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 same week that anti-abortion-rights advocates and Catholic colleges pushed the Obama administration to repeal a recent decision to include contraception in a list of fully-covered preventive health-care services, House Republicans unveiled a proposed spending plan for 2012 that…
New Mexico will be able to pay its bills for about 22 days if the federal government fully or partially halts payments to the state, according to Finance and Administration Secretary Rick May.
Here’s a bright spot in the otherwise grim fiscal picture most states, including New Mexico, have found themselves in — the state will have more than $360 million in new revenues for the upcoming fiscal year, according to a report released yesterday to the Legislative Finance Committee.
Much of the attention on corn-based ethanol has focused on the role that this supposedly renewable fuel is playing in driving up global food prices.
A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News reveals mixed messages from the American public over the country’s budget crisis.
The House stayed past midnight at the Roundhouse early Thursday morning to concur with changes that the Senate made to the budget and the film incentive cap, but the body failed to concur on the changes the Senate made on the retirement “swaps” legislation. The House will ask the Senate to recede from their amendments, and if the Senate doesn’t, the two houses would have a conference committee to iron out their differences.
The House passed the 2012 budget Wednesday afternoon on a 35-34 vote after the passage of just one amendment and the discussion of just two. Much of the time was spent discussing the second amendment, which eventually failed, and left the Republicans complaining that Democrats had wasted time to prevent amendments.
A substitute bill seeking a compromise on the film incentives that Gov. Susana Martinez has vowed to cut back passed the House Taxation and Revenue committee this weekend. The new bill would keep the film tax rebate program at 25 percent but would cap the amount the state is liable for at $45 million per year.
Gov.-elect Susana Martinez promised not to cut education or Medicaid funding in her campaign, but given that New Mexico’s budget deficit has grown from $260 million in July to $450 million, she is changing her language.
Republican Governor-elect Susana Martinez said Wednesday that layoffs of state workers isn’t her first option, but she acknowledged that the possibility isn’t off the table.
“I would like not to have layoffs,” Martinez said Wednesday at an Albuquerque news conference. “People are already in furloughs in state government. We have to make sure we are providing the necessary core services and so I would never say they are off the table.
A bill that would collect taxes on online sales in New Mexico died quickly in this year’s 30-day session, but now Texas is attempting to collect $269 million in unpaid taxes from the online sales giant Amazon. Amazon disputes the…
Over the past four years New Mexico has given up more than $18 million to two private prison operators in the form of never-assessed penalties despite repeated contractual violations, a new legislative report says. The state has not regularly tracked vacancy rates at private prisons and had not even calculated how much the private prison companies might have owed if the state has penalized them for not having enough staff.
Gov. Richardson announced today that he will allocate $1.4 million in federal stimulus money to prevent furloughs in some courts and state agencies in the executive branch.
About a third of the money, $450,000, will go to prevent layoffs and…
Republican candidate for governor Susana Martinez today released a set of principles she said would restore fiscal responsibility to the state budget. It’s a sort of best-practices list that includes many standard Republican ideals, including limited government, low taxes and…
New Mexico is $160 million in the hole three weeks into the new fiscal year, state officials learned Wednesday.
And that hole could double in size if Congress fails to send extra stimulus dollars New Mexico’s way to help pay for Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program.
It’s not exactly the kind of political climate gubernatorial candidates would prefer.
“The next governor is going to have her hands full,” Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Wednesday, confirming the challenges ahead for the next occupant of the governor’s mansion.
The two women running to become New Mexico’s next chief executive responded Wednesday to news of the worsening financial news with plans on how to address the problem that varied in degrees of specificity. But not before taking swipes at each other.
“While my opponent has put forward thin one-liners and platitudes, my plan tells New Mexicans exactly how I propose to cover the budget gap,” Democratic Lt. Gov. Diane Denish said in a statement.
Republican District Attorney Susana Martinez shot back: “Diane Denish’s scheme is just more of the same Enron accounting that created this budget mess.”
Both candidates pledge to cut political appointees
Three and a half months before Election Day, Denish’s and Martinez’s plans to address the state’s budget woes reflected a mixture of gritty realism and pie-in-the-sky election-year promise-making at a time when New Mexico finds itself foundering financially.
Martinez, whose campaign sent out a 364-word statement, promised to implement zero-growth budgets at most state agencies and rid state government of waste and fraud. She said she could find 5 percent to cut, but didn’t go into too much detail about how to accomplish that goal.
Denish, whose campaign sent out a six-page report issued earlier this year, touted a voluntary one-time buy-out she would offer to state government workers and a thorough review of tax credits to make sure they create jobs. If they don’t, Denish would push to have them eliminated. What she didn’t mention is that such a review likely would take months, and wouldn’t save money this year.
Reducing the state’s vehicle fleet by 10 percent and merging several state agencies, thereby eliminating several cabinet-level positions and salaries, were other ideas Denish offered while Martinez talked of shrinking the state’s payroll through attrition.
