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SANTA FE — A power struggle between a Senate committee chairwoman and Gov. Bill Richardson appears this week to have extended to a little-known state health agency.
Sen. Linda Lopez, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, and Richardson have tangled in the past over how far state lawmakers can go to thoroughly vet Richardson’s high-level appointees to state agencies, commissions and boards.
Lopez’s rules committee has demanded that the state pubic safety department be allowed to conduct background checks on Richardson’s appointees, but Richardson so far has refused.
Enter the Health Policy Commission, an independent state agency that provides research, guidance and recommendations on health policy issues.
For years, attempts have been made to fold the small commission into a larger state agency, and this year is no different.
There is a bill this year that would fold the small agency into a larger state department as part of the administration’s move to consolidate programs, and it is causing heartburn for health policy commission members.
“The upshot of being folded in is that we disappear,” the commission’s chairman, Dr. Fred Hesse of Albuquerque told the Independent on Wednesday, adding that the entire commission felt the same way.
Hesse said there are unresolved issues with the governor’s office that he’d like to resolve by sitting down with Richardson himself.
“We have no argument with the executive branch,” Hesse said. “We have very fond feelings for the governor. We’ve met with the governor’s aide. We’ve tried to meet with the governor. It is possible that people below the governor have a problem with our independence.”
Hesse shared those sentiments with the Senate Rules Committee on Monday.
The next day, an employee from the governor’s office went to the Senate Rules Committee to retrieve files of the six health policy commissioners whose names were before the committee for confirmation, Lopez said. Taking back the files meant that the panel did not have information before it to consider the nominees. And Lopez interpreted the action as a signal that the governor was yanking the commissioners’ nominations.
Hesse’s file was not among them because he was confirmed by the Senate Monday.
Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said it was “absolutely false” that the nominations had been yanked. “We have no problem with the confirmations. Never did,” Gallegos wrote in an e-mail.
Gallegos would not say why the governor’s employee had retrieved the files from Senate Rules Committee.
Lopez, operating on a view that the governor was trying to nix the nominations, moved ahead and placed the members’ nominations before the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday morning.
At one point during the rules committee meeting Wednesday morning Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, asked Lopez, “Did you talk to the governor’s office why these appointments were withdrawn?”
Feldman said Wednesday night she didn’t get a clear answer.
Still, Feldman and the other lawmakers voted unanimously to recommend confirmation by the Senate of all six members before them Wednesday morning.
Feldman agreed that there was reason to be concerned over the loss of the commission’s independence.
In a show of how quickly a chamber can move if it wants to, the full Senate confirmed four of the six commissioners hours after they had been recommended by the Senate Rules Committee.
“You can’t yank around people who are volunteering of their time,” Lopez said Wednesday. “If the governor wishes to remove them, he can still do so. I felt it was our duty that we confirm them.”
