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.
Acknowledging the Governor’s opinion that their budget fix may not protect the state’s medicaid program from cuts “may very well be correct,” New Mexico legislative leaders delivered a letter to Gov. Bill Richardson today, urging him not to make cuts to Medicaid, the program that provides health care funding for at least 450,000 low-income New Mexicans.
A budget bill passed last week during the special session was widely believed to have preserved Medicaid from cuts. But the governor’s office said earlier this week that the language in the bill was incomplete, leaving most Medicaid programs in the mix of executive branch programs available for 7.6 percent cuts mandated by the Legislature.
The letter, from House Majority Floor Leader Ken Martinez and Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, was hand-delivered to the governor’s office Friday. In it, they said that the analysis the Legislature had available last week indicated that Medicaid would be saved from cuts. And, they said, no one from the executive branch informed them before they passed the bill that it left Medicaid vulnerable.
In response to an inquiry from the Independent earlier this week, Richardson spokesperson Gilbert Gallegos said in an email that the Legislative Finance Committee, which did the fiscal impact report on the bill, was informed by the Department of Finance and Administration about the “flaw” in the Medicaid language in the bill:
DFA officials alerted the LFC of several flaws in the bill – constitutional flaws, as well as the flaw in the language dealing with Medicaid. The other flaws were corrected, but the Medicaid language was never corrected.
The legislators concluded their letter by urging the governor to use the “flexibility” the legislation provides to make necessary cuts while preserving Medicaid, as the Legislature intended.
