The bill is three wrapped into one and while there are tax measure Sanchez and the Conference support, the food tax has been their biggest enemy in the Roundhouse.

“No matter what they do to the bill to add things, as long as that food tax is in there, we will line up with the poor and oppose it,” Sanchez said.

The food tax is also the target of many other groups, but it was the NMCCB who brought 12,000 tortillas to the roundhouse to protest the idea during the regular session. The fact that the bill is now part of a larger measure does not sway Sanchez who believes there are political motivations behind the make up of the bill.

“The bishops and the church always have to align with the gospel, you cant pick and choose in the gospel,” he said.

In the video below, Sanchez explains he will continue to fight the measure and try to get the food tax defeated as it moves through the Senate, saying, “We’re going to push it to the end. Where else are we going to go? We must line up with poor. That’s why we’re here.”

“We should not be having a debate between white bread and brown bread,” said Allen Sanchez of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops (NMCCB).

If the bill becomes law whole grain bread and tortillas would remain tax free, but white bread and tortillas would be taxed. The measure has galvanized many groups including the NMCCB, Think New Mexico and Health Action New Mexico.

According to organizers of the rally, foods that would be taxed under SB 10 include flour tortillas, flour, butter, soup, condiments, white rice and pasta.

The NMCCB had previously supported a temporary hike half a cent hike in the gross receipts tax. That measure would have left alone the the foods that are now exempt. It is also in support of a surtax of 1.5 percent on wealthier New Mexicans.

Here’s some video from the rally:

Also roughly 250 more state jobs across state government would disappear than in a House-approved state budget plan that served as the starting point for the Senate proposal. Many of those targeted state government positions are already vacant, legislative officials said.

Reaction to the budget proposal approved by the Senate Finance Committee was swift Thursday.

Attorney General Gary King came out swinging, accusing the Senate Finance Committee of a political vendetta. He said in a statement released Thursday afternoon that the committee had proposed cutting his agency by $4 million and that it was punishment for the agency’s prosecutions of “politically well-connected individuals.”

The Attorney General’s office is in the middle of prosecuting Vincent “Smiley” Gallegos, a former state lawmaker and friend of House Speaker Ben Lujan, and former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron.

“We believe that there are people who are affected by our investigation who have friends in the Legislature,” said Phil Sisneros, spokesman for Attorney General Gary King.

But legislative officials deflected the AG’s accusations, saying the Senate proposal doesn’t cut the Attorney General’s office by $4 million. Rather it proposes taking $4 million in general fund money and replaces it with $4 million from a consumer protection fund. The general fund is the state’s main account.

King would have discretion on how to spend that money, legislative officials said.

A spokesman for King, Phil Sisneros, insisted Thursday afternoon despite the replacement money that the Senate’s proposal would force the Attorney General’s office to curb political corruption prosecutions.

The Senate proposal is the latest plan produced by the Legislature as state lawmakers try to close a budget shortfall for next year estimated at several hundred million dollars.

Hours after the Senate Finance Committee approved the Senate budget proposal, legislative leaders from both the House and Senate converged on Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings’s office for a quick meeting.

“It wasn’t a negotiation,” said Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, and Senate Finance Committee chairman. “We were just outlining our positions.”

The House and Senate must agree on a spending plan before they send it on to Gov. Bill Richardson for his signature. Lawmakers only have seven days left in this year’s regular legislative session to produce a state budget.

The Senate proposal differs in many ways from the House budget, including the size of proposed spending cuts and tax increases.

The Senate proposal recommends $150 million less in spending than the House proposal — $5.276 billion to $5.426 billion.

The Senate proposal also reduces by more than half the amount of new revenue the House approved to generate through tax increases, from $340 million to roughly $150 million.

The Senate accomplished this by replacing two House-approved tax increase proposals – a surtax on the state’s wealthiest residents and a half-penny increase on the state gross receipts tax – with a gross receipts tax on non-staple foods.

The battle over taxes has generated the greatest heat during the 30-day session. And the state budget discussions between the House and Senate may well hinge on how much to raise taxes – and what those taxes are.

Advocates who support taxing wealthier individuals and out-of-state corporations through what is called combined reporting reacted angrily to the Senate proposal.

