not just because they think that they can keep it between the lines

does not mean that they are not legally drunk. And, you know, this only perpetuates the falsity that if you have a cup of coffee and sit there for half an hour, you have somehow recovered from 18 beers. And that's wrong. It's a myth that this will make this really won't make any. But I still think that they should have the right to stay open if they want to, if the business wants to do it, do it. Sure. So how did this start to us? I mean, it just seems so obvious. Even this is a very similar conversation. A lot of people are having a round town. They're looking at this and going, wait a minute. This is like something out of the 1950s that you have a cup of black coffee and you're going to be suddenly sober. We can start drinking coffee at midnight if you want to sober. Exactly. Well, it still gets back to how much alcohol is being served to any given individual. And is the the server, the bartender, are they cutting people off at a point when they should be? Are they not encouraging people to drink more by continuing to serve them more? So the last call would still need to be early. And people still need to monitor the amount of drinking that's occurring here. The thing is that we are searching for a range of solutions to a very difficult problem. And this is certainly, I don't think, intended to be, nor

should it be, the panacea for it. We still have to deal with transportation issues. The fact that people are still driving to socialize. There are not activities for the most part where people live. So there's still the issue. People are still getting into cars. So this doesn't work unless you really have the transportation available. This being any of our efforts. Sorry, I did meet a step on you there. You made that point last time we talked about this. I got a lot of feedback after the show that Ms. Cordova was exactly right. You know, if you don't live with an walking distance like in a lot of bigger denser cities of a bar, it's a difficulty. And the reason I bring that up is my feedback again. Don't know about you guys is the cab solution is in essence not as solution in this town. It is not easy to get a cab. No, it's not. We don't have good capsules. And it isn't very inexpensive either. It isn't like being in one of the bigger cities where you can hail it quickly and get home relatively inexpensively. Exactly. And it's not just people who are attending bars that are getting drunk and getting in their cars at 2 a.m. A lot of the binge-reakers that you see weren't at bars because there is some level of responsibility to the server. It's people who are sitting

at home and somebody who is at a barbecue. It was maybe a wedding. So I mean, on the one hand, I hate to see bars continuing to get a bad rap on serving, you know, serving kids and sending them out into the streets when people use very bad judgment and do that entirely on their own. But the thing about this whole thing is so disingenuous. I mean, if we really want to get serious about clamping down on bars in terms of letting people out the door who shouldn't be driving, then why are we talking about this instead of doing something like, you know, turn your keys in and, you know, blow in a breathalyzer or something. There's things that we could do to just end it. And nobody wants to do that. I mean, they don't want to kill the business and the bars and, you know, the liquor lobby would never let you. So, you know. Who wants to be in the bar business now? This is, you know, it's a tough business to be in. Sure. I mean, Jim, you know, good, I'm sure. Well, that's true. I take, of course. Yeah. You can put up a little, you know, and you want to own the liquor. And you want to own the liquor. That's the asset. But I feel sorry for the server, though, that isn't able to identify accurately whether or not they've just been handed a false ID because they can. And I know of instances where they have received felony charges and spent the weekends in jail because they didn't adequately identify

someone's false ID. Right. And at the same time, you know, it's like if you are, if you go to some place and, I mean, it's like, okay, you know, I don't really look like I'm under 21. But, but, you know, you always have to show your ID too. And so, where's the balance even in the expectation that a server is really monitoring people under 21 and making sure that they're not drinking. So, it's a tough one. Sure. It's a tough, tough go. I mean, we should just file this under the, why not? Right. I mean, let's try something. Why not? Well, and if they're going to, then I think it's issue of the food because a lot of bars are not equipped with a license or the, or the kitchen or the whole set up to serve food. So is there another way that you can, you know, that you have the, the, the, the, the mobile people to sell, you know, food? Right. That's what I'm thinking of downtown. Yes. I'm, I'm going to hold my tongue on the quality of the hot dogs you find downtown late at night. It's going to hold off. It's our liquor laws. Yeah. You will find that, that legislatures and city councils have tried any number of measures to try and deal with

