Al Park

On Wednesday evening, as the House was debating a series of tax increases, five members were missing from the chamber–and not excused, leading to a call of the House. “I believe there was a plan to allow people to leave,” House Minority Whip Keith Gardner said.

A revenue package that is a cornerstone of a proposed 2011 New Mexico state budget passed the House Wednesday night by a vote of 38-28; it now goes to the governor’s desk. The measure raises about $240 million in taxes through various measures. But it also may create extra pain for some local governments.

Hours after two state representatives joined GOP lawmakers to table a major budget bill, the pair changed their votes and the bill moved forward. What happened between two major votes on Feb. 17, the next to last day of the regular session, offers a glimpse into how the New Mexico Legislature operates, especially when rank-and-file lawmakers buck a coalition of power brokers.

The curious case of Senate bill 531 is heating up. The bill–which would force state agencies to share financial data, including Medicaid spending, with the Legislative Finance Committee–is on today’s agenda of the House Judiciary Committee, but it wasn’t heard during the committee’s Wednesday morning meeting.
“I was promised it would be heard last night, and [...]

A person filing an ethics complaint and then going public would face much harsher penalties than a public official found to have violated the public trust under a State Ethics Commission proposal the Senate Finance Committee passed Tuesday.

The House Judiciary Committee will consider a bill that would create a publicly accessible database of financial information from government agencies in New Mexico on Saturday.

When will a bill that would create a publicly accessible database of financial information from government agencies in New Mexico get its first hearing in a House committee?
“No idea. We will try for Saturday or Monday,” state Rep. Al Park, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in an e-mail.

House Speaker Ben Lujan’s bill to implement a temporary half-cent hike in the state’s gross receipts tax would presumably not have passed earlier today if two Republican members hadn’t missed the vote.

Two bills that would have merged departments and eliminated redundancies were tabled on Thursday by the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee.
Both bills, HB 94 (Merge Aging and Human Services Departments) and HB 95 (Merge Homeland Security and Public Safety Department), were introduced by Rep. Al Park, D-Bernalillo. Gov. Bill Richardson supported the measures, which [...]

A bill that would prohibit candidates from appearing in public service ads passed through the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee Thursday afternoon.
The most conspicuous example of an elected official appearing on public service ads is former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who was indicted, along with three others, on 50 criminal [...]

State Auditor Hector Balderas wants legislators to pass three new laws that would give his office teeth, including one making it a crime to mislead or obstruct auditors.

The Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee unanimously approved a proposed bill that would create a state ethics commission at a meeting this week. The legislation will be introduced during January’s legislative session.
Committee co-chairs Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, and Rep. Al Park, D-Albuquerque, praised the decision.

While we at the New Mexico Independent are sending tweets on our Twitter account about the state Legislature, we aren’t the only ones. Legislators, media and even the House GOP are sending out updates on the 2009 special session.

While many lawmakers, the governor and attorney general are focusing their ethics reform efforts on high-profile proposals that include creation of a state ethics commission and the enactment of campaign contribution limits, Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is taking a different approach this session.

Can a state ethics commission be truly independent if it has to ask the attorney general for help when it wants to conduct an investigation? That’s the question public officials and activists are grappling with as they try to gain approval for the creation of such a commission from a Legislature that is skeptical of the proposal.