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.
Sen. Tim Jennings, D-Roswell said Tuesday that broad-based cuts are a ‘very possible’ step to balancing the budget. But Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, disagreed, saying ”When you say ‘across the board’ you balance the budget on the backs of…
Get ready, New Mexico. The 30-day legislative session starting Tuesday won’t be like the kinder, gentler sessions of this decade’s early years, when money flowed freely and the living was comparatively easy.
Gov. Bill Richardson has said he doesn’t want to tax food to help solve the state’s budgetary troubles. But on Tuesday he said he could live with taxing items such as candy and soft drinks. Already, state lawmakers have pre-filed bills that tackle the food exemption in various ways.
The state finance and personnel departments, like the governor’s office, say they have no information about the 59 political appointees who are losing their jobs Friday.
Gov. Bill Richardson’s budget proposal is similar to the recommendations issued by the Legislative Finance Committee, the Legislature’s budget committee: Bottom line, the competing budget proposals are similar. They recommend pain.
Spending on state government would shrink by 3 percent and millions of dollars sunk into stalled brick-and-mortar projects around the state would return to the state’s main budget account under a proposal made public by Gov. Bill Richardson…
Welcome to our new feature, The Independent Forum! Every week we’ll ask a different question and solicit responses from a diverse group of New Mexico thinkers. New responses are added all the time. From Wednesday: Bill Jordan of Voices for Children and Steven Robert Allen of Common Cause.
New Mexico would eliminate more than 900 jobs and reduce state workers’ salaries by 2 percent to balance the state’s out-of-whack budget, if it followed a budget proposal released Monday by the Legislature’s budget committee.
Gov. Bill Richardson’s budget balancing task force has just released a final report–and it’s a whopping 393 pages. The task force was convened at the end of the 2009 special legislative session to study and provide analysis about various ways…
District Court workers employed in Bernalillo County’s 2nd Judicial District learned today that they will be forced to take unpaid time off to make up for budget shortfalls — despite a late infusion of cash from the New Mexico Board…
The state officially has closed off enrollment to small employers who aren’t already part of a program that helps tens of thousands of New Mexicans afford health insurance by paying part of the cost of monthly premiums.
Last month the…
Because they’re part of the executive branch, and therefore subject to Gov. Richardson’s furloughs, public defenders are forced to take five days off without pay, as police continue to make arrests and prosecutors continue to work on cases.
State lawmakers may decide to drag Gov. Bill Richardson into court to decide the constitutionality of his special session executive order and vetoes. The lawmakers are relying on two Supreme Court rulings as a hook for their potential challenge.
The task force created by Governor Bill Richardson to study options for raising revenue has now convened four times. There are some interesting reports added to the group’s Web site, covering various options for raising revenue, giving definitions, histories,…
New Mexico is bracing for the worst but hoping for the best.
And right now all the hope appears to be focused on Washington, D.C., although it’s way too early to tell if it’s a mirage or the real thing.
Health reform legislation approved last week by the U.S. House includes $23.5 billion to extend by six months federal stimulus funding to help U.S. states pay for Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program.
New Mexico’s share would come out to roughly $147 million, almost exactly the amount of federal funds the state must replace in the latter half of fiscal 2011 — Jan. 1 to June 30, 2011 — to keep services at their current level, said Carolyn Ingram, director of the state Human Services Department’s Medical Assistance Division.
Such a windfall could put off, for a time, decisions few in the Legislature or in Gov. Bill Richardson‘s office seem thrilled to make: how deeply to cut Medicaid services, and where.
“It’s a hopeful sign,” Ingram said Monday of the U.S. House legislation. “It gives us a little bit of room.”
In recent months, New Mexico officials have fretted over where to find about $140 million in state dollars to replace federal stimulus funding for Medicaid for that time period.
As part of the federal $787 billion stimulus package, Washington injected dollars into states’ Medicaid budgets, which have grown as more and more people enroll in the program due to the sour economy and lost jobs. But that money runs out Dec. 31, 2010, halfway through the state’s budget year, leaving a “revenue cliff.”
The specter of losing so much federal Medicaid funding in a single pop has led to projections of a $300 million shortfall in Medicaid next year, which, in turn, has fueled speculation that the state could confront a $1 billion shortfall in next year’s state budget.
Such big dollar gaps has led the state’s Human Services Department to contemplate steep cuts in services and to adopt some cost-saving measures.
But the possibility of more federal aid is suddenly seeming more possible.
Ingram spent most of last week on Capitol Hill lobbying the staffs of New Mexico’s U.S. senators to support inclusion of a similar provision in whatever health care reform bill makes it to the Senate floor in coming weeks.
Ingram did that lobbying as vice chair of National Association of State Medicaid Directors, a group that is pushing hard in the nation’s capital for extra Medicaid funding.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman said Monday that he supported extending extra Medicaid funding to the states for a full year, rather than the six-month period in the House legislation.
But the senator thinks there’s a better way to extend that funding than on a health care reform proposal, where rules require Congress to offset the cost of the extra funding with cuts elsewhere, spokeswoman Jude McCartin said.
“That would take away from other aspects of health care reform,” McCartin added. “Sen. Bingaman is urging one of the quickest ways in dealing with these issues is direct funding to states.”
Congress could “consider doing a jobs bill that could include aid to states,” which could include Medicaid, McCartin said.
New Mexico isn’t the only state worried about such a Medicaid ‘revenue cliff.’ Many states are concerned about the consequences, according to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.
Any help for the states likely faces many hurdles.
For example, if the U.S. House and Senate pass different health reform bills, a likely scenario, the competing bills would go to a conference committee composed of House and Senate lawmakers.
And then there’s the possibility of the additional funding landing up on a totally separate proposal, where it likely would stoke a vigorous debate.
In the end, however, even if additional Medicaid funding is found to help states out, it doesn’t fix the underlying budgetary problem, which is that Medicaid continues to grow at a rapid rate as more and more people enroll due to the bad economy.
As Raymond C. Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association, told the Washington Post about the six-months of additional Medicaid funding in the House legislation:
“It’s sort of like a cliff,” he said. States “get the funding for two more quarters, but we would prefer that it ratchet down over a couple more. The cliff is just moved back.”
Governor Bill Richardson announced a budget balancing task force as promised at yesterday’s press conference announcing his budget decisions. The task force will be chaired by Rick Homans, Secretary of the Taxation and Revenue Department.
After Gov. Bill Richardson’s press conference today, his office sent out details of his actions on the budget. We’ve got them here for you to see.
Gov. Bill Richardson announced his decisions on the state legislature’s special session budget fix today in a press conference at the state capitol. The Independent webcasted and live blogged the event. Click the headline to read a transcript of our conversation.
Acknowledging the Governor’s opinion that their budget fix may not protect the state’s medicaid program from cuts “may very well be correct,” New Mexico legislative leaders delivered a letter to Gov. Bill Richardson today, urging him not to make cuts…
In the one week since Lt. Gov. Diane Denish established a government efficiency hotline, over 100 calls have been received, her office announced today. The majority of those calls were about “double dippers,” retired employees who have returned to work…
