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 longstanding battle over who owns the state’s more than 1,900 voting tabulators – the counties or the state – appears settled, and none too soon with this year’s elections fast approaching. A bill Gov. Bill Richardson signed into law in recent days renders the fight moot, state and local officials say, by requiring the state to pay for maintenance and upkeep of the voting equipment.
It’s an issue that sounds innocuous but which has had many county clerks fighting mad since 2007. The resolution is found in this paragraph of HB 198: “The secretary of state may pay from the voting system revolving fund the costs of all hardware, software, firmware, maintenance and support for voting systems, whether state- or county-owned, certified for use in state elections.”
The key phrase is “whether state – or county-owned” and is on page five of the 23-page bill, which passed during this year’s 30-day legislative session.
Deciding who pays for upkeep has been a long time coming.
The Secretary of State and counties across New Mexico have jousted over ownership because of the potential cost of maintaining the 1,900 voting tabulators and other pieces of equipment a Nebraska-based company sold to New Mexico in 2006.
After selling the equipment for roughly $18 million in 2006, the company, ES&S, turned around in 2007 and charged counties more than $1 million to maintain the machines. The state and counties have negotiated with ES&S ever since while at the same time bickering among themselves about who owned the machines – each county or the state.
Ownership meant footing the bill for maintenance costs. And many counties refused to sign an agreement with the company that they said was way too expensive.
The money involved wasn’t chump change. At one point Bernalillo County, the state’s largest county, would have had to pay $287,000 a year for maintenance. The bill for Doña Ana County — home to Las Cruces, the state’s second largest county — would have cost $79,000 a year, slightly higher than Santa Fe County’s price of $69,000.
The closest the state came to resolving the issue was in 2008, when the governor, vetoed a bill that set aside roughly $1.3 million a year in costs to maintain the machines. Richardson said in his veto message at the time that the requirement for the state to assume maintenance costs was left unfunded by the Legislature.
Later, a spokesman for the governor said Secretary of State Mary Herrera had recommended the veto.
This year’s maintenance costs are covered, mostly by the federal Elections Assistance Commission, which is giving the state more than $600,000 in grant money to pay for upkeep. But in the future the state – and not the counties – will figure out how, and where to get the money, to pay for maintenance.
