New Mexico in Focus; 1409; Conventions and Campaigns, Keeping Track of USPS Boxes, Medio Fire Threatens Watersheds, Restaurant Re-Openings Part of New Public Health Order, Bracing for Eviction Increase

Funding for New Mexico and Focus provided by the McHughn Charitable Foundation and viewers like you. This week on the Mexico and Focus, wildfire season in August as fires burn later, hotter and bigger. When I started a fire that was, you know, over, like, say, five, six thousand acres was a very big fire. Plus, the governor relaxes restrictions for restaurants, the Mexico and Focus starts now. Thanks for joining us this week on your host, Gene Grant. We have a lot to get to this week as political parties wrap their conventions and campaigns ready for the final stretch. We'll talk about how convention themes influence local campaigns. We'll also talk to a New Mexican who's created a tool to track post office collection boxes to see what's being removed and what gets returned. We track the latest changes in the governor's health order, the Supreme Court's decision

on whether she's been treating restaurants equally and how all the closures and job losses may portend a coming tide of evictions. We begin with the line. Democrats and now Republicans have flipped the office switch on their virtual conventions and the presidential campaigns will roar into September. So two do New Mexico's high profile federal races. That's where our line opinion panel steps in with some analysis. Here on the screen is line regular and attorney Laura Sanchez. We also have Dan Boyd with us. He's the Albuquerque General's capital bureau chief and great to see you in political science, Professor Lana, act to sit again and Lana, you're following the presidential race, of course, but you're also curious about how the themes of those conventions informs campaigns here. Tell me about that. What's your sense of what you thought the big themes were? Well, you know, we've really seen two very different conventions and two very different views.

And we can see that in our candidates and how they're talking about the different issues, either Corona virus or, you know, law and order, of course, is a big issue for the Republicans and their convention is going on now. Dan, interestingly, when you think about it, you know, we all had to get used to a bit of a new look, so to speak, for conventions. We're so used to balloons and cheering people and all that kind of thing. But you know, I just, I, any of the candidates for Senate for, for, for, or U.S. House here are picking up on this theme that Laura's talking at the, sorry, Laura, that Lana is talking about. Have you seen the same things being playing out here in New Mexico at this point? Yeah, I mean, I, I think we've kind of adapted to a lot of these campaigning, you know, remote campaigns, virtual campaigns. It certainly makes it more difficult, you know, to connect with voters, I think. But I, I think like Lana said, you know, we've really seen a difference in tone, the two conventions. Interestingly, both of them have had a pretty heavy New Mexico kind of component to them, both the, the Democrats with the, the governor and Congresswoman devil Holland, both in prime

time. Republicans have had a few speakers as well, an Albuquerque police officer. And, you know, the widower of a woman who has killed last year in a high profile crime. So we've kind of, from coming from different perspectives, but it's, you know, heavy dose of New Mexico. Mm-hmm. Laura Sanchez-Ruffet, I'm, I'm curious. You've been around this game a long time and I'm just curious, is the co-tails for downbell at folks? Is that still a thing? Is that going to be a thing in this presidential race as well? Um, I think it's always a thing in presidential years and, yeah, I think there's going to be some of that, but what's interesting about New Mexico is, you know, we always sort of see ourselves as a bellweather of sorts. And I think that more recently, we've been trending, um, Democrat. And so the Republicans, though, are not giving up. And I don't think that Democrats are, um, looking to kind of, um, you know, lose any ground. And so both sides are really going to be added at the local level as much as possible. Mm-hmm. So while there will be co-tails, um, certainly for the federal races that are going on, um, there's also, I think, a reasonable expectation of a surge from the local level,

because you're going to see in some of these local races, well, certainly the federal ones, but even in some of the more competitive, um, House and Senate races, where people will, will do what they can to get their little, um, you know, solid voters to the polls. And that's going to result in some, uh, uptick for even the, the, the higher ones, the, uh, presidential ones. Um, you know, there, most people probably, well, I think the, the, I think most people think that they've made up their minds, but the Republicans are certainly trying to do what they can to get, um, you know, more people to be peeled off from the Democrat than vice versa. So I think we're still going to see a lot of, you know, we're still, traditionally, this stuff isn't supposed to get started till after Labor Day. Um, so we'll see what they, a lot of their, uh, out of their sleeve, right? That's right. Exactly right. A lot of, I'm curious if anything, if any of this is playing out to your eye in newspaper, radio ads, TV ads, are you seeing some of these themes playing out in, in paid advertising so far? Oh, absolutely, especially, especially in the Senate race, especially with Ron Chetty. He's clearly talking about sort of national themes in the culture war.

