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.
The governor would no longer sit on the state Investment Council if a bill sponsored by Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, succeeds.
The bill is one of three in the Senate aimed at reforming at a state agency at the center of an ever-widening investment scandal with ties to New York state and California. All three bills are scheduled to come up for a hearing Friday before the Senate Rules Committee.
The removal of the governor from the State Investment Council would represent a major change. The governor now sits on the council and wields great authority over the agency.
In fact, a recently completed review of the State Investment Council recommended significantly reducing the governor’s power over it.
That report found that Richardson’s influence over the State Investment Council “is more far-reaching than it is for governors in most of the 14 other states with similar funds,” according to Chicago-based consulting firm EnnisKnupp.
In addition, decisions on how to invest New Mexico’s $13 billion worth of endowment funds were made internally and largely without scrutiny from the board appointed to oversee the state’s portfolio, the report said.
The removal of the governor from the SIC is one of the major provisions in McSorley’s legislation.
A separate proposal sponsored by Sen. Tim Keller, D-Albuquerque, would lessen the governor’s authority over the State Investment Council and reduce the portfolio of the agency’s top staff member — the State Investment Officer.
Currently, Gov. Bill Richardson appoints the State Investment Officer who, in turn, can hire and fire advisers and outside managers helping the agency.
Under Keller’s legislation the State Investment Council, and not the governor, would hire the state investment officer. The council also would gain hiring and firing power over advisors and outside managers.
Other changes contemplated in Keller’s bill would require more investment expertise among SIC members, so that they possess greater know-how to assess investment decisions. Also the Legislature would gain more say in who sits on the SIC board.
It appears that McSorley’s bill doesn’t give the SIC board the same authority as proposed under Keller’s bill. But McSorley’s measure would invest SIC members with a fiduciary duty. That would codify the trust the public already puts in SIC members to provide oversight in how taxpayers’ money is invested.
A third SIC reform bill proposed by Sen. Steven Neville, R-Aztec, would change the membership of the SIC and require several members to have at least 10 years of investment or finance experience.
It also would prohibit SIC members from having contracted in the two years previous with that agency, State Treasurer, the Educational Retirement Board, the Public Employees Retirement Association, the New Mexico Finance Authority or State Board of Finance.
Richardson has said he is in favor of reforming the SIC, but it’s unclear what he would support from the three bills.
Questions have swirled around the SIC, including related to former State Investment Officer Gary Bland and how much information and decision-making he kept from the State Investment Council. Bland resigned in October prior to a scheduled no-confidence vote by council members.
New Mexico in recent months has emerged as a hot spot in an ever-widening investment scandal with ties to New York state and California.
As a result, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an inquiry into the agency.
The SEC inquiry, meanwhile, coincides with an ongoing criminal investigation that began earlier this year in New York. New Mexico’s former investment adviser, Saul Meyer of Aldus Equity, pleaded guilty there to securities violations. Meyer admitted to pushing certain deals to New Mexico’s two investment agencies — the SIC and Educational Retirement Board —because politically connected individuals here recommended them.
Meyer didn’t name names.
