El Rito Media News Services

With less than two weeks left in the 60-day legislative session, House Republicans sounded the alarm Monday on what they characterized as Democrats’ inaction on crimefighting bills and other legislation New Mexicans have been demanding.

“It’s really unfortunate that we’re asking you to be with us here today when we’re 48 days into a legislative session,” Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences, told a group of reporters at a news conference hosted by the House GOP caucus.

“We have 12 days left to deliver on the promises we made to New Mexico citizens,” she said. “These are promises that the House and Senate Democrat Party said they would deliver on. Citizens demanded us to take action on crime, on health care and on affordability, yet here we are, 12 days left in the session, and very little effective policies have been passed.”

House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, said he respectfully disagreed. He pointed to multiple bills the House has passed to improve affordability and health care in New Mexico, both in the current session and in the past.

“I think we’ve done a lot, and we will continue to do more,” he said. “We have a big tax bill coming that should be on the floor of the House over the next few days that will essentially eliminate personal income tax for middle-income families [who earn] roughly $60,000, $65,000 and below — no income tax through the expansion of credits. That’s huge.”

‘Reforming CYFD’

More than anything, House Republicans focused on crime, including the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee’s vote last week to table House Bill 134 to implement harsher penalties for juvenile offenders.

“Juvenile crime has to be attacked through different strategies,” Martínez said. “One of them is reforming [the state Children, Youth and Families Department]. Kids committing crimes are in households and families that are broken, that are struggling. Where is CYFD to intervene before the child becomes a criminal or that child commits a crime?”

Martínez noted the House unanimously approved three CYFD reform bills, though it’s unclear whether Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will veto the bills if they pass the Senate.

“The notion that there’s been inactivity on that front is baseless,” Martínez said. “Now, there might be a difference of opinion. The other side may want to just lock kids up and throw away the key, and that’s fair. That’s for them to decide. But our caucus will continue to be thoughtful to ensure that every kid in every community is protected and kept safe.”

In an interview with The New Mexican last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said he wasn’t seeing enough movement on the crimefighting front.

“I don’t know why we’re inviting more victims as a result of not doing right in the public safety area,” she said. “I don’t understand it.”

Dow asserted Republicans came to Santa Fe with “real solutions.”

“Progressives have blocked us at every turn,” she said, adding many GOP-sponsored bills haven’t received a committee hearing.

“We do not want to leave here with our health care continuing to be in shambles. We do not want crime and criminals to have free reign in our streets, and we have to address the affordability,” she said.

Dow blasted the administration of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat, saying, “four years of bad leadership at the federal level” has caused skyrocketing prices.

“Yet,” she said, “the Democrats are falling short.”

‘Homicide scholarship’?

Rep. Nicole Chavez, R-Albuquerque, whose teen son was killed in a drive-by shooting in Albuquerque in 2015, said the Legislature “can’t afford to make any more excuses, not just with health care but especially for crime.”

“It’s unfortunate that we’re still standing here today waiting for actions to take place when it involves juvenile crime,” she said.

“We have to do something about juvenile crime,” she said. “New Mexicans have been demanding change.”

Rep. Andrea Reeb, R-Clovis, sponsor of HB 134, said the Legislature keeps “kicking this crime problem down the road.”

“As you heard, I believe it was Saturday, we now have what we’re calling the ‘homicide scholarship,’ “ she said, referring to House Bill 255.

“We’re actually rewarding delinquent offenders, violent delinquent offenders, by giving them $2,000 a month for utilities and housing and free school,” said Reeb, a former prosecutor.

“It’s ridiculous,” she added. “I mean, we are encouraging, actually, people to be delinquent offenders and serious violent offenders.”

Reeb said she “prefiled” HB 134, or filed it ahead of the start of the session, to give it the “best chance” of passing out of its committee assignments. She said she doesn’t have “much hope” the committee that tabled the bill will revive it before the end of the session.

Reeb said the bill was aimed at the “worst of the worst,” and there was a mistaken belief it would “take away all the rehabilitative processes for them.”

“The bill addressed the ones that are killing people, that are robbing people, that are raping people,” she said. “It blows my mind that the Democrats don’t see that these offenders need to be treated differently and instead of coddling these kids, we need to actually hold them accountable.”

Martínez said the House passed HB 255, which he said holds juvenile offenders accountable by ensuring the clock on their sentencing no longer stops when they abscond from probation, among other provisions.

“But it also ensures that they’re getting the services that they need,” he said. “They’re not being provided with an education. I’ve heard in some cases they’re not even provided with a fresh change of underwear, and these are children. What makes us think that they’re being provided with the actual behavioral health and restorative and rehabilitative programs that they need to get better?”

Stopping ‘bad bills’

Chavez noted a public safety package has already been signed into law by the governor, but she said lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agreed it was just a start to tackling crime in New Mexico.

