Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 123, No. 73 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
March 25, 2014
Latinos being left behind in health overhaul
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s largest minority group risks being left behind by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. Hispanics account for about one-third of the nation’s uninsured, but they seem to be staying on the sidelines as the White House races to meet a goal of 6 million sign-ups by March 31. Latinos are “not at the table,” says Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic
Health, a nonpartisan advocacy network. “We are not going to be able to enroll at the levels we should be enrolling at.” That’s a loss both for Latinos who are trying to put down middle-class roots and for the Obama administration, experts say. Hispanics who remain uninsured could face fines, not to mention exposing their families to high medical bills from accidents or unforeseen illness. And the government won’t get the
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full advantage of a group that’s largely young and healthy, helping keep premiums low in the new insurance markets.
“The enrollment rate for Hispanic-Americans seems to be very low, and I would be really concerned about that,” says Brookings Institution health policy expert Mark McClellan. “It is a large population that has a lot to gain ... but they don’t seem to be taking advantage.” McClellan oversaw the rollout of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit
for President George W. Bush. The Obama administration says it has no statistics on the race and ethnicity of those signing up in the insurance exchanges, markets that offer subsidized private coverage in every state. Consumers provide those details voluntarily, so federal officials say any tally would be incomplete and possibly misleading. But concern is showing See OVERHAUL, Page A3
TUESDAY
AP Photo
NMED permit delays dairy manure plant Jane Delgado, president of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, works in her office in Washington, Monday.
JILL MCLAUGHLIN RECORD STAFF WRITER
Randal Seyler Photo
World War II veteran John Simons Jr., 91, at left, was honored on Monday by the American Legion for his 70 years of continuous service to the organization. Roswell Post 28 Commander Orlando Padilla, center, and Membership Chairperson Nancy Britton visited Simons to make the award presentation.
Vet honored for 70 years in Legion Roswell veteran on Monday for 70 years of continuous membership in the Legion. John Simons Jr., 91, Members of American Legion Post 28 honored a received an award for his lifetime membership in the RANDAL SEYLER RECORD STAFF WRITER
American Legion — a can Legion merits the membership that began honor of being cited as an with Simons’ service in outstanding contributor to World War II. “Such record of consisSee LEGION, Page A3 tent loyalty to the Ameri-
A plant planned in Chaves County designed to turn dairy waste into biofuel has been delayed at least six months after hitting a snag with its state ground water discharge permit. AG Power broke ground in October on its property at Price’s Lane, with plans to begin construction that month. The plant was expected to begin processing manure as early as April. However, the deal hit a setback with its New Mexico Environment Department permit. “The delay has been with the discharge permitting office,” said AG Power President Dewey Vaughn. “It’s nothing we’ve done. It’s a matter of not having enough staff people to do as much workload that they have.” A public notice was post-
ed in the newspaper Sunday, calling for a 30-day public comment period. The company did review and make adjustments to its application in the past few months with NMED staff, Vaughn said. “The clock is now ticking,” Vaughn said. “Sometimes it gets locked into the state bureaucracy.” Once a permit is secured, the company can begin building on its 40-acre site, he said. NMED spokesman Jim Winchester said AG power was delayed due to data gaps in the application. “We sat down with AG Power several times to resolve (the data gaps), which takes time,” Winchester said. “AG Power is satisfied with the outcome and the timeframe works for their funding, anticipated construction, etc.” The published public
County inmate dies NM hunters get big win in federal court while in medical cell JILL MCLAUGHLIN RECORD STAFF WRITER
A male inmate who was held in a medical cell at Chaves County Adult Detention Center was found dead Monday. Medical personnel tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the man before sheriff’s deputies arrived, said Sheriff’s Office spokesman Britt Snyder. The man was taken into custody early Saturday, arrested on felony charges. The criminal investigative division secured the scene,
