Legislature having balked, Sierra Vista Hospital leaders will now ask community to vote on special hospital district

by Kathleen Sloan | April 20, 2021
6 min read
Sierra Vista Hospital
A special hospital district will also simply Sierra Vista’s ownership and oversight structures. Source: Facebook

Sierra Countians may be asked to decide whether to create a special hospital district at the November polls, since the attempt to have state legislators pass the measure has now failed twice.

If a referendum to create a special hospital district can be placed on the ballot this fall, county voters will essentially be deciding whether to increase their property taxes to support Sierra Vista Hospital, because a hospital district has its own taxing authority.

A special hospital district would also simply Sierra Vista’s ownership and oversight structures.

Putting the question of a special hospital district on the ballot was the informal decision of the Sierra Vista Hospital Joint Powers Commissioners at their April 15 quarterly meeting. Whether to go forward with a referendum on the district was on the agenda as a discussion item only, so the JPC could not formally vote on the matter. The JPC agreed to call a special meeting soon to hold a vote, which will probably pass, as no one dissented during the April 25 meeting.

The special hospital district legislation, Senate Bill 76, was presented during the regular 2020 session by its sponsors, state Representative Rebecca Dow, R-District 38, and state Senator Crystal Diamond, R-District 35,

Travis Day, JPC member and Sierra County Commissionvice chairman, said SB 76 got through the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee with a “do pass,” and then headed to the Senate Judiciary Committee, “where it died,” without ever being scheduled for a hearing. “Some senators were questioning why it was being formed legislatively versus by referendum,” Day said.

In a separate interview with the Sun, Sierra County CommissionChairman Jim Paxon, a JPC member, confirmed that Senator Diamond was privately told by various Senate colleagues they believed that a hospital district should be formed locally, by election.

The Sun asked Senator Diamond and Representative Dow for comment. Dow responded that, as Diamond “took the lead,” on the legislation, she would “let her answer.” Diamond never responded.

Currently Sierra County’s four local governmental entities own the hospital. Agreements among Sierra County, Elephant Butte, Truth or Consequences and the Village of Williamsburg created two boards to oversee the hospital. The Joint Powers Commission, made up of elected officials from the four local governments, has 12 members. It oversees policy, long-range plans and finances. The nine community members who sit on the governing board are appointed by the elected officials of the four governmental entities, and they oversee day-to-day operations. 

The public will still own the hospital if a special hospital district is formed. In compliance with state law, a five-member board of trustees elected by the people would govern the hospital and represent the public interest.

For nearly two years, members of the JPC have said the main reason for creating a special hospital district is to do away with the cumbersome and inefficient 21-person, two-board oversight. Little mention has been made of the district’s taxing authority, which will undoubtedly be deployed to support the hospital’s operation and pay off its construction debt.

Currently the local government entities use their taxing authority to levy gross receipts and property taxes to pay for the debt. No matter what transpires at the November polls, the gross receipts taxes dedicated to the hospital will remain in place until 2046. The dedicated property tax will remain in place until 2028. When they expire, these taxes may be again put on the ballot, according to JPC Chairperson Kim Skinner, interviewed by the Sun before the 2020 legislative session.

The five special hospital district trustees will have the authority to put tax referendums on the ballot. State law gives them the power to propose property tax levies of up to $4.25 dollars for every $1,000 of taxable real estate value. Each new tax levy—some hospital districts have more than one—has a four-year lifespan, after which it would have to be voted upon again.

For more information about the fiscal impact a special hospital district may have on gross receipts and property taxes, read the Sun’s Related coverage at the bottom of the page.

Paxon and Sierra County Manager confirmed that, according to state law 4-48A-4, a petition signed by local voters is the first step toward placing the measure on the ballot. Qualified electors (i.e., registered voters) equal in number to 10 percent of those voting in the last election for governor must sign the petition. In 2018, 4,723 persons voted in the governor’s election, according to the New Mexico Secretary of State website; therefore, 472 registered voters living in the county must sign a petition in support of creating a special hospital district.  

