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.
State Sen. (and blogger) Dede Feldman has had a few days off and, earlier today, reflected upon the legislative session, especially the hectic last day.
“The last night and morning of the 2009 session was true to tradition: underlying hysteria with a thin veneer of shared accomplishment, pride and most of all — relief,” the Albuquerque Democrat wrote on her blog.
Feldman recounted the surprise in the Senate upon hearing that the House had rebuffed the SunCal TIDD — on a tie vote no less. “Surely SB 249 would be reconsidered,” Feldman wrote. “And it was — loosing [sic] again on a tie vote. Whoa, I thought, anything is possible now, including the passage of my long-sought-after campaign contributions limits, which at that point, was still pending in the House. ”
Feldman’s bill, for which she has “been pushing… since my first session in 1997,” eventually passed the House on a 49-17 vote. The bill went back to the Senate for concurrence, which it received.
Feldman also remarked on the first open conference committee, saying the conference committee on SB 584 “didn’t disappoint.”
A last-minute amendment attached to Sen. Ortiz y Pino’s bill in the House by the Speaker was removed, amidst great discussion, and the committee report was adopted by both chambers.
And as for the outburst by House Speaker Ben Lujan, who called fellow Democratic Sen. John Arthur Smith a “racist” and said that Smith was “full of shit,” Feldman says this:
The Speaker was angry that his amendment had been defeated and felt that his motives had been impugned, but he over-reacted. He has since apologized. Chalk up the explosion to the end-of-session frenzy. But chalk up the exposure of the last minute amendment — and possibly its rejection — to open conference committees.