and the Office of Medical Investigators was called. A local investigator was sent to the scene. “The Chaves County Sherif f’s Of fice will be investigating this death,” Snyder said. “We will work closely with the Office of the Medical Investigators and the detention center staff in the coming days. We will release additional details as the investigation allows.” The inmate’s identification will not be released See INMATE, Page A3
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — New Mexico residents now have an advantage over out-of-state hunters when it comes to landing licenses to hunt the state’s bighorn sheep, oryx and ibex thanks to a federal court ruling issued Monday. U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo lifted a long-standing injunction that had prevented the state Game and Fish Department from allocating licenses to hunt the three species based on residency. Armijo, responding to a motion filed by the department, found the injunction was no longer equitable because of changes in the law and court rulings in other states that have backed up quota systems that benefit resident hunters. The injunction stemmed from a legal fight in the 1970s in which David Terk of Texas challenged New
Mexico’s higher fees and lower quotas for nonresident hunters. He claimed his equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution were violated, which resulted a federal judge prohibiting New Mexico from imposing quotas when it came to bighorn sheep, oryx and ibex. “This is an important decision and a huge win for New Mexico hunters,” said Paul Kienzle, chairman of the New Mexico Game Commission. “It’s been a long fight, but New Mexicans now have a good shot at those quality hunts, as intended by the governor and the state Legislature.” The Game and Fish Department said it will reinstate quotas starting with this year’s draw to give state residents the same advantage they have now when applying for licenses to hunt other big game animals such as deer and elk.
Coast Guard working to reopen shipping channel
GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — As workers in bright yellow suits picked quarter sized “tar balls” out of the sand along Galveston Bay on Monday, strong incoming tides kept washing more ashore. Elsewhere, crews lined up miles of oil booms to keep oil away from the shoreline and bird habitats, two days after a collision in the Houston Ship Channel dumped as many as 170,000 gallons of oil from a barge into the water along the Gulf Coast and shut down one of the
nation’s busiest seaports. With cleanup well under way, the Coast Guard said it hoped to have the channel open to barge traffic as quickly as possible but that more tests were needed to confirm the water and the vessels traveling through the channel were free of oil. The closure stranded some 80 vessels on both sides of the channel. Traffic through the channel includes ships serving refineries key to American oil production. Officials believe most of the oil that spilled Satur-
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TODAY’S FORECAST
See PLANT, Page A3
Currently, residents receive 84 percent of all public licenses issued through drawings. Nonresidents get 6 percent and the rest go to hunters who use outfitters. New Mexico sportsmen’s groups had argued that resident hunters had received as little as 7 percent of some bighorn ram hunts because of the injunction. Despite equal odds for drawing a license to hunt bighorn sheep, oryx and ibex, state officials say nonresidents would often get a disproportionately high number of the licenses because so many of them applied for the limited licenses. According to a court brief filed by the New Mexico Wildlife Federal in support of lifting the injunction, New Mexico residents drew just one of 16 bighorn ram tags in 2012.
day is drifting out of the Houston Ship Channel into the Gulf of Mexico, which should limit the impact on bird habitats around Galveston Bay as well as beaches and fisheries important to tourists. “This spill — I think if we keep our fingers crossed — is not going to have the negative impact that it could have had,” said Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Of fice, the lead state agency on response to the spill. The best-case scenario is
for most of the slick to remain in the Gulf for at least several days and congeal into small tar balls that wash up farther south on the Texas coast, where they could be picked up and removed, Patterson said. Crews from the General Land Office are monitoring water currents and the movement of the oil, he said.
Parts of Galveston Island, a popular tourist destination due to its beaches and parks, were closed to the public Monday.
A boom and the sand along East Beach are covered in oil Monday, in Galveston, Texas.
• LETHA GENEVA BAUER • CLINTON “DOYLE” HOBBS • IRIS FERN PARNELL
• FRANCES ISAACS • FACUNDO “COONEY” CARRILLO
CLASSIFIEDS ..........B6 COMICS .................B5 ENTERTAINMENT .....A8 FINANCIAL ..............B4
TODAY’S OBITUARIES PAGE A6
AP Photo
INDEX GENERAL ...............A2 HOROSCOPES .........A8 LOTTERIES .............A2 OPINION .................A4
SPORTS .................B1
WEATHER ..............A8 WORLD ..................A6