City of Santa Fe Touts “Clean” 2021 Audit

“It took longer than we had hoped to get to this point, but the results should be reassuring to the public and interested parties,” Finance Director Emily Oster tells SFR regarding the long-awaited release of the city’s 2021 fiscal year audit. For those keeping track, the original due date for the FY21 audit was Dec. 31, 2021, leaving the city currently with one remaining late audit for FY22 (due seven months ago). As for the 2021 audit, which Carr Riggs & Ingram CPAs presented at last night’s Finance Committee, it expresses an unmodified or “clean” opinion, indicating auditors believe the city’s financial statements are presented fairly. The audit identifies 22 findings—one more than the 2020 fiscal year audit—with the city reporting that 10 of the findings from the FY20 audit were resolved in the FY21 audit. Those findings include four material weaknesses and three significant deficiencies in financial reporting. The auditor’s report on the city’s financials for federal program funding related to the airport and transit expresses a qualified opinion. The audit also reports the city’s ongoing efforts to address some of its chronic problems by catching up on its financial reporting; filling key financial job positions and the like. “We are very pleased to see a clean audit,” Blair told SFR on Friday. “The city is humming at a level it hasn’t done before, and we’re moving in the right direction to make sure this is a concern that’s in our rear-view mirror and never have to look back.”

President Joe Biden is scheduled to return to New Mexico next week as part of a three-day trip out West to discuss how last year’s Inflation Reduction Act will counter the impacts of climate change. Some touted impacts for New Mexico include accelerating the transition to clean energy; increasing green energy jobs; and supporting climate-smart agriculture practices. Upon the bill becoming law last August, US Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-NM, called it “the single greatest action that we have ever taken to change the trajectory of the climate crisis.” Biden’s visit to the West coincides with record-breaking heat this summer. Last week, he convened Mayor Kate Gallego of Phoenix, Arizona, and Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio, Texas to discuss new measures to protect workers and communities from the type of extreme heat permeating the US—Phoenix, for instance, just had 31 straight days of temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. Those new measures include amping up US Department of Labor alerts hazard alerts for heat; added investment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to improve weather forecasting; and additional investment by the Department of Interior Department to expand water storage and enhance climate resilience in California, Colorado and Washington. Biden’s visit also coincides with a new report by New Mexico Voices for Children showing that children are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change because “their bodies and immune systems are still developing, which makes them more susceptible to environmental contaminants.”

Yesterday was Aging and Long-Term Services Secretary Katrina Hotrum-Lopez’s last day in office. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Hotrum-Lopez’s retirement mid-afternoon and thanked her for “her dedication to improving services and care for our seniors has impacted countless lives.” The governor appointed Hotrum-Lopez to the post in August 2019. She previously served as the director of behavioral health services for Bernalillo County, and as deputy cabinet secretary of the state Department of Health. “It has been the great privilege of my life to work with the incredible team at Aging and Long-Term Services, as well as all the incredible state workers throughout New Mexico,” Hotrum-Lopez said in a statement. “During my tenure, our department navigated an unprecedented global pandemic, historic wildfires, and all the everyday challenges of providing services throughout New Mexico.” The governor’s office reports Lujan Grisham’s health policy advisor Gina DeBlassie will serve as acting secretary. By the Albuquerque Journal’s count, Hotrum-Lopez is the ninth cabinet secretary to leave the governor’s administration over the last year.

A file cabinet the state health department donated to Habitat for Humanity contained files that potentially exposed “certain personal information of a specific group of individuals,” DOH reported yesterday. The department became aware of the breach on July 15, according to a news release. “Our privacy team acted quickly to contain the breach and prevent any unauthorized access,” the news release says. “We also immediately initiated a thorough investigation to understand the full scope of the impact of the incident.” DOH says at present it has “no evidence” indicating any exposed data has been misused; has notified the people whose information was exposed. “We want to reassure the public that protecting your personal data is our top priority,” DOH Secretary Patrick Allen said in a statement. “As part of our response to this incident, we have taken several steps to strengthen our security protocols and enhance our monitoring systems.” The news release also apologizes to “anyone affected by this breach” and says the department is “committed to transparency. While we understand the concerns this incident may raise, we are committed to being open and honest throughout this process.”

Former Albuquerque Journal North crime reporter Vic Vela now has a podcast on Colorado Public Radio, Back from Broken, focused on recovery. As the Journal reports in an interview with Vela, the stories told on the podcast “are from people from all walks of life. They are the athletes whose jerseys you’ve worn to games, to everyday people in your community. With each story, it shows why mental health and addiction is important to talk about.” They are issues he knows well, as he also drank and did drugs during his tenure as a reporter in Northern New Mexico, circa 2007 to 2012. He’s sober now, he says, and his podcast helps him as well. “When I’m talking to someone, it helps me get out of my own head,” he tells the Journal. “If I’m able to help someone, it serves as a reminder to me of what and where I don’t want to go again.”

Bomb magazine interviews New Mexico-based artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation), whose first retrospective in New York, “Memory Map,” is on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art through Aug. 13. Among other topics, Quick-to-See Smith emphasizes herself in relation to other Indigenous artists. “My content has a relationship to every single Native artist, their work, and their humor: James Luna, Cara Romero, Diego Romero, Jeffrey Gibson, Jim Denomie. All of them,” she tells Bomb. “They’re the ones that make my world go round because the content in their work is feeding me.” At 83, Quick-to-See Smith is far from winding down. “I’m not doing as much as I would like,” she says. “I would like to speed up the language immersion at home. I would like study about what do we do with our languages because now they’re almost like ancient languages. I’m concerned about putting out a book on contemporary Native art. That’s a long time coming. I want to do another large exhibition that includes two hundred Native American artists.” She recently started a small private foundation and hopes to start publishing books on Native children’s stories in the coming year. When asked how she sustains her “various drives with equal passion,” she says: “I’m doing it the Indian way. This is how we lived our lives traditionally. Everything was connected. Everything you did had a reason to do the next thing. And that thing led to the other thing. That is how we lived our lives.”

Hispanic farmers and ranchers in Northern New Mexico tell Axios Latino that Democrats’ policies have hurt their way of life. For some of those ranchers, broken land promises from the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo still loom large (Axios also provides a primer on the treaty itself). Manuel Trujillo, a farmer in Ensenada, tells Axios some Hispanic ranchers identify with the show Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner, in which a family fights off both the government and developers from their land. The farmers and ranchers expressed frustration with Presidents Biden and Obama over land-use issues, with Monero rancher David Sanchez saying a group of Hispanic ranchers tried, without success, to meet with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack when he served under President Obama. While rural Hispanic Democrats may be frustrated with their party, at least one GOP consultant tells Axios Republicans aren’t doing enough to capitalize on that frustration (for what it’s worth: this is not a brand-new political dynamic). Axios also has a photo essay on 400 years of Northern New Mexico ranching heritage.

The National Weather Service forecasts a 40% chance for precipitation today and tonight, mostly with monsoon-like scattered showers and thunderstorms storms after 4 pm and before 10 pm, respectively. Otherwise, it will be mostly sunny, with a high temperature near 87 degrees and northeast wind 5 to 15 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. As for July: It’s over!

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