Uh, I think his, his ad starts something like what faith, family, and freedom. Um, so those are, those are very much trying to tap into, to these bigger cultural issues that we're discussing as a nation. Mm-hmm. Dan, interesting on the same theme, CD2, uh, I've seen what we've all seen. You can't avoid them. The commercials for Sochil Torres small. She might as well have dipped herself in a red tank. I mean, she is really leaning into it. It's incredible. And we all get it with the district she's in. But again, the themes that are playing out through paid advertising, would she be an example of what you're, what we're talking about here? Yeah, certainly. I think she came out with an ad, uh, again, this week about her, you know, with Shotgun, and you vet her all her Republican opponent also had a shooting ad. So we can kind of see the, uh, the demographic, both of them are targeting. Um, you know, it does seem like there's a lot of similarities in that race as two years ago. So it'll be interesting to see over the next, uh, you know, two and a half months outside groups, outside spending.

I think that's going to be one, you know, to, uh, that a lot of outside monies can be come into the state and it'll probably be really close again. But kind of the Trump impact, um, as was mentioned before, I think will be big in that, you know, and clearly kind of a referendum on Trump and in that district, which has been, you know, historically conservative. I appreciate you saying that we should put a pit in that idea of money coming in from out of state. That's going to happen. You're exactly right. Not a lot of folks have talked about that yet, but you're, you're exactly right. Laura Sanchez, I, it's speaking about money. Are you seeing a serious run by Republicans when it comes to CD-1, when it comes to raising money? Are you seeing this happen? Are we going to have a competitive race here? I can't see a more money being spent in CD-1 than they will do in CD-2. Okay. You was really the one that's in play for them, um, you know, in the same with CD-3, they're not going to, they're just not going to gain any ground. I don't think by putting a lot of money into CD-3 or CD-1, when CD-2 is the ballgame for them. You know, that's a district that's flip-flopped several times over the last 10 years. We saw Harry and I think that part of the election in addition to money is surrogates.

So those surrogates start to mean more at the local level. So, you know, so-and-so is endorsing them or so-and-so is opposing this person. Therefore, I will make a decision because I like what they stand for. So, for example, Harry Teague, who held that district before Steve Pierce picked it back up, has endorsed Yvette Harrell. But then you have, interestingly enough, the head of Namoga, Ryan Flynn, who's the executive director of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, who came out with a letter supporting Torres Small in that race. And then he got criticized by some of the folks that were backing Harry Teague for having done that with calling for his resignation. So it became this whole oil and gas thing. And then, of course, some of you may have seen the ad with the local sheriff who is saying, you know, I'm a Democrat, but I'm supporting Yvette Harrell and not such a sort of small. So it's very interesting. I think we're going to see a lot more of that as we go forward. We'll see some of that also in the other districts, but we're really going to see most of the noise

in the Senate District and in CD2. Gotcha. Lana, would you go ahead? Also, it's how there's, you know, that we're like this microcosm of what's going on nationally. There's so much movement going on in the parties. People are, you know, maybe people are thinking about crossing over and change. There's really so much going on under the hood, and that's being exemplified in what's going on in this race that is receiving national attention. This may be the most competitive race in the country. I'm going to stay with you on that. Let's talk about that. I want to talk about some presidential stuff too. Obviously, the President of the United States made a lot of noise last year and earlier this year about winning New Mexico. Are you seeing the effort at this point? I mean, certainly we've seen some ads, but you know, it's hard to tell because there's no, you know, with no traditional kinds of activities going on for candidates, it's really hard to know what's happening. And, you know, where's the enthusiasm? It's hard to tell if there's enthusiasm or if there's hatred or it's just impossible to know.

Very challenging time to be abundant. It's a good point. If I go to the topic, I mean, I do think that, you know, we're in such an interesting period right now, not just with COVID, but I think politically everything that's happened in the last year or so and really in the last since Trump was elected last time. We've had a surge of women running for office, women being more active politically. We've had, I think that the women's vote is going to be such a huge component of this election in New Mexico. And to what Lana mentioned of New Mexico being a microcosm of the rest of the country, it'll be interesting to see how things play out here because we, for the first time, have every CD district, we're going to guaranteed to have a woman, whether it's a Republican or Democrat, there'll be a woman holding each of those congressional districts. So, you know, when women run, women vote, right? Women vote and then women win. And so you're going to see more women go into the polls. And I think it's a question of, you know, will they be turned off by Trump, even if they're a Republican, maybe they're

or independent, maybe they're more moderate, or they're not interested in the kind of leadership that he has shown to now. I think it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the presidential. It's a great interpretation going on in the state as well. I mean, that's really interesting to bring up because the parties themselves are very gendered, both at a national level and in New Mexico. You know, there are many more women who are committed to the Democratic Party and there are more men committed to the Republican Party. The gender gap has never been bigger. What does that mean with the gender gap getting this big Lana in bigger beyond for candidates? How do they have to respond to this? You clearly can't ignore it. You know, I mean, I think it's very challenging in the sense that we sort of are genderizing our parties, you know, where we obviously have had heroin, we've had with Republican women running as well in all of these races. But if we think of it more at a bigger level, you know, the real surge in female candidate activity is coming from the Democratic side and there's still a dearth of female players in the Republican Party.

