Secret meeting, secret group discusses Spaceport business

by Kathleen Sloan | January 12, 2020
5 min read
Just as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently met behind closed doors with special-interest groups on Spaceport America, so did local elected officials, only they didn’t announce they were doing so to the press. 

The Sierra County Sun heard about the possible formation of an informal group at an open Elephant Butte City Commission meeting in October. The group would be formed to simply receive and disseminate information about Spaceport America activities and opportunities, the City Council said during discussion. 

Also discussed was the New Mexico Spaceport Authority’s desire for one contact for the area. Local officials complained the New Mexico Spaceport Authority didn’t communicate, depriving Sierra County of business, tourism and other economic opportunities. In response, the New Mexico Spaceport Authority said the County’s contacts and groups were too scattered. 

Mayor Edna Trager and Mayor Pro-Tem Kim Skinner said State Representative Rebecca Dow was being proposed as the contact person. Dow would be provided with a kitty of wine-and-dine money, so opportunities to woo potential businesses blowing through Las Cruces visiting NM Spaceport Authority or Virgin Galactic offices could be enticed to see what this area has to offer. 

It is unclear how people were invited or picked to attend the informal Spaceport group meeting on Oct. 22, 2019. However, the Sierra County Sun’s public documents request to the Truth or Consequences City Clerk’s Office included a sign-in sheet. 

It appears that four members of the TorC City Commission were present, a quorum, which requires public notice that was not given. Minutes and emails indicate Rolf Hechler, who is head of security at the Spaceport and also a City Commissioner, ran the meeting and didn’t sign in, but City Commissioners Paul Baca, Sandy Whitehead and Kathy Clark signed in. 

Only one member of the Sierra County Commission was present, Travis Day. State law says two members of an elected board may attend meetings without public notice, although two members of the county’s three-member board would be a quorum, which must be noticed. 

Similarly, only one member of the five-member City of Elephant Butte City Council was present, Edna Trager. City Manager Vicki Ballinger and City Clerk Rani Bush were also present. 

Only one member of the five-member Village of Williamsburg Trustee board was present, Deborah Stubblefield. 

Gina Kelley, Sierra County Lodgers’ Tax Board member; Linda DeMarino,  head of Truth or Consequences MainStreet; Steve Green, former Truth or Consequences mayor; LaRena Miller of the Geronimo Trail National Scenic Byway; Hans Townsend, president of the Truth or Consequences Chamber of Commerce, also attended. 

Prominent business owners include Randall Ashbaugh, who owns land next to Walmart. The site was chosen as a Spaceport Visitors’ Center site in 2013, but the plan was abandoned and unfunded by the State. Jake Foerstner, whose family owns Riverbend Hot Springs; John Masterson, owner of the TorC Brewery; Catherine Wanek, owner of the Black Range Lodge in Kingston, also attended. 

John Mulcahy attended, a former City of Truth or Consequences mayor and economic development director, currently employed by unnamed private business people to lobby for a Spaceport Visitors’ Center during the upcoming legislative session. This area’s State Representative Rebecca Dow also attended.  

Chris Lopez, director of site operations at Spaceport America, led the meeting with Hechler. According to meeting minutes Lopez set the theme as “Do we want to grow together or be separate and not grow?” 

In Hechler’s response to the Sun’s request for meeting minutes and correspondence related to the formation of and business of the Spaceport group, he called it the “Sierra County/Spaceport America Economic Advisory Board.” 

“As you can see, the board is not a policy board,” Hechler said in his response, wrongly assuming the group is not subject to the State Open Meetings Act.  

The State Open Meetings Act requires any meeting with a quorum of elected officials, except court and legislative officials, be open and noticed, even if policy is not discussed. Meetings in which elected officials discuss “a proposed resolution, rule, regulation. . .” are also supposed to be open, according to 10-15-1 (D). 

Policy, a resolution and government plans were discussed at the Oct. 22 meeting.  

Gary Whitehead, former Sierra County Commission chairman, said, according to meeting minutes, “The City and County need to build their own business plan. We are so focused on what Spaceport America and Virgin can do for us, and we need a plan to show what we are all willing to do for Spaceport and Virgin Galactic.” 

Randall Ashbaugh asked the elected officials to pass a resolution in support of the State Legislature funding $7 million for a Spaceport visitors’ center on his property, according to the minutes. “We just have to stick together and all of the cities need to get together to pass the resolution for funding,” Ashbaugh said. 

According to emails from and to Mulcahy, TorC Mayor Sandy Whitehead, who works for Randy Ashbaugh’s title company, discussed the resolution with Mulcahy, which would also amend the City’s Infrastructure Capital Improvements Plan. 

Mayor Whitehead submitted Mulcahy’s draft resolution in her response to the Sun’s open records request. Mulchay’s draft leaves out the Ashbaugh location, but asks the City to request the legislature to provide $8 million to fund a Spaceport Visitors’ Center. 

During a subsequent City Commission meeting, Mayor Whitehead pushed to have the resolution passed, as did City Manager Morris Madrid. Hechler recused himself as a Spaceport employee. Baca and Whitehead voted in favor of the resolution and Clark and City Commissioner George Szigeti voted against it, resulting in a tie and no action. 

It appears the secret group may have met more times. 
Discussing the November meeting in an email to Dow, Hechler said the group should be limited to elected and economic-development and tourism officials. The agenda he drafted covers City policy decisions, use of a public building, as well as hiring more City staff: 

“1. Use/enhancement of the La Belle Johnson Center
  2. City of TorC to hire tourism/special events coordinator, how
      he/she will interact with SPA
  3. Viewing parties/events, locations, promotion, etc.
  4. Decide on final group to serve on this committee
  5. Staffing of the La Belle Johnson Center”

Director of Spaceport Site Operations Chris Lopez also called for another meeting before the end of the year, according to the Oct. 22, 2019 meeting minutes. 

Open-records requests for any other meeting minutes have not been fulfilled, implying the group stopped keeping minutes.  

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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