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City on offensive over bond report Finance director demands retraction of report on rating; Moody’s stands by its findings, downgrade
By Julie Ann Grimm
The New Mexican
After Moody’s Investor Services downgraded its bond rating for city of Santa Fe by a notch over the weekend, the city finance director on Monday continued to demand that the rating
general obligation bond rating from its third-best rating of “Aa2” to its fourthbest rating of “Aa3.” Bond ratings can affect a local government’s ability to attract investors and its borrowing costs. But city officials have noted that Santa Fe’s general obligation bond ratings from other
agencies are “AA+” by Fitch and “AA” by Standard & Poors. New York-based Moody’s formally announced its rating change Saturday. Prior to that, Moody’s included Santa Fe on an April list of cities identified
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Station relocation
GLORIETA CENTER
New lease offers fail to satisfy residents
agency retract what he says is an erroneous report that lumped Santa Fe with recent trouble in Detroit and Chicago A spokesman for Moody’s, however, reiterated Monday that its analysts feel they were justified in placing the city “on review” this spring and in the weekend downgrading of Santa Fe’s
City to develop new south-side transit center after talks to upgrade current mall hub fizzle
Homeowners have until Sept. 1 to accept a property proposal By Tom Sharpe
The New Mexican
The religious group hoping to turn over the LifeWay Glorieta Conference Center to another religious group has modified the options being offered to churches and individuals who have built lodges and houses on lots rented there. Nevertheless, some leaseholders remain unsatisfied. Karen Foster said that like many other leaseholders, she has invested her life savings in her home because she believed the conference center, 18 miles southeast of Santa Fe, would continue to allow her to lease into the future. She knows of nowhere she could buy a home for the $40,000 being offered her. “We have been diligent stewards of God’s blessings to us to live a debt free life,” she wrote. “I for one do not want to start over at this stage of my life with a mortgage. We and our descendants are being forced to donate our homes to an entity that is showing doubtful Christian ethics, and I, for one, do not choose to donate my home to them.” LifeWay Christian Resources of Nashville, Tenn., is aiming to transfer, for a nominal sum, about 2,000 acres and accommodations for more than 2,000 to a nonprofit called Glorieta2.0 whose principals already run another Christian summer camp in Texas. LifeWay would retain
Several people wait to catch a bus Monday at the south-side transit center at Santa Fe Place mall. The city wants to develop a new transit facility on vacant city land on the corner of Camino Entrada and Cerrillos Road after negotiations between city officials and mall owners failed to produce a deal to make upgrades to the current bus hub. PHOTOS BY JANE PHILLIPS/THE NEW MEXICAN
By Julie Ann Grimm The New Mexican
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Pasapick www.pasatiempomagazine.com
S.F. Desert Chorale Touched With Fire, 8 p.m., pre-concert talk 7 p.m., $10-$50, 988-2282, desertchorale.org. 207 Old Santa Fe Trail. More events in Calendar, A-2 and Fridays in Pasatiempo
Jimmy Russell places his bike on the front of a bus Monday at the bus stop at Santa Fe Place mall.
Ruth Cleo Brighton, 91, Santa Fe, July 26 Jeannie Ann Lopez, Santa Fe, July 22 Ruth Anne Miller, 60, Santa Fe, July 26
The Washington Post
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Index
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Classifieds B-5
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Whistle-blowers cope with life after revealing secrets By Emily Wax
Obituaries
t is looking like the city will build its new south-side bus hub on public land near police headquarters rather than making improvements to the existing bus stop at Santa Fe Place mall. Santa Fe Trails has operated what it calls the “south-side transit center” from the mall parking lot for “many years,” according to Transit Division Director Jon Bulthuis. However, in order to use federal money for upgrades to the passenger waiting area, the city must own the land where the hub is located or hold a long-term lease on the property. Agents for mall owners at Trademark Properties wouldn’t agree to sell the parcel or commit to a long lease,
Bulthuis said. So now the choice for a new transit center is the vacant lot at the corner of Camino Entrada and Cerrillos Road — an option that a citizen advisory group recommended earlier this year. “The city and staff, and I think, our ridership would prefer for things to be a status quo in terms of the location. Bringing people to the mall is a good thing,” Bulthuis said in an interview Monday. “But we just couldn’t get this deal done despite the best efforts of staff. Even some of the councilors have reached out. It’s not the city trying to pull the plug on the mall.” In 2008, the Federal Transit Administration awarded the Transit Division a $588,000 grant to improve the bus stop that is currently just a
WASHINGTON — The former high-ranking National Security Agency analyst now sells iPhones. The top intelligence officer at the CIA lives in a motor home outside Yellowstone National Park and spends his days fly-fishing for trout. The FBI translator fled Washington for the West Coast. This is what life looks like for some after revealing government secrets. Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing, according to those who did it. Jeopardizing national security, according to the government. Heroes. Scofflaws. They’re all people who had to get on with their lives.
Comics B-12
Lotteries a-2
Opinions a-10
As Edward Snowden eventually will. The former NSA contractor who leaked classified documents on U.S. surveillance programs is now in Russia, with his fate in limbo. The Justice Department announced last week that it won’t seek the death penalty in prosecuting him, but he is still charged with theft and espionage. Say he makes it out of there. What next, beyond the pending charges? What happens to people who make public things that the government wanted to keep secret? A look at the lives of a handful of those who did just that shows that they often wind up far from the stable government jobs they held. They can even wind up in the aisles of a craft store. Peter Van Buren, a veteran foreign service offi-
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Interim Editor: Bruce Krasnow, 986-3034, brucek@sfnewmexican.com Design and headlines: Carlos A. López, clopez@sfnewmexican.com
Sports B-1
Time Out B-11
cer who blew the whistle on waste and mismanagement of the Iraq reconstruction program, most recently found himself working at a local arts and crafts store and learned a lot about “glitter and the American art of scrapbooking.” “What happens when you are thrown out of the government and blacklisted is that you lose your security clearance and it’s very difficult to find a grown-up job in Washington,” said Van Buren, who lives in Falls Church, Va., and wrote the book We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. “Then, you have to step down a few levels to find a place where they don’t care enough about your background to even look into why you washed up there.”
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Two sections, 24 pages 164th year, No. 211 Publication No. 596-440