Shakespeare was called into service in Santa Fe Tuesday as cries of "a pox on both your houses" echoed in the Capitol Rotunda when the controversy over the UNM Athletic Department (AD) broke into open warfare between the chairwoman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and UNM President Garnett Stokes.

In a blatant attempt at micromanagement, Chairwoman Patty Lundstrom is telling UNM: Either you reinstate men's soccer and three other cancelled sports or else $4.6 million in state money for the department goes away. Blackmail?

Well, whatever you call it that ultimatum is in the state budget that passed out of Lundstrom's committee this week. Her demands brought out the boo birds who are already bone weary of the last two Governors trying to run UNM by remote control. Now the House is getting into the act.

But UNM President Garnett Stokes, who firmly backs the elimination of the four sports to improve the AD's financial standing, is also getting catcalls over her seeming inability or unwillingness to form a working relationship with Lundstrom and craft a compromise that would get this nasty battle settled.

Stokes does have Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith as her backstop. He's not inclined to support Patty's micromanaging in the Senate version of the budget.

What we appear to have are two rookie mistakes--an overreach by the new appropriations chairwoman and ditto for the decidedly undiplomatic one year UNM President. Maybe some of the referees at the Athletic Department can broker a deal.

And how about the UNM lobbyists who get paid to smooth over ruffled feathers? They are the estimable Dan Lopez, former president of the NM Institute of Mining and Technology and Joe Thompson, a former state House Republican leader. Is Stokes getting advice from them or are they not whispering in her ear?

Like the prison warden said in the film Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is failure to communicate."

ENVIRO INFIGHTING

Enviros fighting for a more green economy are seeing red when it comes to one of their own. New Energy Economy (NEE) is alone among the major enviro groups opposing the Energy Transition Act (SB489). That bill calls for a dramatic increase in the use of renewable energy but also calls for a ratepayer bail out of PNM for the costs of closing its Four Corners coal-fired San Juan Generating Station. It received extensive coverage on your blog this week.

Now as the battle over the Act escalates at the Roundhouse, NEE is being scorched by its enviro colleagues, including those at ProgressNow NM.

We’ll be blunt. A progressive ally, New Energy Economy (NEE), is letting their zealous hostility toward PNM stand in the way of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reduce climate change impacts in New Mexico and provide economic relief to coal miners in the Four Corners area.
. . . We know that many of you on this list are also supporters of NEE, and for good reason. NEE has done great work on clean energy and environmental issues. But on this bill. . . NEE is just wrong. NEE seems to have lost their focus on the transition to a clean economy and replaced it with the mentality that utilities must be punished at all costs. . . For most of us, the goal is economic justice, carbon reduction, clean energy, and slowing down climate change. . . But for New Energy Economy, it seems like the goal has become to destroy PNM at all costs, regardless of what else is at stake--even a transition to clean, renewable energy. . . 

NEE and its executive director Mariel Nanasi are also getting under the skin of Conservation Voters of NM. That group came with a page titled "Energy Transition Act Myths and Facts."

Sen. Joe Cervantes, chair of the Senate Conservation Committee, tells us that he will "likely" schedule the ETA for a hearing this Saturday. The bill has also been referred to the Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee.

ODDS AND ENDS

An interesting profile and interview with Brian Blalock, the new head of the Children Youth and families Department (CYFD), perhaps the most challenging agency to lead in this era. We noted his outsider credentials in a January blog--he comes in from the San Francisco Bay--and that a fresh pair of eyes may be what the department needs after years of deep troubles. We had his age at 50 but the profile says he's 43. Well, after dealing with CYFD for a couple of months he will probably feel like 50. . .

In blogging of that on-line petition drive to impeach MLG we mentioned how in 2005 State Treasurer Michael Vigil was faced with a rare impeachment proceeding in the state House before he decided to resign but we did not mention two other recent prominent cases. Veteran political reporter Steve Terrell writes:

There was state Treasurer Robert Vigil — who resigned in 2005 when a House impeachment committee began deliberating about actual articles of impeachment. Six years later, Public Regulation Commissioner Jerome Block Jr. resigned as a part of a plea deal with the Attorney General’s Office that came as another House impeachment committee was investigating him. And in 2013, Secretary of State Dianna Duran resigned as a part of a plea deal while another impeachment committee had started investigating her.

Reader Chris Brown points out that the 2018 investment return for the Educational Retirement Board (ERB) fund was 0.6 percent, not the 6 percent that was on Friday's blog. However, the annualized five year return of the fund is 6.3 percent.

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