The food tax “disproportionately discriminates against the poor,” said Allen Sanchez, a spokesman for the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Whole milk is taxed.  Tortillas are taxed. Brown eggs are taxed. A person on a tight budget will go into a grocery store and buy the most inexpensive food. Most inexpensive food is taxed. It creates the most regressive tax in New Mexico history because it discriminates poor people.”

But some advocates that initially opposed re-imposing the gross receipts tax on food said this week that the narrower definition in the Senate proposal of taxing non-staple foods is “palatable.”

On the spending side, the Senate proposal recommends more cuts than the House.

Public education would get $53 million less than in the House proposal, according to budget handouts. Public education is the state’s biggest ticket item.

Both the Senate and House proposals, however, call for directing more dollars to public education than this year.

The House is proposing $2.319 billion compared to the Senate’s $2.268 billion. This year the state will spend just over $2.1 billion for public education because the Legislature trimmed education spending during an October special session dedicated to addressing the state’s sorry financial state.

Other agencies in the Senate proposal facing reductions from this year’s spending levels include the state Department of Health, at $10 million, and the state’s Children Youth and Families Department (CYFD). CYFD would see a decrease of $3 million.

New Mexico courts would experience a $2.6 million reduction.

Some agencies, however, would see funding increases under the Senate proposal. The Corrections department would get $2.5 million more. The state’s share of Medicaid – the government’s low-income health insurance program – would jump from $578 million to nearly $601 million, the handouts show.

State workers also would take a hit in the Senate proposal.

The Senate’s plan calls for teachers and state workers to contribute more to their retirement plans. Under the plan, employees would pay 1.6 percent more into their retirement plans. The state would stop paying that portion that the employees assume.

The 1.6 percent would be on top of the 1.5 percent more the state’s 66,000 public employees started paying last July 1.Representatives of state workers expressed anger at the Senate proposal, saying the state was turning to hard-working state workers rather than taxing the wealthy and out-of-state corporations.

The additional 1.6 percent in contributions employees would assume if the Senate proposal passed would save the state nearly $44 million, according to budget handouts.

“It’s very disappointing,” said Carter Bundy, political director of Council 18 of the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. The budget proposal “continues to place the brunt of the financial crisis on educational employees and state workers.

Smith, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, said he sympathized with public employees and their complaints.

“I understand their bitching,” Smith said. “They have a legitimate complaint. We just don’t have the resources to hold them harmless.”

UPDATE: The Independent incorrectly reported that the Senate Finance Committee passed SB 10 on Thursday. SB 10 would tax non-staple foods. Instead the measure passed the committee on Friday. House bill 120, meanwhile, has been withdrawn, according to the Legislature’s website. That measure would have required companies to collect withholding tax on people who earn income in New Mexico but that the state can’t locate, according to a legislative analysis. The companies in question — called ‘pass through entities’ — would make quarterly withholding tax payments on net income distributed to their non-resident owners, according to the legislative analysis.

When the Senate Finance Committee included SB 10 as part of the budget plan it may have set off a firestorm.

Sanchez said Thursday that defeating a tax on food was the number one priority of the NMCCB, which represents hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans.

“This is the most regressive tax to come out of this building,” he said.

Including SB 10 as part of the state’s budget, the Senate Finance Committee chairman said, was a way for all New Mexicans to participate in helping close the state’s budget gap.

The measure passed the committee unanimously and some thought this tax increase had a better chance of passing the Senate.

But Sanchez said that argument is false.  ”If the House can pass it, why can’t the Senate? They all represent the same New Mexico.”

Better Choices New Mexico (BCNM) held a rally in the rotunda at the Roundhouse for the second time this session. Their message for lawmakers is that New Mexicans will take on tax raises to prevent budget cuts to education.

“Why do they call them hearings if no one is listening?” asked Allen Sanchez of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops.

BCNM is a group made up of dozens of state organizations pushing lawmakers to pass tax increases already moved on in the House. They are in favor of the surtax on wealthy New Mexicans.

Those taxes would be expected to bring in $300 million to the state and fill the budget cap and then prevent further cuts. While those increases passed the House there have been strong reservations for them in the Senate.

Republicans and conservative Democrats on Tuesday used a Senate Committee viewed as a friendly forum to seriously endanger domestic partnership legislation.