this problem. And, I mean, there really are, I mean, first of all, I mean, there are, there are places that sell liquor 24 hours a day. But then there are any number of places that have tried to extend hours to cut back hours. That's very interesting to see sort of what that interplay looks like between policy and what is largely, again, to pick it from last week. Interesting. I need to, I need to move on to unfortunately, but you're right, exactly right. And it doesn't hurt to experiment. We want to leave that with that thought. Now, when we come back here to the line, we're talking to the future of the national labs, reaction to the president's national address in the moonwalk memories. But up first, with so many healthcare reform ideas out there is compromise even an option. David sits down with two folks at opposite ends of the spectrum to get their prescriptions for fixing our healthcare system. U.S. Senate leaders say there will be no vote on healthcare reform before the fall break. It's a big blow to President Obama's timeline, but it does give us all a chance to research

the issues a little better. Two people that have been investigating the, investigating the issue for years and yet have very different opinions as we will shortly see are here with us today in studio. Carol Miller is a former congressional candidate in northern New Mexico and a health care policy expert across the table from her is Paul Guessing. He is the president of the Rio Grande Foundation, a local research institute. Thank you both for joining us. Great to be here. Same question to begin for both of you, but beginning Carol with you. In your view, what should be the goals of healthcare reform? Well, I think the goal should be better health. I mean, I think we have to have a system that is inviting to people that lets them come into the system easily that focuses on prevention and primary care, public health. That's not where we invest the money. We invest much more money and end of life care, chronic disease care and the like. And there are so many myths out there that are just blatantly false that I hope we're going to have a chance to discuss and rebut each other as we move through the interview.

What would your goal be different from what Carol just said? Well, better health is ultimately the goal, but we would get there through better access to care, better quality of care. And I think there's a lot of ways to reduce the costs of an inefficient system that we currently have now. You know, the fair to say, Paul, sticking with you that you're very much committed to a private sort of sector delivery model and financing for healthcare and you don't want the government in terms of Medicare and expansion of Medicare to play a larger role in terms of healthcare in the U.S.? That's largely true, yes. And, you know, currently 50% of all healthcare expenses are paid for by the government. And everything that's not paid for the by the government is taxed and regulated and has a lot of different government interventions relating to it. So it's a myth, and foremost, that we're some in a private system. We may be more private in certain ways than some of the European models, but we are not in a free market paradigm here in the

United States. It's a hybrid system, public and private pieces, right? But Paul isn't in the case that most industrialized countries handle healthcare financing through the government, the largest pool possible. They spend less per capita and they have generally better outcomes on several measures, isn't that the case? You are right that they mostly do that industrialized countries have pursued that model, but they're very different in a way that they measured outcomes. Certain, for example, low child birth and premature birth are measured differently and more favorably to those other nations outcomes. They do spend less. But, you know, frankly, we are a wealthy country and people who want to spend their own money should be allowed to spend their own money. Now, the problem is when they're spending taxpayer money and they are taking money out of the system in ways that maybe are not necessarily the best. But if a really wealthy person, for example, wants to extend their life and extend their quality of life even for another year or so, they

should be allowed to do that. Now, the problem is when it comes to the taxpayers' expense and we think that moving further towards free markets, individual responsibility for their care and taking it out of the insurance companies of the third-party payer system will see improvements rather than moving into the European style care. Carol, I imagine you disagree with some of that? Well, I absolutely disagree because it's not true. I mean, we know that the waste in the insurance model in the United States currently administrative, we waste a billion dollars every day. Every two and a half years, a trillion dollars is wasted on insurance administrative paperwork that doesn't provide any health care to anybody. The point is, I'm going to use New Mexico as an example because in New Mexico, almost all the health care is paid for by taxpayers. And I'll talk about that. People talk about socialized medicine. We have a lot of socialized medicine in New Mexico where the government owns the

