New Mexico public schools could be cut by $77 million under a budget-balancing scenario that could be on the table in today’s deficit talks, the Albuquerque Journal is reporting.

The paper reports that Senate Finance Committee Chairman, John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, asked the Legislative Finance Committee to prepare a scenario including school cuts that would be part of a 3.5 percent across-the-board reduction for state government.

That would include cuts to public schools, a scenario that Gov. Bill Richardson has steadfastly opposed. Whether to cut funding for K-12 education has emerged as a major difference of opinion between the executive and legislative negotiators who have met over the past few weeks to see if they can hammer out a deal to address this year’s $440 million shortfall.

As Journal writer Dan Boyd reports:

The difference of opinion looms as the largest of several sticking points between an executive branch task force appointed by Richardson and a bipartisan group of 12 legislators tasked with negotiating a strategy to balance the budget.

The two sides will meet behind closed doors today for their third meeting, and administration officials say this session could be pivotal.

“If we don’t see some give on this particular issue, the governor would be inclined to call the session sooner rather than later,” Finance and Administration Secretary Katherine Miller said Tuesday. Richardson would then push his plan to balance the budget without education cuts to all 112 legislators at a date in early October, she said.

K-12 education represents a sizable chunk of the state budget, at more than $2.2 billion, and some top state lawmakers argue that not cutting there will mean deeper cuts elsewhere.

Advocates for K-12 education stress that this is not the time to make any cuts to funding for schools. New Mexico already brings up the rear in several categories.

Education advocates are among a chorus of folks who say cutting period isn’t the way to address the shortfall and that repealing the 2003 state income tax cuts is one solution. Those cuts lowered the state’s highest rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent over several years.

Opponents of that way of thinking say raising taxes during a deep recession is the worst time to take money out of New Mexicans’ pockets because so many people are struggling.

That’s the larger picture in which the question of whether to cut education or not sits — the balance between cutting and raising revenue to address the state’s budgetary shortfall.

It’s not an easy task finding that balance. And, believe me, when the budget deal is cut between the administration and top lawmakers, a lot of folks are not going to be happy.