Before sending the legislation on to Senate Judiciary Committee a 5-4 vote, the Senate Public Affairs Committee approved sending the 816-page bill to a third committee, the kiss of death during a 30-day session.

A bill that must go before three committees for hearings in either the House or Senate during a 30-day budget session is seen as having too much to overcome to survive the session.

Two Democratic senators, Tim Eichenberg of Albuquerque, and George Munoz of Gallup, joined three GOP senators to approve sending the bill to the Senate Finance Committee.

Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, warned moments before the vote that adding a committee to domestic partnerships’ already-daunting schedule would doom the legislation.

“Three committee assignments would kill this bill,” Griego said.

Senate Judiciary, which participated in a joint hearing with Senate Public Affairs on Tuesday, still must vote on the bill. If it passes through Judiciary, which isn’t guaranteed, the bill then goes to the Senate Finance Committee. If it clears that committee, the bill then would go to the Senate floor, where the legislation was defeated by eight votes in 2009.

If the domestic partnerships were to clear the Senate, it would then head to the House for hearings before that chamber’s committees.

With only 16 days left in the 30-day session, the already-slim chances the domestic partnerships bill looked much diminished Tuesday.

The bill itself

The domestic partnership bill, at 816 pages, has been a sideshow during a legislative session mostly attuned to dollars and cents due to New Mexico’s sorry financial state.

The sheer size has been cited as an impediment to the bill’s chances. It enumerates every right conferred on same-sex couples if the bill were to pass, while at the same time conspicuously avoiding any mentions of “marriage” or links to the New Mexico state statute establishing marriage.

Advocates had hoped that by avoiding marriage language they might win over state lawmakers opposed to the legislation last year and qualm their fears that it would lead to same-sex marriage.

The result is unusual among other pushes for domestic partnership across the country, said David Masci of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Masci was an invited guest on The Independent’s live blog Tuesday.

“I don’t think there has been a bill this comprehensive in the other states that have some sort of domestic partnership law,” Masci wrote on the live blog.

New Mexico is part of a trend

Tuesday’s action represents the latest challenge to domestic partnership legislation in New Mexico, where advocates have pushed unsuccessfully for years while supporters of such agreements have notched modest success elsewhere in the country.

Several states, including Washington, Nevada, Wisconsin, California and New York, have domestic partnerships or civil unions. A handful of states — Iowa, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont — meanwhile, have legalized same-sex marriage.

“It seems that more and more states — like NM — are considering this,” Masci wrote in the live blog. “Public opinion shows that the American people favor granting at least some rights to same sex couples, but are more wary of granting full marital status.”

That wariness of same-sex marriage surfaced during Tuesday’s hearing.

Tuesday’s testimony

Jill Norton, for one, told state lawmakers that she rejected the argument put forth by advocates that domestic partnerships would only extend rights to same-sex couples. The specter of same-sex marriage hung over Tuesday’s proceedings, she said.

“Senators, do not be fooled. This legislation is a prerequisite for same sex marriage,” Norton told the joint committee hearing. Same sex marriage “will be a done deal if this legislation is passed.”

Masci and others disputed Norton’s statement, saying domestic partnerships or civil unions don’t always lead to same-sex marriage. The paths to same-sex marriage are varied, they added.

For example, the top court in Iowa – one of only five states to legalize same-sex marriage — ruled that that state’s marriage law was unconstitutional because it didn’t allow same-sex couples to marry. That state didn’t have domestic partnerships or civil unions.

Norton nonetheless zinged lawmakers supportive of domestic partnerships with a remark some heard as a threat.

“Unless you want a repeat of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, you should oppose this bill,” she said, referring to the victorious Republican who bested a front-runner Democrat in Massachusetts to win an open U.S. Senate seat.

Advocates argued, however, that passing domestic partnerships this year would make life in New Mexico fairer for gay and lesbian couples.

Rose Griego offered state lawmakers a visual aid Tuesday to drive that point home.

It was a green binder. Inside was a two-pound agreement that cost $3,000 and that consolidated all the rights available to Griego and her partner, Kim Kiel, under state law.

“It is not fair that gay people have to go to such lengths,” Griego told lawmakers, referring to the expenses the couple spent to consolidate their rights into one document. Despite the investment, the number of rights available to them pale next to those enjoyed by married couples, she said.