hospitals, the clinics, pays the providers on salary. It's the military system, the Veterans Administration and the Indian Health Service. That is true socialized medicine. In New Mexico, almost one out of every four New Mexicans is in that system. And you'd like to see that system expanded? I'm not in favor of a socialized medical system because we can't get from where we are today to there. I'm just saying we know that nationally, 20 million Americans are in the VA, the military and the Indian Health Service and New Mexico, almost one out of four. What we then have is a very large in New Mexico, 800,000 people in Medicaid and Medicare. That is public insurance. It's not socialized medicine. Private providers, but the government cuts the check. The delivery system is the same. What I'm advocating for is just letting everybody have access to that kind of system, one large insurance pool. We've got the 800,000 in New Mexico in Medicaid and Medicare. Then if you add in federal government employees, state government

employees, local government employees and their dependents, almost everyone is being paid for by the taxpayer. Meanwhile, Carol, we have approximately 400,000 Mexicans who go without healthcare coverage. Paul, is it your view that those folks should be covered or do you think not necessarily only if they can maybe afford it? Well, I would make a healthcare coverage more affordable. One of the problems we have is that we have a lot of mandates. We have over 50 mandates in the state in New Mexico and those each and every one of them drive up costs. There's also alternative ways of taking care of health problems. Walmart is opening clinics and their stores. Some of these are less reliant on doctors and expensive professionals for their treating those problems and some of them can use cheaper nurses and those sorts of people to do day-to-day routine coverage. I'm not saying for important surgeries and serious procedures that we should be relying on people who don't have those qualifications, but we are in this model where you have to

see a doctor, you have to pay through the insurance company. Insurance should not be the model here. I agree with Carol on that. We need to, in a car example, you don't take and go to the insurance company to fill up your gas tank or for changing the oil. We need to relegate the insurance companies to, if you get hit by a car, get cancer or get some other serious disease, healthcare. Because of the third-party payer system plays way too big of a roll-on-four, reducing that significantly in our healthcare system. You said reducing costs, so-called public option, which is a big part of the debate playing out today. Many people argue that that would lower costs because it would create a big pool and it would keep the insurance companies honest. Do you disagree with that? A big pool, it may be a nice, one nice thing about this, but it's not going to solve the problem. Government doesn't have all of the information when it comes to an individual's needs in healthcare. They can just, like Medicare does, basically approve everything, keep

administrative costs low. But as an individual person, as a patient, if you have the control and the relationship of the money and relationship with the doctor, you're going to be able to solve that problem, you and your doctor better than bringing insurance companies or the government in. Either one doesn't have the knowledge and they're not going to be as concerned about using those resources in a cost-efficient manner. Carol Miller, a public option? Well, I'm not even sure what Paul is talking about right now. Somehow, not to have the public or speaking for less insurance, the public option has been defanged. I'm very concerned about that. The public option that we thought we were going to have was going to be a Medicare-like pool where people could basically buy in to coverage like Medicare. And right now, there's talk about a basic public option, a standard public option, and a premium tiering within that system, which the beauty of Medicare and Medicaid is that

they have a set benefit plan and they cover the services that they've decided to cover. And I'm very concerned about what's happening to the public option. If we're going to fight for one, it better be a good one. Or else, we're going to just be back here in another 10 years. We will have, basically, what we're doing with health reform now, and I call it sickness insurance bailout. We're talking about handing over the 45, 50 million uninsured Americans to private insurance companies, except for those who might choose a very defanged public option. I'm opposed to that. I think we need one health care system where everybody gets the same standard of care, not with more barriers that make it difficult for people to get in the system. I'll tell you one of the myths I'm talking about. You'll always hear people say, well, people can always get health care. They'll go to the emergency department, but that's expensive cost. And it turns out that the National Center for Health Statistics just did a study, and only 12% of emergency room visits should have gone somewhere else. 88% actually should have been treated in the care that the patient