Once the county clerk verifies the signatures and informs the county commission the petition is “certified,” the county commission must issue a proclamation calling for an election.

Paxon told the JPC that County Attorney Dave Pato and New Mexico Hospital Association Attorney Dave Johnson would write the proclamation or “election referendum.” The referendum must be submitted to the county clerk by June 24, Paxon said, in order to be on the November general election ballot.

Paxon said the intention is to include candidates for the special hospital district trustees on the November ballot, as well. They will be installed if the special hospital district referendum passes.

State law 4-48A-5(B) stipulates that candidates for trustee must file declarations with the county clerk “not later than 5:00 p.m. on the thirtieth day after the issuance of the proclamation by the board of county commissioners.” If the referendum is successfully placed on the November ballot, those interested in running would have to declare their candidacy by Monday, July 26, the first business day after the 30-day deadline.

State law dictates that two of the five seats will have two-year terms and three will have four-year terms. In subsequent elections, all seats will be for four-year terms.

The county commission, as mandated by state law, will determine whether the trustees will be elected on an at-large or district basis.

The county commission has decided there will be two at-large and three district seats, Paxon said at the JPC’s April 15 meeting. The hospital district positions will correspond to the districts for the three county commission seats. County residents will have three votes, one for each at-large candidate and one for their district candidate.  

Winning candidates must “furnish a corporate surety bond in the penal sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000) for the faithful performance of his duties and the accounting for all funds which shall come into his possession. Such bond shall run to the benefit of the special hospital district,” state law 4-48A-8 (C) states.

The JPC will hold town halls to inform the public about the special hospital district and to circulate the referendum petition. “It will be a tight schedule, getting it on the November ballot,” Paxon told the Sun.

CORRECTION: The date of the JPC meeting referenced in the third paragraph from the end of the story, which was in error in the original posting of this story, has been corrected.

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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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2 thoughts on “Legislature having balked, Sierra Vista Hospital leaders will now ask community to vote on special hospital district”

  1. Isaac Eastvold

    This is an excellently researched and presented synopsis of what has become an unnecessarily complex, top-down issue concocted by an elite few. It will be interesting to see what arguments are manufactured to convince taxpayers to swallow yet another tax increase.
    The Sun is to be commended for putting this whole ball of snakes out in the public view. However, for property taxpayers, the bottom line is clearly that their taxes would go up, and up. . . .

    It seems property owners need the Sierra County equivalent of the California tax crusader, Jarvis, to once and for all put a cap on property taxes rising like a bloated cow in the sun. Property owners on fixed or very low incomes would especially feel the bloat.

    With nearly 210 acres, we are one of the larger property owners in the county. Our land was purchased in 2017 to be kept in a natural condition as the anchor for a future open-space system benefiting Sierra County residents. Our land is intended to offer outdoor education opportunities in the natural and cultural sciences, therapeutic contacts with nature, outdoor recreation such as hiking and nature study, research and preservation as an inheritance for future generations.

    Unfortunately, Truth or Consequences’s Comprehensive Plan does not even have an open-space element on which to build such a system. And the county owns, with the JPC as “managers,” the infamous 15-acre “hospital” property blocking access to this special landscape. This essentially locks up the many benefits to county residents, including the economy, which would be available if these 210 acres could go forward in the public interest. But the JPC is on record as opposing our acquisition of this parcel, misrepresenting it narrowly in their April 15th meeting as a “donation.” We would certainly be open to other purchase options, and so stated in our written request.

    A lot of confusing dates are sprinkled throughout the Sun’s article. The Sun did its best to try and keep it all straight. However, two April dates need to be re-examined: 1) in the 4th paragraph from the top, and 2) the 3rd paragraph from the bottom.

  2. Diana Tittle

    The editing error regarding the date of the JPC meeting referenced in the third paragraph from the end of the story has been corrected.

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