This should be interesting. By the way, folks, I want to let you know the Professor Atkinson at the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico. She is the director of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections and Democracy there. She's also the Executive Director for the Institute for Social Research at the University of New Mexico. Now, we have to leave it there for now. One of the election issues we have been and will be following is the U.S. Postal Service. President Trump's Postmaster General has pulled male sorting machines and mailboxes from communities across the country ahead of what's expected to be the largest male in turnout in U.S. history. Now, an Albuquerque-based software designer has teamed up with an online mapping community to keep a close eye on what mailboxes may have been removed through a new community source web application. Enemy, of course, but at Megan Kamerick talked to Russ Biggs about his work. Russ, thanks for talking with us today. You help develop a new application that is meant to help folks find USPS collection boxes around the country. Can you explain how you came up with

this idea and how you want people to use it? Sure. So, last weekend, I didn't actually come up with the original concepts, but I'm part of a community called OpenStreetMap, which is an open source, sort of like a Wikipedia for maps. So, in one of the Slack channels for that, someone named Michele Marin, who's the community manager company called Mapbox, who's done a lot of this kind of work, started thinking about post office boxes and some of the news about them disappearing. So, he kind of reached out and by Saturday morning, he had last Saturday morning, he and I started developing this application. So, we had a really simple idea, which was we had full data set of all 205,000 USPS collection boxes that was acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request last year by someone named Nathan's story out in Boston. So, we had this data set, and then it seemed like a pretty straightforward process to say, okay, maybe we can take this set,

and then allow users to just say, is the collection box there, or is it not? That was kind of the original concept of very simple, is the box still there, or has it been removed? There definitely is a time gap within that. So, but with the current reports, one thing we kind of had a question about was, okay, we're hearing reports that post office boxes are being removed, but how many and where, and which ones exactly? So, that was kind of the principle. So, throughout the last week, I'll be developed Saturday, Sunday, and then, finally, and Monday, we launched spotthebox.us, it's spot-the-box.us. So, it's a web application, pretty simple, you just open it up, it'll find out where you are, and then you can see all the post office boxes around you, click the box, that you have just walked up to and confirmed, that is there or not, and then it'll take you to a simple screen where you say it's here, or it's been removed. So, that launched last Monday,

evening, and so far, we've got about 700 posts that people have like confirmed or denied whether or not a box is there. So, our goal is just to get as much crowdsourcing of this information, that way we can kind of distribute that work. If you pass by a collection box, you can simply use this, and then you'll be able to know. Now, it's a web-based app. So, is it also going to be an app for phones, but right now, you use it on your phone, and you open like a web browser to use it correct? Yeah, it's cool. It'll probably remain a web application. There's a lot of extra work that goes into building the native stuff, and then deploying it in the stores. So, the web application worked really well for us, because we're able to get it done in a weekend. A native application can take a little more time, but there's plenty of functionality on the web now on smartphones, so it's a pretty great platform to get that done. So, it's also, it's a matter of like, you want people to confirm the boxes are there, but you also want them to say, hey, this box is missing,

so it's both. So, you're keeping an up-to-date database. Yes. Actually, mid last week, we added another option, which was there's some reports, and it's kind of fuzzy on what it means, but of boxes being locked. There's different stories about that's pretty standard practice in some areas for when the post office is closed to prevent tampering, but there's kind of in different stories going on about that. So, we have a locked slash unusable or out of order, because it has come that in-between category. I know that you just launched this more than a week ago, so the data might not be robust or significant as of right now, but what are you seeing so far? Are you seeing any trends or problems? I don't know the numbers. I didn't check exactly how many we have that have been removed so far. There's not a lot that have been removed, that have been reported removed at this point. One set that was kind of interesting, I'd heard a lot of reports around

Eugene Oregon of a lot of boxes being removed. Someone's been doing a lot of work up there the last I think over this last weekend, and a lot are being marked as present. So yeah, as the data kind of hopefully continues to flow in, we'll see more bigger trends of what's happening. A lot of this is really happening, a lot of the surveys only happening really in urban areas. So rural areas aren't being surveyed through the app. This is kind of a common problem when you crowdsource data. It's definitely going to come for more urban areas. Those are the general trends we're seeing right now. The Postmaster General has said that he will stop dismantling male sorting machines and removing male collection boxes until after the general election in November, but there was no mention of reversing the damage that had already been done in states like New Mexico. What are you hoping to get out of the data with these things in mind? Kind of regardless of what the Postmaster General is saying, I think there's still censors these reports of them already being removed.

