I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Memo to New Mexico’s 112 state lawmakers: Remember, what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.
For many in Santa Fe that could become the mantra, because the 60-day legislative session that kicks off Tuesday at the Roundhouse could call for a feat of superhuman strength.
Consider the challenges:
A yawning budget gap estimated at a $1 billion over two years that has Gov. Bill Richardson and state lawmakers talking of cuts to public schools and state services.
A slew of controversial bills, including one that would grant gay and lesbian couples many of the same rights as married couples, which has engendered significant opposition in previous sessions.
A fight over an issue that has previously gotten a chilly reception, to put it mildly, from many lawmakers: ethics reform.
And hanging over all of this is the dark cloud of scandal. Three separate investigations are occurring simultaneously, including a federal inquiry into the business practices of Richardson’s administration. Two state probes, meanwhile, are looking into the operations of a defunct housing authority run by a friend of state House Speaker Ben Lujan and trying to find federal election money that went missing during the tenure of former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.
Thickening the plot is the guilty plea to federal corruption charges in October of former Senate President Pro Tem Manny Aragon.
The politics around all these issues are already in play, and the anxiety they create is only heightened by a struggle between two state lawmakers to win one of the state Senate’s top posts.
On top of that, some are speculating that Richardson will face restive state lawmakers spoiling for a fight because of perceptions of his weakened status. Richardson already has faced questions of whether he was a lame duck.
“I don’t think he is held in as high esteem as he was before,” Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, said. He added that he thinks some people will try to exploit Richardson’s perceived weakness.
Richardson, however, deflected such musings last week.
“We’re working very closely with the Legislature,” Richardson said at a press conference, when asked if he expected challenges from state lawmakers. “This is a responsible budget. What we have been doing in the last three weeks is moving forward. I think we are in very good shape to have a very good legislative session.”
The budget
The state’s budgetary problems are the biggest challenge confronting lawmakers this year.
State revenues have taken a nosedive with the falling prices of natural gas and oil, producing a half-billion-dollar budget gap this year and one next year that a prominent lawmaker has predicted could reach $1 billion.
The state’s pauper status amounts to a cultural shift for Richardson, as well as lawmakers who have worked with historic budgetary surpluses when oil and natural gas prices topped out.
“In all the years I’ve been here, [this is the first time] we do not have a budget going into the session,” Rep. Jeannette Wallace, R-Los Alamos, said of the effect the financial difficulties have had on the budgeting process.
Richardson and a high-powered legislative committee have already agreed broadly on how to close this year’s gap.
The governor wants to make $108 million in cuts to state agencies and enact one-time cuts of $48 million that would include “sweeping” state agencies of unspent money at the end of the year and temporarily halting an expansion of health care benefits for New Mexico children that lawmakers passed during a special session last August. That money would go into the state’s general fund.
Richardson also has proposed increasing tax revenues by moving up the date by which corporations must make a quarterly payment to the state this year, a change that would yield $65 million. He also has proposed improving tax collection methods through staffing increases and database improvements.
For next year, Richardson has proposed making $290 million in agency cuts, increased tax collections for $34 million, agency savings through efficiencies of $12 million and using $119 million from the state’s reserves, or “rainy day” fund.
Where the governor and the Legislature already disagree is how much money to inject into the state’s main account, the general fund, from stalled brick-and-mortar projects around the state.
Capital outlay
A legislative summary released Friday shows that only $3.3 billion of roughly $6.2 billion earmarked for brick-and-mortar projects -– sometimes called pork, also known as capital outlay –- has been spent from 1998 to 2008.
Richardson wants to claw back more than $260 million of the balance, while a high-powered legislative committee is recommending significantly less, about $160 million.
Of greater interest to the governor and lawmakers is whose projects are targeted and who gets to make up the target list — the governor or the Legislature. Each year the governor and state lawmakers divvy up money — usually hundreds of millions of dollars annually — to dedicate to such projects.
“This will be contentious,” Richardson said last week.
Rep. Luciano “Lucky” Varela, D-Santa Fe, vice chairman of the Legislative Finance Committee, echoed the sentiment.
“Capital outlay is … going to be toughest,” Varela said. “Every legislator is involved in that and they are going to fight.”
But state lawmakers won’t just take up the state’s budgetary crisis. There are non-budgetary issues that will generate significant debate, and even hard feelings.
Ethics reform is one of them, and advocates say it’s an issue that finally has the wind at its back, what with Aragon’s guilty plea and the three ongoing investigations providing the backdrop for its discussion.
Ethics reform
New Mexico is one of a handful of states that doesn’t limit how much individuals and businesses can give to elected officials and political candidates. It also doesn’t have an independent ethics commission, something that 40 states already have.
“We have bipartisan interest in repairing our public image,” said Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Sandia Park. “I predict you will see a whole package passed, and I think it will have to do with a whole lot more than just spending caps. I think it’s good.”
State lawmakers expect to debate several bills, including one that would impose limits on campaign contributions, another to create an independent state ethics commission and one that would give the Attorney General’s office the jurisdiction to prosecute political corruption cases. Right now, the jurisdiction to prosecute rests with local district attorneys who may not have the resources to do so, Attorney General Gary King told KUNM Friday morning.
There are signs that passing such reforms could be a hard-fought battle.
“How do you legislate ethics?” said Jennings the state Senate president pro tem. “Everything that everyone is screaming about … all that stuff is against the law. Everybody knows what you have to do is right. That is a decision made by people.”
Domestic partnerships
Another contentious issue is domestic partnership legislation. Rep. Mimi Stewart and Sen. Cisco McSorley are sponsoring bills in their respective chambers that would give many of the same rights as married couples to gay and lesbian couples, as well as unmarried straight couples in a committed relationship.
Such expanded rights would include medical coverage through a partner’s health insurance plan, the right to visit a partner in a hospital, the right to take family medical leave to care for a partner who is ill, and property rights in a partners’ pension and inheritance rights.
Supporters, including some financial planners and attorneys, said domestic partnerships would help save thousands of dollars for gay and lesbian couples as well as unmarried straight couples not related by blood.
But opponents say the legislation would essentially codify same-sex marriage and undermines traditional understandings of marriage.
Last year, a domestic partnership bill died in committee, with two Democratic lawmakers siding with Republicans to kill the legislation.
Advocates are cautiously optimistic that a change in the membership of the state Senate, in particular, increases the chances for the legislation. The ranks of the Senate’s progressive lawmakers will grow when a handful of freshmen join the domestic partnership debate this year. Five sitting senators were defeated in last year’s primary and general election by candidates generally considered more progressive.
Beffort, the Republican senator, also predicts that it will pass.
But others say the bill’s chances for passage depend on who is leading the Senate: Jennings or Sen. Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa, who is trying to wrest the top job from Jennings.
“Tim has never voted for it and I think if Tim is in the leadership in the Senate he could conceivably make committees designed to kill it,” McSorley said.
Sen. Jennings responded: “Cisco is just getting personal. If I am opposed to it, I will vote against it. If the votes are there to pass it, it passes.”
