Today's News

The Los Alamos Public School board met on Monday to review and discuss the draft request for proposal documents for the Los Alamos National Lab Management and Operation Contract Competition.

LAPS noticed that the documents did not mention the obligations for the successor to provide support to the Los Alamos schools in the amount of $8 million each fiscal year.

This obligation is covered under Public Law 105-85, the “Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005.”

LAPS drafted a comment to address the missing language for the main purpose of making the potential contractor aware of the $8 million and avoid any unwanted surprises.

LANL Foundation Treasurer Bill Wadt and Los Alamos Commerce and Development Corporation Executive Director Patrick Sullivan were present to discuss the comment that Wadt drafted with the help of Superintendent Kurt Steinhaus.

Wadt offered to help draft the comment because he has extensive experience working on Management and Operation contract issues, dating back to 1992.

Wadt informed the school board that the original language was developed by Maury Pongratz in an effort to protect the school district when the LANL contract was up for competition in 2005-2006.

The power was restored in White Rock at 6:53 p.m. Wednesday after more than four hours. The Public Service Company of New Mexico and The Los Alamos Department of Public Utilities determined the cause of the outage to be a lightning strike that hit a building within the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

“We had to coordinate with LANL and PNM to get the system back up," DPU Spokesperson Julie Williams-Hill said. Earlier in the day, PNM and LANL thought there may have been a break in a transmission line outside of the county’s power grid.

White Rock experienced a total power failure at 2:30 p.m. At 4 p.m., the county set up portable generators at the major intersections in White Rock to handle the traffic from the 5 p.m. commute.

Williams-Hill thanked the utility companies involved in finding the source of the problem. “Thank you PNM, LANL and all our customers in White Rock,” Williams-Hill said in an update on the DPU's Facebook page.

Santa Cruz resident Celso Ramos, 37, of Santa Cruz, was arrested July 13 in Los Alamos on a magistrate and district court warrant on charges relating to possession of heroin.

In early 2015, Ramos was arrested as part of a series of drug trafficking arrests that took place in Los Alamos on Feb. 17-20, 2015, and yielded several prescription drugs and slightly more than two ounces of heroin (58.2 grams).

According to court documents, police were called to a White Rock neighborhood because Ramos and a 29-year-old woman named Deanna Doss were seen acting suspicious.

LAPD first received reports of the couple “walking up and down driveways.”

Police made contact with the couple in the parking lot of the Smith’s grocery store in White Rock.

When questioned and searched, police found four fully loaded syringes of heroin in his backpack. The amount of heroin in the syringes turned out to be more than 2 ounces. While searching Ramos at the detention center, police discovered an additional 2.5 grams of heroin, according to the report.

Ramos was charged with trafficking controlled substances (possession with intent to distribute, narcotic or meth, first offense), possession of a controlled substance (felony narcotic drug) and use or possession of drug paraphernalia.

New Mexico adjusts rules for dark-money groups in politics

SANTA FE (AP) — New Mexico campaign finance regulators are making some adjustments as they move forward with a proposal for more detailed financial disclosures from nonprofit advocacy groups that attempt to influence elections.
In response to public comments, Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver on Tuesday released revised rules aimed at so-called dark money groups that can spend unlimited amounts to influence elections and ballot measures when acting independently.
Several conservative-backed groups with a statewide and national presence say Toulouse Oliver is overstepping her authority by requiring that independent expenditure groups disclose their contributors.
Toulouse Oliver says New Mexicans have a right to know who is paying for ads that attempt to influence their vote. Revisions rules would raise the spending threshold to $2,500 before independent expenditure groups must reveal their contributors.

New Mexico to get $18M from Volkswagen emissions settlement

SANTA FE (AP) — New Mexico is set to receive $18 million following a settlement connected to the Volkswagen smog device emissions scandal.