chose. Paul, let me ask you this. In a recent op-ed, you wrote that there should be a, quote, limited government role in health care for the neediest. As I mentioned earlier, there's 400,000 New Mexicans who don't have basic health care coverage. How would you, in your view, how would you provide them with health care in terms of those neediest New Mexicans? There's a couple ways. One is reform should come at the state level, not the federal level. I'd like to see the 50 states innovating and creating new options, reducing the level of mandates, reducing the role of health care. And by that, I mean that you should have a high deductibility plan that covers those emergencies and that for less costly routine procedures, individuals should be able to do these tax-free like their employers do when they have the employer plan. And so they should take that tax-free money and use that and negotiate with their doctors and get the best option. What if they don't have money to pay for it?

That's what I'm saying. The federal government needs to make a tax-free option. Yes, if they don't have any money and they're genuinely broke, then there could be that welfare option at the state level. But I don't want a one-size-fits-all federal plan. It has to be done at the state level and we have to have the states paying for it. But right now we're just printing IOUs in Washington. The states need to balance their budget, because they have a balanced budget. And so they're not going to be able to print the money to do this. So each state could do something on their own. Unfortunately, that's going to have to do the last word. Two different views. Surprising some common ground, Paul Gessing, Carol Miller, thank you. We'll have much more on the health care reform debate in the coming weeks and months. But right now let's send it back over to Gene Grant and the line panels for more news and opinions from the week that was. The Mexico Congressman Martin Heinrich scored a victory recently on Capitol Hill. The House of Representatives approved one of his amendments, which increases the amount of money set aside for research and development at our national labs from six to seven percent doesn't sound like a lot, but it's a little bit. But however, it's still less than the

eight percent that's been dedicated there in recent years. Then there was news the Senate had voted to not increase funding for more F-22 fighter jets capping it, I believe, at 178, even though it may mean hundreds of jobs lost around the country. Jim, I bring this up in the context of Courland Air Force Base, the F-16s that are being mothballed, our tacos, our air national defense guys. We've got 40 pilots down there who are quite good at what they do, I'm sure. But there's an idea floating around town, I'm hearing a lot that we're in this tough spot. The F-16s are going. We had been banking on getting some of the extra F-22s that were going to be coming. They are not coming now. The F-35s are easily seven years away. So what do we do in the interim? Congressman Heinrich and others feel, on one side of the ledger, we should have a flight-based mission, meaning give the pilots something to do. They need to fly something. This is what these guys do. But we've got new technology on the other side of the table for unmanned flight and all that kind of stuff.

So is the Congressman taking the right stand here by digging his heels and saying, look, it's going to be a flight mission. Are we on the edge of maybe missing an opportunity if we take a hard road on this? In Albuquerque, we tend to look at Courland Air Force Base and Sandy and National Labs as job engines. And we lose the sense of the bigger picture that they are to fit into our national security scheme. The overall scheme, how do they really serve their purpose of making the country safer and extending our power overseas? In that, if you look at it that way, as the Pentagon is saying, the tacos don't make any sense because they're flying obsolete planes. We've got an Air National Guard that is not going to engage in dogfights with Russian migs over Clayton anytime soon. And the technology is changing. The unmanned vehicles that we're seeing used extensively in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq don't require a pilot at all. And yet that is the air war we have now.

You always have Congressman inject themselves for the purpose of saving jobs. That's why you had the base closure commission that really didn't do much about everybody. Everything Congressman jumps in to defend it. Did he do the right call? I think from looking at the traditional viewpoint of protecting jobs, that's what he's doing. But then again, is he serving the national interest by insisting that the rather obsolete unit be giving a mission just so we can protect jobs in his home district? In Margaret, that's a good point. You know, another thing that the Congressman did was in fact get Congress to agree that if we, if these things are going to go, it cannot go and just fall off the end of the table. We have to have a mission in something to do here. But that feels sort of stopgapy. It doesn't feel like we've got a real strong hand that we're playing with the Pentagon here. I don't think that this conversation makes too much sense without bringing a couple other people into it. And so I bring Dwight Eisenhower into this and I think that I'd bring Dylan and certainly in the Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan. Not Dylan,