“Now, nothing’s been done, so was that all talk or are we ready to work on real solutions?” she asked.

Although other public safety legislation is under consideration, Reeb and other Republicans said the GOP is willing to work with Democrats on doing more.

“It’s so frustrating, and it makes me so angry that we are still here [with] 12 days left and nothing significant has passed that is going to keep our New Mexicans safer,” she said.

Asked whether Republicans’ strategy is to stop Democratic bills from advancing, Minority Leader Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, said the strategy is to stop “bad bills” from moving forward. She said time is the only tool Republicans have on their side because they’re in the minority. The House has a three-hour time limit on floor debates, and Republicans have been taking up the full three hours of late.

“We stand here as a team ready to bring solutions, ready to fight against so-called solutions that we don’t agree with and protecting New Mexican citizens as much as we possibly can,” Armstrong said.

Adrian Hedden
Carlsbad Current-Argus
achedden@currentargus.com

Stalled plans to store spent nuclear fuel in the Permian Basin could get new life depending on how the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a case seeking to restore vacated licenses for two such facilities.

The court heard oral arguments in the case March 5 and filed it for a later decision

At issue are two projects to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods – one proposed by Holtec International near the Eddy-Lea county line in southeast New Mexico and another proposed by Interim Storage Partners in Andrews, Texas, about an hour’s drive east.

Holtec’s plan calls for a newly constructed facility to hold up to 100,000 metric tons of the rods. The Texas project would augment the existing Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews to store about 40,000 metric tons of the materials.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted the Texas site a license in 2021 and approved a license for Holtec’s project in 2023, but the licenses were vacated in separate 2023 decisions by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court said the licenses were invalid under a provision of the federal Atomic Energy Act that specifies spent nuclear fuel can only be moved to a permanent, deep geological repository.

Those rulings were appealed last year to the Supreme Court in separate fillings by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the companies. The appeals were consolidated, meaning any ruling on the Texas case will also apply to the New Mexico proposal.

Attorneys from Interim Storage Partners and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission argued to the Supreme Court that the facilities were legally licensed by the federal agency and would provide a solution to the nation’s problem of what to do with its nuclear waste.

The state of Texas and oil and gas company Fasken Oil and Ranch both appealed the NRC’s original approval of the license for Interim Storage Partners and now want the Supreme Court to affirm the circuit court’s revocation of the license, arguing that the projects in the Permian Basin pose too big a risk for the local area.

What is temporary?

Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch voiced some of the same concerns, asking how the facility could be considered “temporary” when the license was for 40 years of operations.

He pointed to canceled plans for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, which was defunded by the administration of President Barack Obama after officials from that state opposed the project.

Gorsuch also voiced concerns about impacts the site could have on the oil and gas industry that is booming in the region where the facilities would be built.

“Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the solution. We spent $15 billion. It’s a hole in the ground. How is this interim storage that the government is authorizing here, especially when ISP is getting a 40-year license. That doesn’t sound interim to me,” Gorsuch said. “On a concrete platform in the Permian Basin where we get our oil and gas? Hopefully, we don’t get irradiated oil and gas.”

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that by not moving the spent fuel, which in many cases sits at the site of decommissioned nuclear reactors, the federal government continues to put local communities at risk.

“If it takes 40 or 80 years to have a solution, it is still temporary,” Sotomayor said. “The risks to communities continue to rise If we keep permitting storage in facilities that have had to be shut down.”

David Frederick, an attorney for Fasken, argued the material was safer where it was, stored in cooling pools that gradually lower the heat and danger posed by the fuel rods than it would be while being moved by rail to rural New Mexico.

“That material is so hot, it takes years to cool,” he said. “It can only be done safely onsite by removing the reactor core and moving it into water.”

Malcom Stewart, a Justice Department lawyer representing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said many of the former power plants now only functioned to store the waste left after decommissioning.

He said moving the rods to one location – in the desert of the Permian Basin – would allow the former plant locations to be repurposed and restored to their native state.

“The petitioners and ISP have argued that you have a bunch of places around the country that now serve no other purpose than to store spent nuclear fuel, and it would be better to centralize the waste so that the other facilities can be returned to what is called green space,” Stewart said.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the federal government already decided that Interim Storage Partners could move and store the rods safely, contending that future advancement in technology could make it even safer.

“We have (Interim Storage Partners) here saying that they can receive this material. I’m not fully understanding why it matters that the material is so hot in a situation where the commission has licensed this transfer,” Jackson said. “Someone thinks it can be done.”

But attorney Aaron Lloyd Nielson of the Texas Office of the Attorney General argued that regardless of how it is moved and stored, and the level of safety, the facility would pose decades of risk and potentially be a target for foreign adversaries.

“If anyone thinks this is temporary, I have a bridge to sell you. There is no way we can move all the spent fuel in 60 years,” he said. “What the commission has done is put an enormous terrorist bullseye on the Permian Basin.”