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.
Speaker Ben Lujan is trying to keep the House from voting on an open government bill that would override one of Gov. Bill Richardson’s 2009 vetoes, Rep. Paul Bandy, R-Aztec, charged Monday.
The Senate voted to override Richardson’s veto of SB 531 last week but needs the House to take a similar vote to overturn the governor’s veto.
The 2009 bill created a mechanism by which state agencies are required to share confidential data with the Legislative Finance Committee, the Legislature’s budget arm. Supporters of the bill have said the information sharing would go toward helping state lawmakers understand, and scrutinize, everything from how money is spent on state contracts to whether Medicaid fraud is a bigger problem than rates seem to indicate.
But since arriving in the House, the Senate bill has bounced around committees.
It first went to the House Appropriations and Finance Committee (HAFC). On Sunday night the bill was reassigned to the House Judiciary Committee after being reported out of HAFC, Bandy said.
“By sending this legislation to yet another committee, Speaker Lujan is attempting to avoid the chance for the House to override the veto,” Rep. Paul Bandy, R-Aztec, said Monday afternoon. “This legislative shell game subverts the democratic process.”
Lujan responded Monday that he didn’t make the motion on the House floor to re-assign the bill to the House Judiciary Committee.
Lujan is generally considered the single-most powerful lawmaker in the Legislature.
Asked if the House would hear the veto override bill as a whole before the session ends Thursday at noon, Lujan said, “I am not saying it will or will not.”
Asked why not, Lujan said, “We have a committee that is going to look at it.”
Richardson’s decision to pocket veto SB 531 last year incensed many state lawmakers. The move came even though the bill had passed unanimously in both the House and Senate.
The Senate voted 34-8 to override last week.
