Columns

Hal Rhodes from NM News Services Editorial piece in the April 61 Los Alamos Monitor “English Only Please” was a disappointing example of the misunderstanding many have of the official English movement.
More than 90 percent (177) of the world’s nations have enacted an official language. English is the most common official language on Earth.
The universal language of science, commerce and industry is English.  Air traffic control the world over is conducted in English.  
In order to facilitate unambiguous communication in engineering, protocols are adopted.  Adopting English as our official language helps make our government more efficient and is effectively simply a protocol.

The state’s roughly 240 “active registered” mines, 83 percent of them producing aggregate and stone, employed 5,156 people in 2009, paid them $287 million, and produced minerals worth about $1.8 billion – good for a ranking of 20th nationally without counting oil and gas.
The big value numbers come from coal ($736 million in 2009), potash ($491 million), and copper ($290 million and hiring again).
Except for potash and salt mines around Carlsbad, the mines are located in the southwest quadrant and in a broad and mostly rural northern arc that starts at Raton, swings south to include Belen and Albuquerque, edges north and west to Grants and then goes to the Arizona.

In legislative post mortems, we’re hearing that the economy wasn’t much of a priority this year for either party.
Not necessarily so. Economic development bills may have been overshadowed by bigger dramas, but some good bills made it to the governor; others were impaled on ideology and ignorance.
The most obvious winner was the locomotive fuel tax credit to help Union Pacific Railroad create its $400 million rail hub in Santa Teresa, a project mothballed since 2007. A slam dunk, you might think, but no.

In the recently completed 2011 legislative session, Senate Bill 17 (Keller, D-Bernalillo & Neville, R-Aztec), a bill designed to complete SIC reforms by removing the governor as chairperson, passed with wide bi-partisan support.
It now sits on the governor’s desk waiting to be signed. SB-17 was carefully crafted in the interim, by the bipartisan Investment Oversight Committee, long before the recent gubernatorial election.  
It is composed of original sections from the 2010 bill including sections to ensure minority party legislative appointments.  
It now also includes an amendment that allows the Governor to serve for two more years in the Chairperson role before removing the position all together.