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.
Gov. Bill Richardson has delayed until Monday, March 1, a special session originally scheduled for Wednesday.
His decision came as top lawmakers lobbied him to postpone the session, which will be dominated by money issues. State lawmakers have to craft a state budget for next year despite significant economic woes.
“Since the end of the regular session last week, lawmakers have been working on a budget compromise and have seen progress,” Richardson said in a statement released by his office Tuesday. “However, the legislative leadership has requested that I give them a few more days of negotiation ahead of a Special Session and I am granting their request. I believe giving lawmakers this extra time to build consensus is the best thing for all New Mexicans.”
New Mexico is struggling financially and confronting one of its most daunting challenges in decades. Estimates project the state is staring at several hundred million dollar shortfall to keep services running at their current levels.
The difficulty for top lawmakers in reaching a compromise spending plan for next year was evident last week when House and Senate leaders failed to agree before the regular session ended Thursday on how much in tax increases and spending cuts to use.
The wasn’t for lack of trying. In the two weeks prior to Thursday, both chambers had approved competing budgets. The philosophic disagreement driving a wedge between the House and Senate was a classic one: House Democratic leaders preferred raising revenues through tax and fee increases to the deeper spending cuts Senate Democratic leadership wanted.
The Senate proposal recommended spending $120 million less than the House plan — $5.3 billion to $5.426 billion. It also raised nearly half the revenue proposed in the House bill, generating $180 million through tax increases vs. $340 million in the House bill.
Some leaders said Tuesday the disagreement that kept the two sides apart was still there. But they would make a genuine effort at trying to broker a deal in the special session, they said.
“If we’re called in, we’ll make the effort,” Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday morning.
There also was a hint that top lawmakers wanted to keep negotiations going so as to arrive at a budget deal before coming in for a special session.
“I understand the House doesn’t want to come in until there’s a (budget) agreement. That sounds perfectly reasonable,” Smith said.
The small delay in the special session doesn’t push back the special session as far as some had hoped for. Some lawmakers wanted Richardson to postpone the special session to later in the spring, perhaps April, when the state would have a better sense of how its revenues were coming in.
But Richardson said last week he didn’t want to wait too long to call a special session.
“New Mexicans don’t want to wait,” he told reporters. “I don’t want to send a signal to the markets that our budget is not concluded. I don’t want to get into March or April because of political primaries.”
Richardson was referring to House lawmakers, some of whom face political primaries in June. House lawmakers are up for re-election this year. State Senators are not.
Waiting might give lawmakers a better chance to see how revenues are coming in, some legislators said.
Already the Legislature’s budget arm, the Legislative Finance Committee, has projected that state revenues were $40 million below expectations as of earlier this month, a notion contested by Richardson’s budget team.
And that throws into question New Mexico’s projections that revenues will grow by 6 percent next year, some lawmakers said.
Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, said on Monday he thought the 6 percent projections were too sunny. “I don’t know anybody who is growing by 6 percent,” he said.
Getting a better sense of future revenues is important because if revenue grow at 2 percent, rather than 6 percent next year, that would leave a $200 million gap in addition to the shortfall state lawmakers will have to close with next year’s budget, Jennings said.