“Separate does not mean equal,” she added.

Tuesday’s speakers run the spectrum

Tuesday’s hearing attracted a range of speakers, from a lawyer working on a legal team defending a voter-approved ban of same-sex marriage in California to a northern New Mexico widow who said her gay son deserved the same rights and opportunities as his two brothers.

“I’ve been Catholic since I was born. I love and respect my church,” said Mary Louise Montoya of Mora. “Our church is very clear that we are to respect all human beings. My sons are very different from each other, but I love them equally and unconditionally. One of my sons is gay. All three sons deserve the same rights and opportunities.”

Brian Raum, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, countered by saying that passage of domestic partnerships surely would lead to same-sex marriage. Raum is on the legal team defending voter-approved Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California after that state’s top court created same-sex marriage in a 2008 ruling.

The hearing also featured dueling interpretations of how Christianity should come down on the issue of domestic partnerships.

Allen Sanchez, executive director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, said “the church interprets it as a steppingstone to marriage. It parallels marriage.”

As such, the church had to oppose the bill and stand with the “traditional interpretation of the gospel for over 2,000 years.”

But Father Christopher McLaren St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Albuquerque, countered, telling state lawmakers “If Jesus were here, he would be asking you to act with compassion, not fear.”

“I believe Jesus is here today,” he added. “And he is looking at you, the powerful .. telling you that the hurt and pain of my brothers and sisters should be taken seriously.”

Sen. McSorley speaks to supporters

Approximately 100 people turned up at the New Mexico state capital Monday to support domestic partnership bill (SB 183) expected to be heard in the Senate this week.
Reps. Brian Egolf and Mimi Stewart and Sens. Cisco McSorley and Gerald Ortiz y Pino joined Equality New Mexico Interim Executive Director Jordon Johnson and Episcopalian priest Daniel Gutierrez in support of the bill, which would offer domestic partners rights similar to those of married couples.

“This will go through the House,” Egolf assured the crowd, “the Senate is where the fight is.”

Stewart told the crowd that because the Senate didn’t want language equating domestic partnership to marriage, that language was removed from the 800-plus page bill.

The next step for SB 183 is a Tuesday afternoon joint committee meeting of the Senate Judiciary and Senate Public Affairs committees. McSorley, in anticipation of lengthy debate, asked his colleagues in the Senate to attend the Tuesday meeting in order to allow supporters to be present and to avoid redundant questions in future meetings.

Janice Bruce-Hightower, who told The Independent that she met her partner 10 years after it became legal for blacks and whites to marry, was concerned that if her partner of 27 years were hospitalized she wouldn’t have the right to visit her.

For James Brethour, this issue and the rights of property after death were what brought him to the capitol today.

“For married couples property is transfered automatically,” he said, “but I have no guarantees of that, or even of being able to visit the hospital.”

While legal concerns were on the minds of many of the attendees, acceptance of LGBT people was the main motivation for rally organizer Wenda Watch. “The big challenge we face is fear,” Watch told The Independent. “People are scared that their kids are going to get beat up like Matthew Shepard did. They think their kids will choose this lifestyle, and it really is fear for children. They think allowing domestic partnership is one more step to making it okay to be LGBT.”

Nearly half of those in attendance in support of domestic partnership were young people. High school students Lilly Lawrence-Metzler, Emerald Lueras and Jasmine Ramsey, and college student Kody Moore, came to the rally as representatives of local queer-straight alliances. Though years away from being worried about healthcare costs and rights, Lawrence-Metzler told The Independent that the students came because they felt everyone deserves equal rights.

“We’re lucky enough to go to schools that are accepting,”  Lawrence-Metzler said, “but not everyone our age has that.”

Father Gutierrez asked that anyone still opposed “look into the eyes of each one of us to the simple compassion that drives each of us,” adding that “Christ came to release the oppressed,” and saying “there is no better example than here.”

The New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops has been the bill’s largest opposition.

With the state swimming in the red, many state lawmakers viewed fixing the budget as their first priority.

Then there was the size of this year’s domestic partnerships bill, a whopping 825 pages, making it a tome likely to go unread by all but the most conscientious, and studious, lawmakers. It enumerates every right conferred to same-sex couples while avoiding any mention of “marriage.”

