Misc.

Would it be fair to say the upcoming session of the New Mexico Legislature might be chaotic?  Of course it would.  As the republicans  take over the House of Representatives they are cooking  up a recipe for disaster as they remake the committee memberships.  Anyone with a D beside their name will most likely be shuffled off to a committee where they have no knowledge of the issues.  And the institutional knowledge that is so important will be lost.  There is going to be some really bad legislation introduced and possibly passed.  The new Attorney General Hector Balderas will need to keep a close eye on all of that legislation so he will need to quickly hire some attorneys to replace the ones he fired.  Without their eyeballs on the legislature there will be bad laws passed.

Newly minted Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn has cancelled some land auctions meant to stimulate solar energy production on state land.  In a terse announcement yesterday he gave no reason for the cancellations of the bidding process.  Would someone look into at the Albuquerque Journal?  There might be good reasons for this, but we can already see the lack of transperancy at the land office under Dunn's newbie administration.  My guess is that he is doing this for the ranchers who hold the grazing leases on that land.  They probably want undue compensation for giving up their highly subsidized use of the land.  But, hopefully he is just trying to get a bigger chunk of the revenue for the Land Office.  The cowboy hat might be a hint!  We will see.