Our goal is definitely to find where and how many exactly, because at least in the reports, I've seen there's not a really good indication of exactly where or how many have been removed. So we have kind of an older data set from 2019. There will have been possibly some removal that happened from September 2019 and up until this latest news of more being removed. But we can kind of get a sense of which ones might have been removed. And then if they are replaced, we are working on a feature to have multiple survey passes so that we can kind of get a time series of and correct information as well. So that's kind of the bigger goal. It's hard to know, you know, at the level we have 700, doesn't quite tell the story. We haven't set a mark that we'd like to hit, but definitely, you know, as many of the boxes as possible is our goal. The Post Office is calling it a false narrative that Lewis DeJoy is trying to influence this

election. Does the reason matter or does the impact of pulling a collection box or sorting machine the same, regardless of why? I mean, I would say it does matter kind of the election isn't as a added impact to that. This project, I think, had some of that context in mind, but it's not necessarily just around the election and that. I think some of it's about if there are these reports of post office boxes being removed, that affects general life for folks as well. Outside of the election, the election would be a huge piece, especially with the large mail-in action happening. So we're kind of keeping an, I think, somewhat neutral around that. I'm not going to see what the data can tell us. Both for the election and general usage of the Postal Service. As you mentioned, you worked on the initial build of the application with another person, Michael Marin, but now you're collaborating openly with others on the internet. Can you explain that

a bit? Yeah, so, like I said, this all started an open street map community. So we started a chat and there was a lot of discussion back and forth. Once I got the prototype built, I was able to, I put it up on Github, so all the source codes available on Github, it's open source license that are an MIT license, which generally, it's a pretty simple license that anyone can kind of do roughly anything with the code, which they wish. We've had about, I think, six contributors contribute code, and then there's lots of discussion happening. The name of the box was named by somebody else, some of the colors of how to pick these pieces have been picked by other people. There's some people just helping kind of organize because having a project open like this takes a lot of organization. I'm definitely kind of the main, the maintainer and the main contributor right now, but it can kind of be a full-time job of managing questions, comments, feature requests.

So it's been great to have a lot of help. And every day, more people are looking at the repo and starting to join in the discussion. And what does the feature look like for this? He mentioned that a second project might be in the works to visualize and share the data collected. Yeah, we haven't talked about that too much, but I think there would be a good follow-up, which is after we've collected all this information, kind of look at how it was collected, when it was collected. And eventually, if we can get this new feature to show multiple passes on a box. So if someone reports it removed, someone then reports it, present, any sort of crowdsourcing, there's some data control that you have to do with in that, because there is, you know, kind of call it like graffiti or, you know, bandalism that can happen with the data. So we can kind of help tease that out and then just present the data instead of it being a data collection tool. Another big feature we want is photo documentation. So we're working on that so that you can access your camera phone and take a

photo of a removed box or of the box. And that will help, I think, improve the data quality. So something that also brows all of that, because all of a sudden you get a lot of information and you might be able to want different ways to slice and dice it. So we haven't talked too much about that follow-up, but I think that is going to be an essential piece of after we collect all this data, what do you do with it? And we want it to be open and available. Great, this is really interesting. Russ will love to hear how this evolves as you guys build it out. Yeah, thank you for chat with me about, I really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. The lightning-caused meteor fires burning through 3,000 acres of forest above Santa Fe, sending smoke across northern and central New Mexico. At the same time, firefighters are battling blazes across the west, including Colorado and California. This week, Carzbon at Laura Pascas talks with incident management team Chief Buck Wickham about what's happening with the meteor fire and checks in with the Santa Fe National Forests Terrence Geigos about why this is an unusual fire season for New Mexico. Terrence, it almost seemed like we were going to catch a break this

fire season, but what happened? I feel like August isn't our normal fire season? Yeah, now that's a really good observation and that's correct. You know, this year was just a kind of a freaky year for the monsoons. In fact, I think it got dubbed the non-soons because we didn't, you know, we just didn't get the moisture that we're used to getting this time of year. Typically, we don't have to worry about a large fire on the Santa Fe National Forest this time of year. In fact, we're looking for opportunities to start beginning our prescribed fire opportunities, maybe manage a wildfire for some resource objectives because we're in the fields conditions and weather conditions that we can do that, but just the lack of moisture that we got during the the monsoons season put us right back into fire season. So we're getting some fire indices and ERCs that are pretty dang close to what we would see in June, which is the peak

of our fire season here, so oddball year. I know that you often don't have the luxury of just focusing on what's happening right now, but you have to be looking ahead as well, and I'm curious what you're thinking might be able to happen this winter in terms of prescribed fire hand burns and things like that, especially with the challenges that COVID and the seasonal flu could potentially present this winter. Yeah, we've been discussing that quite a bit and, you know, we do have to go about that very diligently and make sure that we're communicating well with the public and looking at the smoke receptors and the sensitive smoke receptors that we could potentially impact. So we are, we've been talking about that for about a couple months now and working with leadership and just trying to figure out what prescribed fire opportunities, there may be out there with the least amount of impacts when it comes to smoke.