Tom, Bob Dylan. So when Bob Dylan writes Masters of War, he's writing in reference to what Eisenhower had said. And so Eisenhower's farewell speech warned us about a military industrial complex. And what Eisenhower was warning us about was what has become a continual war economy. And so when Jim, you know, talks about, this is a jobs program, right, that so DOD has $660 billion in the budget, 10 times more than education, 10 times more than transportation. It is because these are one jobs programs, but it's also a reality that once you have war machines, you have to use war machines. And that's what Dylan was writing about, right,

singing about, that the Masters of War have now created death planes that need to be used. And I think that this conversation doesn't make sense. When we're talking about Congress voting for F-22s, you know, budget cycle after budget cycle, because they're protecting jobs in Georgia, they're protecting jobs in Utah without really being able to say, we are not going to have air to air combat. I got about a minute to bring these other guys in. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, two of the most liberal members in the Senate, voted to continue the F-22 program for the very reason that their states are addicted to the military and government jobs. What was interesting was it to see a hawk like John McCain in folking? He made a very important point. John McCain made the point that we should not just be thinking in terms of a jobs program here, we need to be thinking about terms of what is the best for the defense. So I think this,

you know, and then interesting Walter Cronkite actually said that all the presidents and so on that he sat down with the Dwight Eisenhower was really an extremely important one. But here's the deal, even with this unmanned aircraft, right? There's problems even with that because this whole issue about, who is making decisions for us? Margaret's point is that, okay, by virtue of creating a war machine there then creates the need to use these. But I think the other major players that need to be brought to, we need to remember, are the defense contractors. Because what has also happened is that defense now is for profit. And we saw what happened with our previous vice president. We see the impact that the defense contractors have on congressman, for example, in Colorado, who don't have the courage to stand up and make sure that 483,000 acres aren't taken over by this approach to the military that's going to wipe out 17,000 folks and the last short prairie grassland in southern, south-eastern Colorado. We need to be paying attention to

this proposal for the expansion of Pinyon Canyon site in south-eastern Colorado and north-eastern New Mexico. And it's all part of the push for, for approach to military that isn't about what's best for defense. It isn't about what's best for our communities. It's about what's best for the war machine and for the defense contractors. Whitney, I got to hold you off on that one. I am so sorry, but these guys were super interesting. As usual, it happens. Absolutely. Thank you for your patience. Now, it's time to put our panelists on the clock. They have just one minute as a group, you know, the drill. So let's start with the president's press conference this week, once in a specifically healthcare reform. For interesting presser, Jim, let me start with you. Did he make his case, meaning was any senator or congressman or anybody else so moved one way or the other? Obviously not, because the very next day, the leaders of the Senate said they will not have a vote on his health care plan before the summer recess. What do you expect during the recess, by the way? What do you think is going to happen? I think local people are going to go beat on the doors

of Martin Heinrich and tell him that he needs to consider the public option and single payer. And I hope they do. And I hope that they are also talking with Udall and Binghamton, that the leadership should be coming from places like New Mexico, where we have so many uninsured, where people go bankrupt every day because they can't afford healthcare. 44,000 people losing health insurance every month. It's crazy. Well, we certainly need to find a way to get this healthcare reform passed. It's been how many years have people been waiting for that. And there are people every day who are losing, who have lost their jobs, lost their ability to get that healthcare. And this is real issue. And politics really need to be put aside so we can make some rules. What do you think? What do you think in 15 about the blue dogs and what they're doing? What do you think? Oh, well, I think they're at least standing up for some of the moderate voters out there. I mean, when most of the members of Congress right now are voting, 97% of the time with Nancy Pelosi, as is Martin Heinrich, I think that there's a lot of middle of the row voters who are appreciating what they're doing. And they are swinging it right now. It's amazing. Now, the Rio Grande River could be in for a major facelift in the southern part of our state.

