Madrid turns Fenn’s lights and heat back on a week later—after Assistant Attorney General intercedes

by Kathleen Sloan | December 16, 2020
5 min read
T or C activist Ron Fenn's analog electric meter was returned today, minutes before the city commission was to meet, by electric department director Bo Easley, restoring power to Fenn's home seven days after it was wrongfully and prematurely disconnected. Photograph by Ron Fenn

At 8:40 a.m. today, Truth or Consequences city officials returned Ron Fenn’s analog electric meter after he had spent a week with no heat and lights, restoring power it disconnected because Fenn tried to appeal the installation of a smart meter.  

New Mexico Assistant Attorney General Gideon Elliot, assigned to the AG’s consumer and environmental protection division, successfully interceded with City Manager Morris Madrid on Fenn’s behalf. 

Fenn contacted Elliot, who called Madrid, Fenn said, “10 times”; none of his calls were returned by Madrid. Elliot then phoned City Attorney Jay Rubin, who arranged for Elliot to speak with Madrid on Dec. 14, four days after the disconnection. The assistant attorney general was not satisfied with the results of that conversation, according to Fenn.

Late in the afternoon of Dec. 14, Elliot (who declined the Sun’s request for an interview about his advocacy for Fenn) emailed Madrid a letter, urging him to turn Fenn’s power on immediately.

“While there is no specific statute prohibiting your actions,” Elliot stated in the letter, “you should know that as an employee of the City of Truth or Consequences, your actions as a public officer fall within the scope of the Governmental Conduct Act, NMSA 1978, § 10-16-1 thru 18. The Act specifically requires that public officers (1) treat their position as a public trust, and use their powers and resources to only to advance the public interest; and (2) that public officers conduct themselves in a manner that justifies the confidence placed in them by the people, and ‘at all times maintain the integrity and discharge ethically the high responsibilities of public service.’ NMSA 1978, § 10-16-3.”

Elliot went on to point out the Public Regulation Commission has forbidden service disconnections while Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s emergency health order is in effect. Although the city-owned electric utility isn’t ruled by the PRC, Elliot stated, “your actions nonetheless fall within the scope of conduct that the policy seeks to prevent, namely the disconnection of essential services to particularly vulnerable individuals, such as the elderly.”

“As Mr. Fenn is 77 years old,” Elliot said in conclusion, “the Office of the Attorney General respectfully urges that you return to him the meter he had before December 9, 2020, and restore his power today, December 14, 2020, and that his service remain in place until the appeal process has run its course.”

Madrid did not act on Elliot’s request, and Fenn remained without electricity throughout the next day, Tues., Dec. 15.

That afternoon, at 4:31 p.m., Elliot forwarded the letter he had written to Madrid to each of the city commissioners, with a note that concluded: “The Office of the Attorney General trusts that your prompt attention to this matter will result in Mr. Fenn’s original meter and service being restored tonight.”

Fenn had forwarded Elliot’s letter to Madrid to the commissioners the day before.

At 8:40 a.m. the following morning, Wed., Dec. 16, the same deputation of four city officials who had seized Fenn’s analog electric meter a week earlier came to return it: Chief of Police Michael Apodaca and a patrol officer and Electric Department Director Bo Easley and a department employee.   

They had in hand a letter from Madrid, instructing Fenn him he must submit an appeals argument by Dec. 22. Evidently, the city has rejected Fenn’s prior appeals letter, which was submitted Dec. 9.

form letter outlining appeal procedures signed by Madrid and handed to Fenn on Dec. 16
Madrid’s letter attributes his decision to reconnect Fenn’s electricity to the city’s “practice of non-interruption of utility services during the holiday season.”

Two other residents are appealing city disconnect notices received after they, like Fenn, declined to allow a smart meter installer access to their properties. Their right of appeal is set forth in city code 14-30.   

Lee Foerstner, owner of Riverbend Hot Springs Resort and Spa, forwarded to the Sun his letter appealing the city’s threatened disconnection of his electrical service on Dec. 18 if he does not allow the installation of a smart meter.

Ariel Dougherty told the Sun she is appealing her Dec. 22 disconnect notice.

The appeals process laid out in the code allows a first appeal to the utility department head, a second appeal to the city manager and a third appeal to the city commission. Since the disconnect notices are signed by Madrid, it is unclear if the first two quasi-judicial appeals hearings are moot, and if the next and final step in the appeals process is for the city commission to hear residents’ appeals.

The Sun has asked the city commissioners several times about their positions on the possible health risks, fire hazard and data breaches of smart meters. The Sun has asked for their comments as well on the inequitable exemption of 30 to 40 businesses downtown from the smart-meter installation program. None of the commissioners has ever responded.

The city commission has held its silence with the community, as well. The city commission denied the public the right to vote on a 10-year moratorium on smart meters—the petition drive and ordinance initiative spearheaded by Fenn last year.

The city commissioners remained silent at today’s meeting, each declining to use “response to public comment” section of the agenda to speak about the denial of Fenn’s due process and his week-long suffering.  

While sitting as a quasi-judicial body in the upcoming appeals, the city commissioners will have the opportunity to explain the rationale for purchasing a $1 million smart meter system, when city resources are short, and imposing its installation on unwilling customers during a pandemic, when residents’ health is already at risk.  

Ron Fenn after a week with no hot water
Fenn, photographed in his kitchen this morning after enduring seven days without heat, lights and hot water

Fenn spoke during today’s city commission meeting. He took exception to Madrid’s letter—given to him 20 minutes before the meeting’s start—which stated the city was turning his electricity back on “consistent with the city’s policy of non-interruption of service during the holiday season” as insulting doublespeak.  

“This is a public utility, owned by the people, not by Morris Madrid,” Fenn said. 

author
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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3 thoughts on “Madrid turns Fenn’s lights and heat back on a week later—after Assistant Attorney General intercedes”

  1. Just about says it all about who runs this city and in whose interests. How long is this community going to put up with their tyrannical actions backed up by the praetorian guard?

  2. So I’m still trying to wrap my head around how 30 to 40 commercial properties were able to get a pass on a “smart meter,” but a common citizen can’t opt out? This stinks and smells of injustice. The T or C utility company is supposed to be a public entity, not Mr. Madrid’s private company. I am glad some one from New Mexico government intervened, and perhaps Mr. Madrid needs a reminder that he is a manager, not a dictator.

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