The the meteor fire has created a lot of smoke for the for the city of Santa Fe. They've been dealing with a lot of smoke from this wildfire, and so that's definitely a consideration. We don't we don't want to compound that later on down the road if we can help it. And speaking of prescribed fires, it seems like prescribed fire and maybe some past burdens have helped slow the meteor fire. Is that the case? Yeah, yeah. There was a prescribed fire that was done by the Espanyola Ranger District in Pateco Canyon. It was about 500 acres. It was done last year around May, and it was a little wetter year. In fact, I have a picture of it and there's still snow on the on the mountain tops there. But yeah, it it really came into to be a key part of slowing down the progression of the fire. When the when the meteor fire kind of ran the Rio and Medio drainage, you know, fire likes to run uphill. And so it was in a drainage

bottom and pushed uphill with a little wind behind it. And it actually kind of ran right into that prescribed fire that we did a year ago and knocked it down. And in fact, there were some spot fires inside the prescribed fire, but they were very easily handled because there wasn't the amount of fuel in there from the burn. And in fact, the hand line from the prescribed fire was also utilized to pick up the main edge of the fire. So it was it was really awesome that that prescribed fire played such a critical role in keeping the fire from progressing across the 102 because if the if the fire would have crossed the Pateco Canyon road, what we call for service road 102, it would have gotten into what we call the Gabaldon roadless area. And that's an area that's got a lot of terrain, thick fuels, and it's really close to a lot of values at risk. You know, the Tuscuchia watershed is in there. The Santa

Fays ski base in Hyde State Park. The forest service has a lot of campgrounds along this ski hill highway that would have been impacted. And then of course, the upper watershed for the for the Santa Fe is is in a kind of direct impact if something gets going in that area. So it was it was really great to see that hard work be paid off like that with a wildfire interacting with it. Well, thanks for your time, Terrence, and thanks for everyone's hard work on the fires. Thank you. Back the meteor fire started on August 17th, if I'm right, and it's burning up above Nambay reservoir in the Santa Fe National Forest. How did the fire start? And what is it's behavior been like this past year? Well, we haven't made a determination to how the fire actually started yet. The there has been an investigation up there, but I haven't heard what if there was a determination

made what it actually started the fire. And what is it? High severity, low severity kind of what's happening up there? I know it's probably different from day to day, but how would you characterize its severity this past year? We've got several crews up there. We initially we tried to stop the fire at Rio Nambay and then Rio and Medio on the southern part of it, but you know one of the things that's really been difficult is we've been hit by winds from every direction of the compass because of the thunder cells around our fire that give us a lot of wind but haven't given us much rain at all. But the fire the first day ran across the Medio drainage and made it about as far as Aspen Ranch and then we had to back off and try again but we've got it two different areas we didn't want us to go north over to Rio Nambay and we didn't want it to go south across

that 102 road and so that's been pretty much what our focus has been on the fire. We've divided it up into two different groups of folks working out there and wanting to come in from the north and from the south and they're doing pretty well. And how has COVID changed how you all are fighting fires and working together? Well anytime that we we have four rules that we go by one of them is the concept of a module of one and so if you're on an engine crew you're a module of one and there might be three to five people on an engine crew but they work together they eat together they stay together and they don't mingle with other people and anytime they're forced to do that then we have to wear mats and that's one of the things like you know we wear mats all the time from you know the first briefing until we go to bed every night and so that's another thing that we're

trying to do is make sure people are wearing mats and then social distancing try and do not get any bottlenecks of people you know and you know for instance we don't eat in the chow hall anymore we get our individual meals and go hide somewhere and eat by yourself you know it's so the social distancing is in taking them to consideration then and then washing our hands you know we've all heard the drill since we were kids go wash your hands we've got hand washing stations and sanitizers everywhere and we try to get everybody to wash your hands and tell your sickle washing your hands you've been fighting fires for decades what do you notice that's different about today's fires then maybe they were 20 or 30 years ago oh there are so many things different you know one of the things that I'll say is different as really critical is the fuel bed that we're fighting fires in you know I have been fighting fires for several decades and you know

fires are getting a lot larger now than they were and you know and for several different causes maybe not necessarily all fuels but fires do burn with an incredible intensity and the fuel bed that people are fighting fires now compared to when I started when I started a fire that was you know over like say five six thousand acres was a pretty big fire and now you know these fires exceed that tremendously you know there's fires burning in California over hundred thousand acres you know and I do think that and I think that different ways of managing fires have caused a lot of the acres and you know to get bigger up fires and it's a lot easier world to fight fires in now than it was when I started we had a lot less to deal with you know well thank you for joining us back we appreciate your time and hope y'all stay safe out there okay all right Saturday is a big day for restaurants coffee shops breweries wineries because the new public

health order will allow indoor dining at 25% of fire code capacity churches and house of worship get a bump from 25 to 40% to the governor made the announcement Wednesday after a string of days in which New Mexico saw its case counts its deaths and hospitalizations decrease she warned however that quote our progress is only as good as our willingness to stay the course and quote Dan clearly a nod there to the fact that we tried this once and didn't go well will it stick this time how do you think we'll do yeah I think it's tough to predict I mean I think clearly we've been being trending in a positive direction and there's there's pressure on the governor to kind of ease up on some of the restrictions but I don't think there's a magic formula here you know as you mentioned the last time we kind of loosen some restrictions then case numbers increased again I do think you know with the unemployment rate having increased last month that probably also ratcheted up some pressure so I I think they're trying to kind of slowly turn the knob as secretary of grace would say but I think it's unclear you know whether whether that can be done