The International Boundary and Water Commission announced plans for an occasional flooding between truth and consequences in El Paso. This could be very interesting. Now, the goal is to restore the river as well as the fish and plant life in the area. Trust, let me start with you. This is a fascinating idea. But we hear this a lot with, you know, Everglades areas, southern Louisiana, this idea to expand the water table to bring this stuff back. And do you think it's a good idea for us here? It's a drop in the bucket. It's a drop in the river. I mean, part of the question is the federal money going to be available. But I think there's does have the potential dealing not only with with restoration of the water, but also potentials for flood control. So it's going to be interesting. I think we do need to pay attention to riparian health and the flow of the river. Anybody who lose out down there? Well, actually, I think that there are people who gain because I think that if we negotiate the transnational water issues, and this is one attempt, because that's the agency, the inter-boundary water agency. And so I think that this is a win. This is a wonderful development. To restore the river, it just sounds like exactly what you do in the desert.

Sure, sure. And not much controversy around it. No, it looks like a win-win situation. You have groups that have been known as radical environmentalists at one time now working hand in glove with the elephant beauty irrigation district, which are its hardcore agriculture. This is a good development. Whitney got shut out again. This is like not your night. I'm changing chairs. I know. I'm so sorry. Gosh, all right. Chalk went up for the traditional journalist. What am I talking about? Are you a report found when it came to covering last year's presidential election, the traditional outlets were more than two hours ahead of bloggers getting stories up? Did you? What did you make? Did you buy that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, when it comes to big stories where network television or covering them with cameras, there's no way that a blogger in his bedroom is going to be able to, you know, to keep up with no offense. But, no, I didn't surprise me at all. And actually, I was kind of glad that they came out with a report to remind us that there is a good reason to have network television. Sure. Sure. Bloggers don't report. They really sit at home and they follow. I love the bloggers in this state who beat up on the opkirky journal all the time. And then they use the opkirky journal reporters for their blogging. Yes.

I think this is ridiculous reporting. I think that the news story itself, that because you can use these enormous computers to count clicks, really, because you come up with a metric and a result does not mean it's significant. I do not think this is significant. That's an interesting point. Oh, see, and I actually thought the research and the methodology was pretty interesting. And each one of those guys have gone on now for pretty interesting, interesting jobs. What kind of jobs? Well, last time when we were going to cover this, I could have told you exactly that. Tell me after. Super curious. Now, 40 years ago this week, the United States put a man in the moon. There have been a lot of retrospective events this week on the lunar landing. Margaret, just got to ask, what do you remember from it? Well, I just think that this was a moment of national unity. I remember the experience of all of the televisions being to, you know, just everywhere televisions were on and there was, you know, Walter Cronkite, who passed away this week reporting. And it was just that moment of solidarity and national competence, right,

that this wasn't a war, this wasn't, this was about taking science and knowledge and putting it to use in just connecting us up with the universe. What did you, what did you think of Mr. Obama's, I don't know if he, sorry, I'm sorry, but what, what he did this week? Did he give it, okay, I'll give you another one now, give that to Jim. What, significant still, this event? Absolutely. Well, significant in New Mexico, because we have such a strong tide of our air force here. I mean, they've been showing the right stuff on all the television stations. It was a great movie. And actually, reminding me we were talking about the tacos, that's why we care so much because we're used to it in the States. That's right. All right, you two are out on this one. Sorry about that. Can't just beat up a Whitney tonight. We'd love to hear what you think about the topics. We talk about each week, just drop us an email at infocuscanemy.org. It's right under my chin. As you can see, or leave us a comment on our blog, Newmexicoinfocus.org. Have you ever wondered what impact our monsoon rains might have on our major water supply, the Rio Grande, of course. Recently, I got an education on some stormwater

