Santa Fe New Mexican, October 23, 2014

Page 1

Royals’ Butler delivers big hits for K.C., evens Series at 1-1

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Locally owned and independent

Sports, B-1

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Shoppers fail to reuse bags Report: Consumers lack incentive to take them back By Daniel J. Chacón The New Mexican

Canada shooting called terror attack Canada mourns a soldier slain in a shooting at Parliament. PAGE A-5

Official: State ready for Ebola outbreak A disease specialist says labs will soon test for virus. PAGE A-6

Non-Navajo speaker booted from ballot

An ordinance the Santa Fe City Council passed to encourage shoppers to carry reusable bags by banning most merchants from providing single-use plastic bags isn’t working as intended. Most shoppers just switched from plastic to paper, says a report by the

Sustainable Santa Fe Commission, a volunteer group that advises the council on environmental issues. That’s because when councilors passed the law in August 2013, they dropped a section that would have required retailers to collect a 10-cent fee for paper bags, the report says. The City Attorney’s Office had advised councilors that the fee would

have been an impermissible tax. The fee had been designed to give shoppers an incentive to bring their own reusable bags, as well as a way to reimburse businesses for the higher

Please see BAGS, Page A-4 Mark Souder, who is visiting his mother in Santa Fe from Seattle, loads purchases that were doublebagged into his rental car outside Albertsons on Wednesday. DANIEL J. CHACÓN/THE NEW MEXICAN

Century later, bell set to toll at San Miguel Chapel

A candidate for tribal president loses latest appeal. PAGE A-6

Bill helps accused in Medicaid fraud cases

Woman claims she was told to send images to county investigator By Steve Terrell The New Mexican

N.M. senator: Agencies would get due process By Patrick Malone The New Mexican

Last year’s shake-up of behavioral health providers in New Mexico drew comparisons to the Salem witch trials and injustices perpetrated by rulers of the Roman Empire on Wednesday at a hearing where a state lawmaker unveiled proposed legislation that would guarantee due process to agencies suspected of Medicaid fraud. State Sen. Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, said Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration’s abrupt halt of payments to 15 agencies that provided mental health and substance abuse treatment and their subsequent replacement by five Arizona companies inspired the draft legislation. Suspicions of fraudulent billing by the providers in New Mexico surfaced in the fall of 2012, when OptumHealth New Mexico, the contractor that oversees Medicaid behavioral health services for the state, brought them to the attention of the Human Services Department. In October 2012 — months before an audit of the providers was launched — OptumHealth and the

Ex-aide to Martinez says rivals’ car plates probed

Don Sena, left, and Jake Barrow, both with Cornerstones Community Partnerships, make adjustments to the electronic striker for the bell at the San Miguel Mission on Wednesday. The bell is from about the 1850s and hasn’t been rung since 1872. Cornerstones installed an electronic striker that will ring on Sundays for the 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Masses and other occasions. The first ringing is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Thursday. PHOTOS BY LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN

Storm silenced original bell in 1872; current one lacked a clapper to ring By Anne Constable The New Mexican

G

od willing, and if some technical problems get solved in time, a bell will peal in the tower at San Miguel Chapel, known as the oldest church in the country, for the first time in more than a century on Thursday evening. The bell is scheduled to ring out over Santa Fe’s Barrio de Analco Historic District at 5:30 p.m. or

Please see BILL, Page A-4

Please see BELL, Page A-5

For several months, critics of Gov. Susana Martinez have raised the possibility that during her 2010 campaign for governor, while Martinez was still district attorney in Las Cruces, she used access to government databases in her office to get information on political opponents. On Wednesday, a former campaign aide to Martinez said that one night during that campaign, Martinez told her to take a photo of the license plate on a sports utility vehicle bearing an anti-Martinez bumper sticker and send it to an investigator in her District Attorney’s Office to find out the vehicle’s owner. “I don’t know which databases she used,” said Anissa Ford, who worked as Martinez’s personal assistant until November 2010 when Martinez was elected governor. “But she told me to take a picture of the SUV’s license plate and send it to Kip [Scarborough].” Scarborough was the investigator for the district attorney. A spokesman for the Martinez campaign vehemently denied the story Wednesday. According to Ford, whose account was first published this week by The Santa Fe Reporter, the incident occurred in October 2010 in the park-

Please see AIDE, Page A-4

The electronic striker is in place for the bell at the San Miguel Mission on Wednesday.

Pasapick www.pasatiempomagazine.com

Ex-Blackwater guards guilty in 2007 Iraqi deaths 17 people killed when U.S. security team opened fire By Matt Apuzzo The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards were convicted and immediately jailed Wednesday for their roles in a deadly 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that marked a bloody nadir in America’s war in Iraq. A jury in U.S. District

Index

Calendar A-2

Court found that the deaths of 17 Iraqis in the shooting, which began when a convoy of the guards suddenly began firing in a crowded intersection, was not a battlefield tragedy, but the result of a criminal act. The convictions on murder, manslaughter and weapons charges represented a legal and diplomatic victory for the U.S. government, which had urged Iraqis to put their faith in the American court system. That faith was tested repeatedly over seven years as the investigation had repeated setbacks, leav-

Classifieds B-6

Comics B-12

Main office: 983-3303 Late paper: 986-3010 News tips: 986-3035

ing Iraqis deeply suspicious that anyone would be held responsible for the deaths. “This verdict is a resounding affirmation of the commitment of the American people to the rule of law, even in times of war,” said Ronald C. Machen Jr., the U.S. attorney in Washington. “Seven years ago, these Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers on innocent men, women and children. Today they were held accountable for that

Please see IRAQ, Page A-4

Crosswords A-8, B-7

Lotteries A-2

Juan Estevan Arellano The author discusses “Enduring Acequias: Wisdom of the Land, Knowledge” of the Water, 6 p.m., Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo St., 988-4226.

Obituaries

An Iraqi policeman inspects a car destroyed by a Blackwater security detail on Sept. 25, 2007, in Baghdad, Iraq. KHALID MOHAMMED/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO

Opinion A-11

Sports B-1

Time Out A-8

Outdoors B-5

BREAKING NEWS AT WWW.SANTAFENEWMEXICAN.COM

Rose K. Fernandez, Oct. 6 Noel Victor Ice, Santa Fe, Oct. 20 Maryjane Burrell Ledyard, 92, Santa Fe, Oct. 13 PAGE A-10

Today Mostly sunny. High 72, low 42. PAGE A-12

Two sections, 24 pages 165th year, No. 296 Publication No. 596-440


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Santa Fe New Mexican, October 23, 2014 by The New Mexican - Issuu