Roswell Daily Record THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Vol. 124, No. 89 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
April 14, 2015
Tuesday
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Gov. signs 10 bills offered by Roswell delegation By Jeff Tucker Record Staff Writer After a flurry of bill signings and vetoes by Gov. Susana Martinez that ended Friday, 10 bills offered by Roswell’s state delegation have been signed into law. In total, state Reps. Nora Espinoza, Candy Spence Ezzell and Bob Wooley and state Sen. Cliff Pirtle, all Republicans from Roswell, guided 11 bills through the 2015 legislative session that ended March 21. By Friday’s noon deadline, the Republican governor had signed 10 of those bills into law. The governor’s lone veto of a locally sponsored bill was eclipsed on Friday when Mar-
tinez’s signed a similar bill regarding racehorse testing. On Friday, Martinez signed two bills sponsored by Roswell’s state delegation. The governor on Friday signed into law Senate Bill 453, sponsored by Pirtle, and House Bill 431, sponsored by Wooley. Senate Bill 453 increases the amounts authorized for payment to a person or business displaced by a state government program or project. “The bill would result in increased costs to the state relating to payments for displacing businesses or residents or farmers,” states a fiscal impact report of the bill prepared by the Legislative Finance Committee. “Howev-
Pirtle
Ezzell
Espinoza
Wooley
er, there is no data available as to how much the state has had to pay for displacing businesses, residents or farmers.” Senate Bill 453 was passed by the Democrat-controlled New Mexico Senate on March 12 by a 36-0 vote and by the
Republican-controlled New Mexico House of Representatives on March 20 by a 65-0 vote. House Bill 431 provides an exception to concealed carry firearm fees and firearms training course requirements for current members
of the New Mexico Mounted Patrol. The bill was amended in the Senate to broaden the exceptions to retired members of the NMMP, any law enforcement officer, a person in active military service and most retired military members.
House Bill 431 passed the House on Feb. 26 by a 59-0 vote and passed the Senate on March 19 by a 31-5 vote. The governor on Friday also signed into law Senate See BILLS, Page A3
April showers hit the desert (Charles Fischer Photos) Heavy rainfall from Sunday night through Monday morning caused flooding at the Gen. Douglas L. McBride Roswell Veteran’s Cemetery. Mayor Dennis Kintigh, left, said that although there is a retention pond to hold excess water, there is no trench to carry the water from the grave sites to the pond. Kintigh assisted digging a ditch while cemetery employees worked to pump out water from around several graves and then fill them in with dirt. “We know we have a drainage problem,” Kintigh said. “It’s just so flat out there and the water has no place to go.” The rain gauge at the Daily Record recorded 1.8 inches of rain by late Monday afternoon.
City, unions reached new pay plan By Jeff Jackson Record City Editor Roswell policemen are forgoing an automatic 2 percent pay adjustment as part of a new collective bargaining agreement finalized Thursday between the city and the officers’ union. The concord with the Roswell Police Officers Association calls for officers to be paid under a new earnings structure that places them in the top 55 percentile of 12 select cities, all in New Mexico. The pay scale adopted unanimously at Thursday’s City Council meeting also applies to the Utility Workers of America Local 51, which represents a group of city employees. While both sides of the triennial negotiations
described the process as harmonious, the hard part is figuring out how much extra money the rank-andfile will earn. There is not a flat per-employee pay raise, City Manager Steve Polasek said at Thursday’s meeting. Each employee’s increased pay will be determined by the position’s base pay, step pay and new COLA figures, and those are not available until established by the U.S. Department of Labor, he said. “There’s not a number you just pop in there,” Polasek said. “It’s really procedural more than it is a fixed dollar amount. And that’s a big change. It gives all of our employees, in my estimation, a sense of security in terms of a fair compensation plan without having to worry about the
negotiation. The compensation plan spells out how it’s going to work. The numbers will be what the numbers are. The city will disburse an additional $400,000, estimated, in step pay as part of the CBA that runs from July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2018, Polasek said. Through contract language “annual market adjustments,” policeman pay is guaranteed to be in the top 55 percentile of the 12-city “benchmark” based on an annual review. Since a review recently concluded, the next review will come in 2016, Polasek said. “We had a couple of starting schedules that were below the federal minimum wage still,” Polasek said, “because they hadn’t
changed in so long. We don’t want to lose good people that we have. We want to put them in the situation that they can grow with the city. By doing the annual market adjustment with our benchmark cities every year, we’ll get an idea where we stand in terms of the pay schedule based on the 55 percentile.” The CBA also puts the Roswell Police Department on an equal pay level with the New Mexico State Police but it slightly lags the Chaves County Sheriff’s Department, said Roswell Police Chief Phil Smith. “I have always been a union guy. I was a teamster. I respect the men and women in that union. I respect their contract, See CITY, Page A3
Turtles visit Roswell
Mary Morgan Photo
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be performing at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Pueblo Auditorium on 300 N. Kentucky Ave. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Tickets for children 4 and older are $10, adult tickets are $15 and VIP tickets are $50. Mark Anthony, right, spokesman for the event, poses with ‘Raphael.’ They will be performing at elementary and middle schools to teach about bullying.
Rubio tells supporters he is running for White House MIAMI (AP) — Sen. Marco Rubio entered the presidential race Monday by offering the nation a younger generation of leadership that breaks free of ideas “stuck in the 20th century,” a jab at both Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton and his one-time Republican mentor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Standing in front of a banner that proclaimed “A New
American Century” and repeating that refrain throughout his kickoff speech, the 43-year-old Cuban-American used his first turn as a Republican presidential candidate to take on two of America’s political dynasties. In doing so, he bet heavily on the electorate’s frustrations with Washington and his ability to change how his party is seen by voters. “This election is not just about
what laws we are going to pass,” Rubio told his evening rally. “It is a generational choice about what kind of country we will be.” He said it’s also a choice between the haves and have-nots, nodding to his own upbringing by working-class parents. “I live an exceptional country where the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who
Today’s Forecast
Today’s Obituaries Page A7
HIGH 67 LOW 42
• Arturo Morales Saucedo • Rosemary Elizabeth Herschkorn
come from power and privilege.” Earlier in the day, the firstterm Republican from Florida spoke to his top donors and told them many families feel the American Dream is slipping away and young Americans face unequal opportunities. He’s banking on the hope that he, alone among many GOP rivals, can make inroads with groups that have long eluded Republi-
cans — young people, minorities and the less affluent. “I feel uniquely qualified to not just make that argument, but to outline the policies that we need to have in order to achieve it,” he said on the donor call. In his televised speech, he told supporters, “The time has come for our generation to lead the way toward a new American century.” Index
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