quality issues from some local experts. Well, the monsoon season is certainly nothing new to us here in Albuquerque. The city gets about eight and a half inches of rain annually. However, that equals to just over three billion gallons of runoff into the Rio Grande. That's a lot of water. And a lot of reason to pay attention to the impact that this stormwater has on our water system, especially when you consider the Rio Grande is now the lifeblood of this city. Because as of this year, it is now our main source of drinking water. Now, here today to tell us more about the efforts to keep the Rio Grande during the monsoon season safe is Trevor Also. He's a drainage and environmental engineer with the southern sendable county of Royal flood control authority. Kevin Daggett, he's a stormwater quality engineer with the Albuquerque metropolitan of Royal flood control authority as well. And last but certainly not least, Vern Hirschberger, environmental health manager with the UNM Safety and Risk Services Department. Thank you all for being here. Let me start with an overall question, guys, that this idea of stormwater and drainage water is new for a lot of people. They

don't realize maybe the importance about how it not only contributes to our drinking water but how we can be impactful ourselves on how what we do to affect our quality of our water. In our 190 square mile Albuquerque area, we've got about 722 miles of storm drains and CBC boxes, 16,000 storm drain inlets, the mileage for line drainage channels are about 60 some odd miles, miles of online deroyos we've got about 50 miles. I mean, there's a lot of water flowing through this city, any given storm. And in fact, the idea that it takes about 45 minutes for it to get from tramway down to the river. This is a huge issue. So water's flowing for a lot of different ways. How did you guys approach this? I mean, there's a lot of ways to have water flow through here. How do you manage this? A mathka is an in partnership, if you will, with the city of Albuquerque in the sense that we share a lot of the infrastructure with the city. We either own a stretch of a given channel. The city

will own a stretch, maybe upstream of that same channel, some of the storm drains that dump into that channel. It is an immense infrastructure and basically back in the 60s, the design philosophy and certainly a mathka falls into this category. It was flood control and our purpose, our mandate was to prevent property damage, try to minimize it as well as any loss of life or people getting injured due to floods. And so that's been our primary mandate. So the thought was to try to get the water as quickly as you could from that spot up on Montgomery and tramway to the river, as quick as you could. And so the channels, they're very efficient for the purposes of flood control and getting the water to the river. Unfortunately, that puts us in a unique category here in Albuquerque with regard to other municipalities around the nation in that where they have a flatter, wider valley, say, we have a hard time slowing that water down and treating it and actually releasing it back into the channels. We've managed to

to put together several really stellar facilities that are really good at trapping some of the constituents that we're trying to remove from the water. But it's still an ongoing challenge. Just to expand on what Kevin was saying, we're in an urban environment here. A lot of this precipitation and runoff falls onto the streets that's picked up in the streets and then convey to the channels that Kevin was speaking of. So it's basically whatever gets into the street, which is a lot of things that we don't necessarily think about as we're walking around. But obviously, cars travel on these streets and anything coming off of a car that could be poorly maintained, it could be motor oil, it could be small bits of tire that wear off eventually over time, brake pads contribute to what actually gets onto the roadway surface and is deposited over time. Floatable trash is a really big issue. As soon as if that's in a street, it can get into the

storm sewer system and then move into the channels and actually move all the way down to the river. So as soon as water hits these streets, it basically flushes this system out and all of this stuff is without check can get down to the river. I've seen and we've all seen lots of oil stains and driveways, streets. People change their own oil. They flush their radiator system for anaphries, things like that and dump it straight into either on the curb or on the sidewalk. Is this part of the problem that people are just not considering where this stuff goes at the end of the day? I'd say it may not be, you know, a broad awareness that there really isn't except for, you know, certain situations where we have installed specific controls. There isn't treatment for that storm water before it goes to the river. That's why we're here today. We're trying to get the word out that, you know, all this stuff that Trevor mentioned that's in the watershed that can wash off. We'll get to the river unless we've gotten some areas, some treatments for them, but that those