While the two candidates played up their differences, there were similarities. Both promised to eliminate the hundreds of jobs across state government held by political appointees – a measure expected to save $8.8 million a year.
Both in the past also have mentioned reforming how the state doles out money for brick-and-mortar projects, also known as pork, an often-touted goal that somehow never found enough support among state lawmakers to become a reality during the past 7 1/2 years.
Everything is on the table—including education
Both gubernatorial candidates made clear Wednesday that while they were ready to cut expenses while eschewing major tax increases, they were prepared to protect the most basic services, including education.
It’s a scenario some lawmakers have questioned: keeping K-12 education untouched in future budget cutting. Education has suffered cuts in the past, but K-12 education is a big target, representing roughly half of the state budget.
“We can’t hit agencies” like the state transportation department any more, Sen. Steven Neville, R-Aztec, said Wednesday. “We might have to talk about wholesale elimination of functions. We may have to say we can’t provide XYZ anymore. Or the big taboo – education. We are going to have to re-look at education – at administration and overhead.”
Agreed Smith: “Everything on the spending side is on the table, including education.”
Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, however, said she was hard-pressed Wednesday to name where the state could cut in education.
“All I can tell you is I just finished talking to a … school nurse,” Feldman said. “People (at Albuquerque Public Schools) are really worried about what will happen this school year. We have a school principal covering two schools. School nurses who are covering more and more kids.”
Feldman also wondered if the state’s health system could take any more hits.
Funding for 33 county and community health councils and five Tribal Health Councils around the state already has been slashed this year because of the state’s budget troubles. The councils coordinate different agencies, organizations, in a community or county, that are addressing health needs at the local level, advocates have said.
“Doing away with these planning councils … it’s like your plane is about to crash and you are ripping out your control system,” Feldman said. “If we are looking to make a safe landing … we cannot afford to keep cutting those vital programs.”
No first-year governor will want to sign tax increases
“We have to look at what the situation is during the regular session,” Feldman said.
Smith ruled out a major tax increase as impractical, saying a first-year governor wouldn’t want to sign off on a tax increase to start off her tenure, he said. Smith acknowledged, however, that lawmakers would discuss – and likely would be open to– closing certain tax credits, deductions or exemptions.
Wednesday’s news wasn’t a surprise to him, Smith said. He and other senators had predicted that the Richardson administration’s projection that revenues would grow by 6 percent was overly optimistic. In the end revenues have grown by about 3 percent.
He also said the news could get worse.
New Mexico is one of 21 states without a contingency plan if Congress doesn’t pass legislation approving extra Medicaid dollars to shore up state spending plans.
Congress is currently debating whether to extend extra federal dollars for the government’s low-income health insurance program through June 30, 2011, six months beyond the current deadline of Dec. 31. If the extra dollars don’t come, however, New Mexico will be stuck with a $160 million hole in the state budget, meaning the current $160 million hole could double in size. That’s because this year’s state budget assumed the extra Medicaid dollars from the federal government.
Governor has authority to cut now
Martinez and Denish might have one saving grace. This year’s state budget gives Gov. Bill Richardson the ability to cut monthly allotments to agencies across state government, meaning some of the hard work of balancing this year’s budget actually might occur before the next governor takes office.
“Agencies have been preparing for a potential shortfall and, as a precautionary measure, were instructed to reduce spending by as much as 5 percent at the start of this fiscal year,” said Nicole Gillepsie, spokeswoman for the Department of Finance and Administration, the governor’s budget arm. “Agencies are hard at work finding ways to achieve maximum efficiency with the aim of avoiding reductions to services or additional cuts focused on state employees.”
Gillepsie also said the governor is “working to develop a plan for reducing agency budgets, and will present the plan for Legislative Finance Committee review and Board of Finance approval.”
Smith said he doesn’t hold out much hope that much cutting will occur before the next governor takes over.
“I don’t think this governor is going to move quickly enough,” Smith said.
The governor’s office did not respond to an e-mail from The Independent asking for a response to today’s news of the state’s worsening financial situation.
Join The Independent tomorrow as we live blog from an Albuquerque town hall on the federal budget. Albuquerque will be one of 19 locations for the AmericaSpeaks “Our Budget, Our Economy” town hall meeting.
President Obama joined the chorus of governors and state officials across the country Saturday as he urged Congress to extend the boosted rate of federal government spending on Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program. More …
The state Health Department and Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) have agreed to jointly administer the Health Policy Commission (HPC), according to a memorandum of understanding released by the Health Department. More …
The New Mexico Health Policy Commission and state Health Department are in negotiations to determine the Commission’s fate, officials at both agencies have told The Independent.
The Commission was created by the legislature in 1991 to provide state…
Senate Majority Floor Leader Michael S. Sanchez, D-Belen, just released a statement saying he’s surprised the governor vetoed the food tax—because the guv was in on the plan the whole time.
“I am surprised that the governor has decided to…
