Elephant Butte Lake-msAt least one state lawmaker believes the New Mexico State Legislature should strengthen a law that currently gives an operator of a boat two days to provide information to officers investigating an accident involving the craft.

Sen. Carlos Cisneros, D-Questa said Thursday he didn’t know about the 48-hour reporting period and supported changing the statute.

“If you are involved in automobile accident, clearly the law mandates that you should not leave the scene of the accident,” Cisneros said in a phone interview with the Independent. “I think it is imperative that individuals report immediately, not one or two days afterward.”

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Dona Ana County District Attorney and Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez also urged a change in the law:

This incident … raises the bigger issue of how boating crashes are handled under current law. The legislature should seriously consider strengthening the boating laws to close any loopholes that allow operators to leave the scene of a crash before law enforcement is contacted, arrives, and investigates. Investigations into boating crashes should not be handled any less seriously than those involving motor vehicles.

The law that Cisneros and Martinez referenced allowed Gov. Bill Richardson’s chief of staff, Brian Condit, to wait two days before he called an officer to discuss a boat accident at Elephant Butte State Park over the Labor Day weekend.

State officials have cited Condit with operating a vessel in a negligent manner and damaging another person’s property. He was at the helm of a houseboat that sideswiped one houseboat and damaged another, according to the incident report.

One eyewitness told NMI that the governor, Condit, state budget chief Katherine Miller and others in their party left the scene of the accident within minutes of the houseboat docking.

A change to the law might have to wait a year or more, however. The coming 30-day legislative session in January 2010 is reserved for only budgetary and financial matters. Richardson, however, could alter the session agenda to allow state lawmakers to consider such legislation.

“It would not be germane to the session–unless the governor puts it on the call,” Cisneros said, adding, “I think it makes sense.”

The governor’s office did not respond to an e-mail sent Thursday morning by the Independent asking whether Richardson supported such a change to the law.

State officials cited the statute on Wednesday in response to questions from the media about why Condit had called the officer investigating the boat accident two days after the Saturday accident, even though the officer had spoken to many witnesses the same day.

There is no explanation in the incident report of why Condit left the scene or why it took him two days to contact the officer.

Bolen and another officer investigating the incident at Elephant Butte State Park interviewed several witnesses, with many of them recalling the same sequence of events, according to the incident report:

A man later identified as Condit was seen operating “Bloody Mary,” a houseboat owned by Leon “Skip” Fay of Rio Rancho. Condit piloted the houseboat into the marina, but came too close to C-dock, sideswiping Shaw’s houseboat. Then the “Bloody Mary” accelerated. At this point Fay took control from Condit, but it was too late, witnesses said. The houseboat, thrust by momentum, headed across the slip toward D-dock and smashed into a second houseboat, “The Floating Irish.”

The incident report estimates the damage to “The Floating Irish” at more than $10,000. The reporting officer writes also that the owners of the Dam Site marina told him that underwater structures below D-dock were damaged. Shaw’s houseboat suffered very minimal damage.