Roswell Daily Record THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
Vol. 121, No. 38 50¢ Daily / $1 Sunday
INSIDE NEWS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite criticism of Fannie Mae by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, his campaign accepted nearly $280,000 in donations raised by a registered lobbyist who once represented the government mortgage giant and whose clients now include a private equity firm and the drug company.. - PAGE A5
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• Girl Scouts Mardi Gras features feathers • RPD hosts meth lab training program • Pecos goes all ’60s; yeah, yeah, yeah • Pardon our dust • Rockets claim district championship
INSIDE SPORTS
Campaign-disclosure bill headed to the house Passing the Senate unanimously on Sunday, a proposal attempting to fix problems within the state’s campaign-disclosure law, is now headed to the House for consideration. Senate Bill 11 requires anyone who makes an independent expenditure, that is not necessitated to be reported under the Campaign Reporting Act, to file a report of the expenditure with the secretary of
state within three days. According to the fiscal impact report of the bill, the independent expenditure reports must identify: the name and address of the person who made the expenditure; the name and address of the person to whom the expenditure was made; the date, amount and purpose of the expenditure; and the name and address and the amount of each contribution not previously reported for, each contributor contributing $100 or more in
Lawrence pleads no contest to neglect charge
the aggregate during the previous year that were ear marked for an independent expenditure or made in response to a solicitation that refers to the independent expenditure.
“I think people ought to be able to give what they want to give but it needs to be reported. These so called education political action committees that say anything they want to say and don’t have to report who gives money to them is a problem,” Sen. Rod Adair,
Have a heart
Darrell Lawrence, 30, pleaded no contest to charges of neglect of a resident, Monday. The charges stem from Feb. 4, 2011, when Lawrence’s stepmother was hospitalized in Eastern New Mexico Medical Center. The Roswell Police Department was called in by hospital staff because they suspected abuse. Both Lawrence and his sister Tracy York, 37, were charged. At the time, RPD spokesman Officer Travis Holley called it “the worst case of elder abuse I’ve seen in 13 years.” He explained that an individual does not have to work in a nursing home for charges to be filed. The ER nurse told the police that it appeared Ford had been laying in her own waste for several days. Ford was released from a nursing
TODAY’S OBITUARIES
• Dr. Curtis Ray Foster • Leroy Wilburn • Les Mason - PAGE A7
As of 3:30 p.m., Monday, the Senate had recessed subject to the call of the chair. Adair said senators were expected to be called back to the Floor between 6:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. to discuss the budget bill which unanimously passed the House last week.
Public education was the largest recipient of the $5.6
billion budget approved by the House. The budget allows for $215 million in new spending and leaves nearly $42 million in revenue unallocated. The budget will likely be altered on the Senate side. “There’s not any real portions of the budget such as tax relief, tax incentives, tax credits, tax deductions that encourage economic growth. The governor submitted a number of ideas like that but they haven’t made it in the budget and we still need to fight for that,”Adair said. j.bergman@rdrnews.com
Julia Bergman photo
Roswell resident Danny Gomez helps a dialysis patient pick out a valentine gift as part of the Community Volunteer Program's annual Valentine’s Party event. The event will run until Wednesday. Johnny Gonzales, program leader, said valentine's gifts will be given to dialysis patients, cancer patients, families in need and the wives and mothers of Chaves County Detention Center inmates through the event.
Magnitude-5.6 quake strikes rural Northern California
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Phil Mickelson rallied from six shots behind to win for the fourth time at Pebble Beach, a final round made even more memorable by the guy in a red shirt who was among the first to congratulate him Sunday on the 18th green. Turns out that Tiger... - PAGE B1
R-Roswell, said. “This bill seeks to have sunshine and open gover nment with regard to who gives money to political action committees.”
JESSICA PALMER RECORD STAFF WRITER
See NEGLECT, Page A3
MICKELSON FIRES 64 TO WIN
TUESDAY
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JULIA BERGMAN RECORD STAFF WRITER
ROMNEY’S FUNDRAISERS ANONYMOUS
February 14, 2012
HOOPA VALLEY INDIAN RESERVATION, Calif. (AP) — A moderate earthquake struck Norther n Califor nia’s coast Monday after noon, rattling nerves around the Oregon border but yielding no immediate reports of major injuries or damage, officials said. The magnitude-5.6 quake struck at 1:07 p.m. about 18 miles inland in an unincorporated part of Humboldt County, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter was a rural area near the small community of Weitchpec on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation, about 240 miles north of San Francisco and about 60 miles south of the Oregon border. The temblor was widely felt within a 100-mile radius, according to the USGS website.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department and Eureka Police Department sent deputies and officers to check on residents, but dispatchers said there were no immediate reports of emergencies. Things also seemed fine on the Hoopa reservation, according to Byron Nelson Jr., the tribe’s vice chairman. “It was just a mild shaking. It wasn’t a sharp jerk,” said Sgt. Gene McManus of the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Department, a neighboring agency that also saw no immediate problems. Children’s building blocks tumbled at Weitchpec Elementary School, but the staff and students took the shaking in See QUAKE, Page A3
Single car roll over
Noah Vernau Photo
A single car rollover occurred on Brasher Road. and Sunset Avenue., Monday afternoon. A crash is currently under investigation.
Obama’s budget: Government still getting bigger
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TODAY’S FORECAST
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INDEX
AP photo
President Barack Obama speaks about the "Community College to Career Fund" and his 2013 budget, Monday, at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion electionyear budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill. Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers.
Many of the ideas in the White House plan for the 2013 budget year will be thrashed out during this year’s election campaigns as the Republicans try to oust Obama from the White House and add Senate control to their command of the House. “We can’t just cut our way into growth,” Obama said at a campaign-style rally at a community college in the vote-rich Northern Virginia suburbs. “We can cut back on the things that we don’t need, but we also have to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share for the things that we do need.” Republicans were unimpressed. By the administration’s reckoning, the deficit would drop to $901 billion next year — still requiring the government to borrow 24 cents of every dollar it
spends — and would settle in the $600 billion-plus range by 2015.The deficit for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, would hit $1.3 trillion, a near record and the fourth straight year of trillion-plus red ink. Obama’s budget blueprint reprises a long roster of prior proposals: raising taxes on couples making more than $250,000 a year; eliminating numerous tax breaks for oil and gas companies and approving a series of smaller tax and fee proposals. Similar proposals failed even when the Democrats controlled Congress. The Pentagon would cut purchases of Navy ships and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters — and trim 100,000 troops from its rolls over See BUDGET, Page A3