While ABQ's Nob Hill hipsters battle for legal pot there's some unfinished mind-altering business left over from the last century for New Mexico to deal with--and it is. From Portales:

Depending on the will of the voters in Roosevelt and Curry counties, the number of dry counties in New Mexico next year could go from two to zero. . . After Curry County had a similar resolution, the Roosevelt County Commission will consider a resolution calling for an election to allow alcohol sales in the unincorporated parts of the county. . . 

The Curry commission unanimously passed their version of the resolution, with commissioners noting they weren’t stating their views on alcohol sales in the county but instead leaving the question up to its residents. Curry and Roosevelt are the only two counties in New Mexico that are dry. The dry status does not apply to cities within those counties that choose to offer alcohol sales.

So come next summer the cowboys in Curry and Roosevelt could be enjoying a cold (and legal) brew in the far reaches of those sparsely populated counties. Will by then the Nob Hill crowd be legal when they toke on their joints? We'd bet the Curry County beer gets there first.

And the boom goes on:
Devon Energy Corp. announced plans to open a new office in Hobbs with about 40 employees. . . Devon is a leading independent energy company engaged in finding and producing oil and natural gas. Based in Oklahoma City, Devon's Hobbs office is expected to open later this summer and  house approximately 40 of Devon’s 225 employees in the currently booming oil and gas region.

Another rural area is about to get a revival. It's Torrance county, where the closing of the private jail two years ago caused hundreds of lost jobs and devastated the economy, but now in Estancia:

. . . The town lost a million dollars in tax revenue and other payments. Then in May, Torrance County landed a contract with the federal government to re-open the jail--mostly to house migrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. . . “Now that it’s comin’ back, money’s comin’ again!” exclaimed Bo Bardy, who has worked at Gustin Hardware in Estancia. . . That money derives from the business of incarcerating migrants, many of whom are coming to the U.S. from Central America to seek asylum. U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped about 144,000 people near the Mexican border in May. . . 

"Money's comin' again!" In rural NM that ranks up there with getting rain ten days in a row.

MORE ECON BEAT

Sec. Keyes (Journal)

How about we keep the econ ball rolling with some more call centers for ABQ? Well, maybe not:

Economic Development Secretary Alicia Keyes told a panel of lawmakers that jobs at call centers don't generate high enough wages in general to warrant major grants under the state's Local Economic Development Act. At most the state will offer $1,000 per new job to offset infrastructure investments at urban offices that handle telephone calls for business customers. Recent state grants in urban areas provide about $6,000 per job created. Keyes said that state intends to focus business incentives instead on sectors such as aerospace, film, cybersecurity, biosciences and clean energy that offer jobs requiring greater skill and higher pay.

But where is the ready workforce for such highly skilled jobs in NM? Heck, high-paying Intel has had a hard time finding local talent. And what about all those high school grads who don't go on to college? Call centers still work for them (not that we need to pay 6 Grand for each job). And will the film industry hog too much of the LEDA money as it parachutes in for the increased film subsidies, leaving little for other industries? Thank you for the floor, Mr. Chairman.

Cybersecurity, aerospace and the like are great growth sectors of the economy but when you are once again 50th in the nation in the child well-being rankings, you aren't exactly grooming a promising future workforce. The NM section of the Annie E. Casey Foundation annual Kids Count Data Book makes for somber reading. First, the ABC's then the aerospace?

THE BOTTOM LINES

We misidentified ABQ City Council District 2 candidate Joseph Griego on the Monday blog as Joseph Sanchez. Sanchez is a candidate in the Dem primary race for the northern congressional district,

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2019