aren't broad or far reaching. Those are usually the exception and not the rule. Kevin, another thing I see on the list here that you guys are concerned about is fertilizer and how people use these things to maintain their lawns. Well, that has to go somewhere, right? I mean, it drains off. Absolutely. A fertilizer herbicides, pesticides, household products, soaps, detergents. People need to really be aware of the potential of getting those into the streets and then dust into the system and straight to the real ground. So that's part of our outreach as Vern was saying is we're trying to get the word out to people that things as as miniscule as you might think they are actually pretty big and the overwhelming the big picture of the city. I couldn't help but think about, you know, the various dog parks we've got around the city, even not dog parks. People not picking up after their dogs with walks. How impactful is that? Well, it's very impactful. It's amazing, but I've heard statistics that there's some 80,000

dogs in this city and they produce combined about three tons of waste per day per day per day. Wow. And so we're really trying to emphasize to people that they need to be responsible pet owners and when you take your pet for a walk in the park, please try to pick up after that after your dog. And also, we're providing stations at some of our facilities along our channels where we have bike paths but ice cream paths. They're called mutmits and it's a basically little post that has some bags and you can grab a bag and carry it along with you as you walk your dog to help pick up. I mean, Trevor, it's a bacteria issue. Is that what's going on here when you talk about waste products? That is the issue is that pet waste is the one bacteria source that we can control with the greatest, most efficiently. I mean, there are other sources of bacteria just naturally occurring bacteria from wildlife. But that's much more difficult to control. Whereas

pet waste, we have much more control over that. There's an interesting paradox here because if you think about how you wash your car, you trek in your driveway, you think about clean, soapy water, running down the gutter. What could be so bad? It's this water that's clean. But this cleansers and stuff are obviously a big problem here. You guys actually recommend that you wash your car on your lawn if, in fact, you're going to do that. Why, why you're lawn instead of on your driveway? Well, for stormwater reasons is because, and also for water conservation reasons, you know, that water that would otherwise just hit the hardscaping and go down to the storm drain. When the next rain comes, it'll make it to the river and all that soap goes in there. A lot of that will get trapped on the humic material and other plant material in your turf. And it can biodegrade there before the next rain. It's more easily done there than in the, you know, infrastructure down underground where there's not as much variety of things to

eat it. The alternative to that would be if you were to go to a car wash. That's even better. The system there is actually piped to the sanitary system. So any runoff from that would actually go to a treatment plant. Right. Good question. First, just washing your car on the street. That would just get straight to the river. Absolutely. Kevin, what can folks do watching this program, starting tomorrow morning to help with this problem? Well, if you just, if a person just stops to think, you know, what you do in your daily routine, how can I help this problem? You know, to start with how you dispose of any garbage trash, even clippings from your backyard or from your grass. That is a big problem. Some of our stormwater quality facilities, it's amazing to me after a storm, how much organic matter we actually get, as well as sediment. And the organics typically come. We see a lot of grass clippings, leaves, branches, things like that. So

you can start in the yard by trying to properly dispose of these things. We need to wrap up. But do we have a website to point folks towards that they can get some information trouble? Or anyone wants to take that? Yeah, I mean, we do have a website that this team is putting forward and it's keepthereogrand.org, I believe. And then of course, the respective agencies websites typically have information regarding environmental programs and water quality. Thank you guys for spending the time. It's an important issue. While you're on the website, don't forget to vote in our online poll. Last week, we asked you what the reality is regarding our state's drunk driving problem. Now, 42% of you feel no laws or public service announcements will ever be enough. Society needs to take a stand on the issue. 33% feel like the state has come a long way in the last few years. And the other 25% for whatever reason, aren't sure or have no idea. Now this week,

we want to know what you think about the idea of letting Albuquerque's bars stay open even later after a last call to give patrons a chance to sober up. Up next week on New Mexico and Focus, Building New Mexico's Energy Economy. Until then, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.