responsibly and kind of slowly enough to help some of these restaurants and businesses out economically but still kind of keep the the spread at a low rate um Laura interestingly when you think about it there was an outbreak in Lee County as we track the numbers in Lee County as you know had thumbed its nose at masks and you know indoor dining bands and everything else how do we how does the governor balance opening things versus how everyone sees it should be done if they're governor as a matter of fact how does the governor approach this kind of thing um very delicately I think I think you know that southeastern part of the state is always sort of on the bubble about being you know treated as as being part of sort of Santa Fe and the Santa Fe machine if you will like they always and having represented a municipality in that part of the state I understand how you know independent they are and how in many ways they feel compelled I mean they they feel in many ways culturally uh a relevance to Texas I mean they go to Texas for

their um you know medical issues a lot of times they go to Midland, Odessa or um you know Lubbock or somewhere else to get medical care and so for them um those you know lines those political lines of Texas versus New Mexico are blurred a lot more than they are for the rest of us um and that's just a fact of life down there so I think for many of them they saw the governor's approach as being very different from what they were seeing as reasonable and they were not seeing as many cases and so they they in some situations weren't taking it as um as seriously as I think people in in um Albuquerque and Santa Fe were taking it with the mask wearing and all of that but now we see the result of that potentially is the surge so um I think it's important that the governor and and her people be um delicate and not sort of be I told you so about their approach with that region because that was just further um inflame a bad situation but I think they're doing what they need to do which is to encourage contact tracing to encourage um people to be well informed about what they need to do to protect themselves um to really be vigilant about that um and and really

to try to reach out to them with more information um to try to overcome where they're headed right now which is really troubling given their sparse population so for example there was a uh Justin Riedosa there's a McDonald's with 13 um cases that's huge for one uh one employer let alone you know a place like McDonald's that potentially serves a lot of people um who are traveling through the area that could really be a serious um uh a thing for um an infection like this to spread Laura Sanchez will stay with you for one more and get the other guys in on this too but since your the attorney on our panel I'm curious this your sense of where the Supreme Court came down on Wednesday it seems pretty definitive to me nothing's really ever settled but how did you hear the final final ruling on this it it am I missing something here it seemed pretty definitive as I as I was listening well so procedurally just to kind of go back a little bit please filed at a time when you know we had been opened at 50 percent capacity indoor for dining um and then it got

shut down based on a resurgence of cases that was in um July and then this this case was filed soon after that and the basis of the challenge really was that um they were arguing that there wasn't enough data to support uh an approach on health on a health basis a public welfare basis um to shut down businesses like this that it was really causing an economic impact and that was the harm that they were causing so it's really an argument that government is overstepping their bounds um and causing an economic um or you know potentially like a property value to go down that they have a right to so that was the sort of the legal argument um the Supreme Court initially basically agreed with um the temporary restraining order and then this hearing that happened this week was to determine a permanent injunction which would have been a permanent sort of banning of the governor's ability to uh to close down um in indoor dining to a certain extent it's um the impact of the ruling

is lessened because the health orders have now been changed so that this weekend the everything will be able to open back up everything being restaurants to 25 percent capacity indoor so the practical effect of this um is somewhat uh is not as important necessarily as it had been before when it was shut down completely but i think um legally speaking it's still an important outcome because it validates the governor's ability to make these kinds of broad sweeping um executive orders for the public welfare and so in that sense i think you're going to see other potential industries if they have a problem with the way the governor's approaching this they're going to be hard pressed to to be able to win at the Supreme Court level and then of course we saw that that Steve Pierce and other other republicans saying well here's an example of why people should get out and vote and try to you know vote the bums out meaning the the Supreme Court but interestingly enough Judith Nakamura is a republican a republican appointed um you know uh chief justice or justice

so it isn't a political issue when it comes to um members of the judiciary in particular Supreme Court they're looking at jurisprudence they're looking at precedent they're looking at the law so it doesn't come down to you know what's the letter after your name gotcha what's the letter of the law a lot of has the outspoken republican opposition to this been the health order i should say the public health order has it been a political winner or political loser meaning are they losing on this short term or winning or long term is this winnable what's your sense of where the GOP is coming from on this no i think it depends what happens with the numbers and people are fickle on this and i think it depends where you live i think a lot of it depends where you live if you're in a rural area and you're not seeing very many cases you don't understand why there's a one state policy and so you know i think that that's you know so i think it's complicated i think there's a lot of uh people in sort of these southern districts in these rural areas in particular who probably aren't very happy with how things have gone uh with the covid orders and you know they're not part

of albuquerque in Santa Fe as Laura talked about and i think that you know maybe the one straight strategy has been a difficult strategy for them in particular um um Dan same question is this could i mean you can make anything political in this world you can make anything you want to political but there's the you know as Lana and Laura just sort of spelled out there's a built-in opposition that's there and they're going to vote for this governor or somebody else for governor at some point it could this be a problem for her down the road i i think some of the you know it could kind of um highlight some of those already tensions between urban and rural parts of the state um you know that Laura talked about i think those are already there and and i think this might be exacerbating some of that um i do think obviously this point out in an election season you know that's given it even more but kind of political cue it would probably be political anyhow but even more so i do think though kind of uh you know philosophically too it's just highlighting differences uh

