Martinez might find resistance to new state police corruption unit

Susana Martinez

For the past year on the campaign trail Governor-elect Susana Martinez has hammered away at the corruption and serial scandals that have plagued New Mexico since 2005.

Her response to voters was always the same. She’d treat corruption for what it was – a crime. And then she’d mention her idea of creating a special State Police unit charged with investigating public corruption instead of pushing for an independent ethics commission, a perennial loser with state lawmakers.

Now, with two months before her first legislative session, Martinez must convince state lawmakers of the worthiness of her idea.

There are signs it won’t be easy. Due in part to the state’s woebegone finances, creating a new police division appears unpopular with some lawmakers who worry about spending more money at a time when the state is broke.

Then there’s the wariness with which some state lawmakers view the executive branch, particularly given the constant tug-of-war the Legislature and Gov. Bill Richardson endured over a plethora of  issues.

It is not lost on some lawmakers that Martinez is talking about placing responsibility for prosecuting corruption at an agency under the governor’s control.

“Most people think there’s more corruption in the executive branch,” said Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell. “That’s what we’ve seen more of, where more of it appears to be.”

Martinez, the budget and where ethics fits in

Martinez has spent her first days as governor-elect calling or meeting with legislative leaders, mostly about budget matters. Fixing the state budget will rank as the top priority during the coming legislative session, meaning dollars and cents, and not ethics or corruption, likely will dominate discussions between Martinez and legislative leaders.

As of last week, Martinez said she didn’t yet have a sense of whether legislative leaders were open to an idea of a corruption-busting State Police unit. That hasn’t stopped her from lifting entire paragraphs of boilerplate from the campaign trail to continue lobbying for the idea.

New Mexicans want more than an independent ethics commission to guard against future corruption, she told a small crowd last week at an Albuquerque press conference. As she did on the campaign trail, Martinez dismissed an independent commission as “politicians who are looking at politicians who are then investigating politicians,” she said. “That is unacceptable to this administration.”

Martinez’s idea has caught on with some lawmakers, among them, Sen. Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales.

“There is no doubt we need someone to investigate corruption,” Ingle said. Attorney General Gary King is supposed to be out in front in the fight of corruption, Ingle said, but “there’s nothing being done.”

But the Portales Republican acknowledges the state’s precarious financial straits when talk of how to pay for a new state corruption unit comes up.

“It’s going to depend on the extra money that is needed,” he said.

While support is hard to quantify, the idea already has picked up some powerful opponents. Rep. Luciano “Lucky” Varela, D-Santa Fe, and chairman of the Legislature’s budget arm, the Legislative Finance Committee, is clear where he stands on the idea, and it’s not behind it.

Chances are the state police might be uprooted from its current home, the Department of Public Safety, because of an ongoing government-restructuring effort, Varela added.

“I don’t have it in my mind where the state police should be,” Varela said. “We’re not there. I would suspect the Department of Public Safety would look differently once we get done with it.”

Corruption looms large in New Mexico

Corruption, and how to fight it, has been on New Mexico’s legislative agenda ever since 2005, when a string of several high-profile scandals began. Since then two former state treasurers, a former Senate president and a deputy insurance superintendent are among the public officials who either have pleaded guilty to or have been convicted of corruption-related charges.

Add to the mix at least two federal criminal probes of Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration, and how New Mexico’s public officials conduct business has become a matter of urgency for government reformers.

But all the high-profile scandals, and what appeared to be support of ethics reforms by an overwhelming number of New Mexicans, wasn’t enough to propel one of the reformers’ biggest goals into law — an independent ethics commission.

For four years Richardson and state lawmakers wrestled over how to set up such a commission, who would sit on it and how members would be appointed.  The concept has proved deeply unpopular at the Capitol, and never got close to passing.

This year, for example, reformers and advocates actively opposed an ethics commission bill after lawmakers added language that would have punished more harshly a person who publicly spoke of testifying before the commission than an individual found to have violated the public trust.

Ethics commissions across the nation

Despite Martinez’s dismissal of ethics commissions as the playground of politicians who have no incentive to punish wrongdoing, ethics commissions in other states such as Ohio and Connecticut have investigated and fined governors for ethical lapses, demonstrating that some panels have some bite and aren’t merely showpieces.

In fact, New Mexico is one of a handful of states without a commission. More than 40 already have one, including many of New Mexico’s neighbors such as Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Nevada, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Arizona, like New Mexico, does not have one.

Looking forward

But the idea of a commission appears shelved, at least for now, as Martinez takes the helm of the state and tries out her idea of bolstering criminal prosecution of corruption.

Jennings, the Democratic senate leader, however, offered a reminder of how potentially strewn with obstacles the path to creating a special State Police unit might become during the coming legislative session.

“Before we create new divisions, we better get rid of a lot of what we have and get our budget in control,” Jennings said of the state’s budget situation. “It’s easy to add government, but hard to take it away.”