you know this is the latest court case governor's faces string of lawsuits and she's prevailed and all of them so i do think looking forward to maybe expect some discussion at the legislature next year about these emergency powers laws and whether they need to be changed or rained in and i think that's where kind of we're going to see this uh go next yeah Laura Sanchez he's got a little bit of time on this one but we're headed into the holidays in a couple of months certainly uh schools might be more likely to return it's going to be winter there's a lot of things to think about here and we'll be indoors you know do you think we're just bound for more trouble and the governor's sort of thinking about it that way saying look you know we've got holidays coming up people are going to be traveling getting together even January could be a big mess when you really think about it is that where the governor's head's at well if you were the governor right now is that we would be fed about yeah i mean i think anybody um in terms of a proven approach to dealing with with this with this problem you have to be thinking ahead um in all times and i think that's a big part of what the thinking is of course you know i i think the governor also has a very difficult

job in that she needs to listen to her advisors right she needs to listen to the the doctors that are involved in this but she also needs to be concerned about the reality of the economy balancing that approach and and the fact that people i think you know we're still seeing hundred degree days we're still seeing some really really hot um temperatures here in albuquerque and and certainly in the rest of the state so because of that it's unrealistic to expect people to be able to go out to eat and sit out in the hot sun or even under a tent and have it be comfortable in any way so it will be a gradual approach to try to figure out how to get the economy going and then i think that the holidays we're going to see a very different holiday season i think this and we've seen in the past and also a very different legislative session so once we get past the election a lot of those issues about how the legislatures going to function or not are going to come to light and it will be very interesting to see sort of what kind of um all hands on deck approach our leaders take interesting that's a great last note really want to appreciate say i appreciate

that and thanks to everyone for keeping track of everything through a whirlwind news week and Dan thank you for your reporting no doubt yeah thank you absolutely now throughout the pandemic we've been keeping an eye on homelessness many of you know about the moratorium on evictions but that's not the whole story once more here's NMIS mega camera with line panelists and housing advocate surge martina's and chuck sheldon a longtime landlord and apartment owner i'd like to welcome our guests professor surge martina's teaches primarily in the u&m school of laws economic justice clinic also known as the business and tax clinic which focuses on support for grassroots economic development initiatives enforcing the rates of low wage workers and improving housing stability and conditions for low income tenants chuck sheldon is the CEO and president of the sheldon company tnc management company and enchanted properties construction company he's former president of the apartment association of new mexico and owns or manages a total of about 1700 units thank you both for joining us thank you it should be safe to say that it's

the best interest of both tenants and landlords to have a good relationship built where buildings are safe and well maintained rent is reasonable and renters are responsible tenants and pay rent on time some renters for a variety of reasons are not able to pay rent when it's due and right now the covid-19 pandemic is causing more problems with unemployment and other woes and their concerns we're going to see a huge wave of evictions this federal help for renters has declined or for rather for taxpayers right now there's still a moratorium surge on evictions here in new mexico but that is set to expire soon and it doesn't apply to all renters what do we know about when these moratorium will end yeah we the federal moratorium ended about a month ago and required a 30 day notice which i think today actually is the 30th day so so the federal protections could you know are effectively over in terms of moratorium the state the the state supreme court

issued a stay on physically performing evictions in certain cases and that has been in place since March and it's in place until further notice we don't have any indication from the court when that will be lifted or how long it'll be in place so does the state moratorium from the that the supreme court oversees that apply to everyone it applies to renters renters who are being facing eviction specifically for non payment of rent who can show the court that they are experiencing a financial hardship that makes it unable for them to pay the rent so not everybody okay because people are evicted for a variety of reasons um so how many more evictions do you expect to see in the coming months i mean that is that's the you know the million dollar question we i expected to see a lot more uh over the the the previous months and um we were able to

federal stimulus and other measures were able to sort of stem that now that the stimulus has is gone and the the employment unemployment insurance bump has gone away i anticipate seeing you know more folks unable to pay the rent and the resultant increase in evictions what the actual number is is anybody's guess right the numbers of folks who are rent instability in their ability to pay rent is skyrocketing but you know it's not in anybody's interest to have huge amounts of evictions uh and wave after wave so what we'll actually see is it's really completely unknown at this point you say they're in here in New Mexico the courts have a super fast eviction process why is that uh New Mexico is you have basically we have a statute that says eviction cases have to be heard by the court within seven to ten days and there's room for

pushing that out a little bit but not a lot of room there and so you know in a situation where if a tenant can't pay the rent and the landlord gives them a three-day notice after those three days are up then the landlord can start a lawsuit and so inside of a couple weeks you can find yourself facing an eviction and the process moves very quickly which unfortunately leads to you know it doesn't give time for folks to maybe find other resources or find ways to to get the rent if if there's a you know a one-off reason for them not being able to pay it that month or whatever and so the the the the speed with which the process moves really prevents a lot of taking stock in you know it doesn't give you a lot of breathing room so even there's there there's still a moratorium people can still get a judgment of eviction why is it important to avoid that even if you can't be turned out physically from your apartment right now right so getting a judgment of eviction is

unequivocally a bad thing it you know it's another landlord the next place you try to go right if you want to move to a new place the landlord is not going to look favorably on that it can actually disqualify you for certain subsidies and other forms of you know housing assistance and it is you know it's it's not going to rebound well to your you know to your to your benefit obviously it's just a bad thing to have uh on one's record and so having that you know judgment even if you're not physically displaced is also very undesirable as a tenant Chuckie said the Lord renter relationship works best when everybody interacts as citizens how can a landlord or a property manager or owner best work with tenants well I think that you know what Serge was saying you know moves quickly the courts have been backed up for a long time so you know we're we're short judges on the bench so you know I think we have a little bit more

leeway and and times and then the judges typically by statute is three to seven days and they've been giving 10 to 15 days for people so you know it's it's been up to the jurisdiction of the of the judges but it behoves us to work with the tenants you know and have a communication with the tenant as to you know they're struggling you know how can we help them and you know if you call me after your you know your rents do and you haven't done anything to emitiate that you know then it's very difficult right because my you know the banks when I look at the banks you know they require their payment on the fifth and there is no leeway right and if you're five days to 10 days late then there's a 10% penalty so you know we're we're up against between a rock and a hard space ourselves and so the more leeway the more people will think about this and and I always talk about it like

your children right and and not to be thinking down about tenants but when your children don't talk to you you know they're in a room by themselves or there's somewhere else you know they're up to something that you don't want them to be up to yeah and and so what you do is you go in and check on them to see okay what are you guys doing right oh you're writing on the walls you know you're not supposed to do that well it's the same thing as well we're working with tenants when they don't talk to you and we're reaching out to them you give them that three day notice is a a shocking point if you will because it's how I need your attention come and talk to me you're not talking to me you know you're we give people five days leeway rents do on the first we give them till the fifth to pay it's just like everyone in life no you know not everybody can make their

payments and and be an eight hundred vica score and get their payments done on the first so we get people leeway so if they know they're gonna have a problem just start talking to they should start talking to their landlord right away absolutely so that five days you get three days now that's eight days late before you even start any kind of legal process right and usually around the 10th of the month so then you know that's 10 days before you start a process we try to talk to all our tenants and if you have a difficulty get them to you know the goodwill for example will will help people with one month's rent if you've been given a three day notice you know Catholic charities helps yes talk about some of the avenues of assistance for renters when they're having problems do you work with your property managers and train them to work with renters to get that kind of help absolutely everybody has a list of people we're considered a second chance we have second chance units where we help people that have actually been in prison have failed in society and

have difficulty in society and and we've tried to help those people and and find them housing and being and nurturing so we work with a lot of agencies and we talk to the agencies to be able to help folks we also have market properties where you know they don't take the you know people that have had some difficulties and so we have a blend so we're very versed in helping tenants gets help what's amazing to me is some of the folks won't reach out to get the help you know you can take things to them and say call these for example I believe I saw the paper the other day and and surge was quoted in there and trying to help you know people get this $300,000 at the city has well I call 311 right away and and I said okay what's the process well the process like everything is lengthy and you know you have to apply and you have to show

you have you know paid your taxes and you have to show that you can't eat anymore so you know most people won't go through that process to to apply so is this uh I was going to bring up this $300,000 the city's coronavirus relief money they've made available for eviction prevention is this just a temporary solution is there a downside to this kind of aid there's no downside to providing you know assistance I think it's it's not based on the numbers that you know we anticipate it's not going to be not going to be able to prevent or help you know everybody who's going to be in need and you know as Chuck was alluding these programs aren't always nimble and and able to work so you know I'm I advocate for slowing things down on the eviction side but also for making more funds available and assistance available and speeding it up making it right because nobody can wait a long time especially you know landlords have their operating expenses and and I get that

right so saying let's all just wait for ages while government agencies and bureaucracies slowly move into action that's not a real viable solution given the speed of which these things happen but you know it's a recognition of the need for rental assistance to benefit renters landlords and everybody and an understanding of this is the real issue and it was an issue before March it will continue to be an issue affordable housing and rental instability well I'd we unfortunately have to wrap up but it seems clear that this pandemic has brought forward long simmering issues that we have to solve around housing and affordability so we hope both of you will come back as we I'm sure there will be more to talk about so as you just heard from our wonderful panel we have some movement on businesses opening restaurants particularly it's a long overdue fist pump for some and a worried groan for others now to me it's an opportunity to go into fall in the flu season

particularly in good shape if we take the lessons learned from earlier this year we now know how to wear a mask some of us anyway as well as social distancing and of course washing our hands now if we manage this partial opening and we come out of Liberty Weekend without a backslide like we had after Memorial Day we're gonna stay ahead of the game it's all in our hands and we can do this thanks again for joining us for staying informed and engaged we'll see you again next week funding for new mexico and focus provided by the McHughan Charitable Foundation

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