Add those two factors to the small window – 30 days — state lawmakers have to reach a budget agreement to fix next year’s shortfall, variously estimated between $500 million to $900 million.

And achieving success resembled a taxing, if not tortuous, path.

Now, with the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops adding its voice to the opposition, suddenly advocates have found themselves scaling Mt. Everest without an oxygen tank.

Even lawmakers supportive of the legislation privately say the domestic partnerships bill is DOA.

Supporters and opponents are ignoring the signs for now and, in an ironic twist, agree on one thing: Nothing is dead until the final gavel comes down on a legislative session.

“This bill is not dead. We never know whose hearts or minds we’re going to change,” said Linda Siegle, a lobbyist at the center of the push for New Mexico to create domestic partnerships.

“Oh, nothing is dead,” agreed Sen. William Sharer, R-Farmington, the sponsor of a resolution this year to define marriage as between a man and a woman. Sharer said he would stay on the lookout all session for a miraculous last-minute resurrection.

“Even after a session is over, a bill isn’t dead,” Sharer said.

Advocates of domestic partnerships had hoped 2010 would lead to a different result than in the past.

Last year’s domestic partnerships bill died in the state Senate by eight votes, largely due to the decision by the Catholic Church to jump into the debate after staying neutral in the previous two sessions.

Several Democratic lawmakers mentioned the Church’s stance when asked last year about their opposition.

Advocates this year hoped to avert last year’s failure by working up a bill that avoided the highly charged word “marriage” and that enumerated every right conferred on same-sex couples, which caused for the legislation’s length.

Avoiding the word “marriage,” advocates hoped, might persuade the Church to revert to its previous neutrality.

But that didn’t occur.

“In November the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a pastoral letter” that instructed bishops to not give any ground “that would lead to same sex marriage,” said Allen Sanchez, spokesman for the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Sanchez said that watching what has happened across the country over the past two years persuaded church leaders that a law creating domestic partnerships would give supporters a legal foothold to push for same-sex marriage.

The top courts in Connecticut and California during 2008 ruled that domestic partnerships – or civil unions in the case of Connecticut – were inherently legally unfair and were not the same as marriage. Citing equal protection under the law, each state’s Supreme Court struck down the laws creating domestic partnerships. The courts also found a “fundamental right to marry” and ruled that marriage was available to gay and lesbian couples.

Voters in California later overturned that decision, a ruling that now is being challenged in federal court.

“They started to look at how could something be written that would not be a stepping stone for a lawsuit … for marriage,” Sanchez said. “Last year’s bill and the way this one’s been interpreted is a stepping stone for marriage.”

“What you need to beef up a lawsuit, you need some kind of statute passed granting benefits or rights,” Sanchez said. “And then you say you can’t have two (water) fountains – separate but unequal.”

The church’s decision still left some advocates stunned.

“After indicating that they would consider a neutral stance on the bill if all reference to ‘marriage’ was removed, the archdiocese now refuses to collaborate with equality advocates outright,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement this week.

“The ACLU and allied partners did everything humanly possible to satisfy their concerns about the language of the bill, and still the archdiocese would not budge. It is a shame that such a powerful voice has chosen to speak out against equality and fairness for New Mexican families.”

In our comprehensive coverage of domestic partnership legislation, NMI has live blogged a joint committee hearing, covered the dramatic votes that brought the bill to the Senate floor and examined a poll commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a poll commissioned by the state Republican Party. We’ve looked into the Catholic church’s involvement in this issue, taken a close look at some supporters, seen the governor take a stand and analyzed the dynamics of today’s floor vote.

As we have previously noted, the bill, sponsored by Sen. Cisco McSorley, D-Albuquerque, would give straight and gay couples many of the same rights and responsibilities of civil marriage, such as access to health insurance, family medical leave and property rights. It is supported by groups such as the ACLU, Equality New Mexico and Human Rights Campaign, but opposed by the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Last year, domestic partnership legislation died in the Senate Judiciary committee. In 2007 it passed the House but was defeated on the Senate floor.

There are 27 Democrats and 15 Republicans in the Senate, but Democrats also outnumbered Republicans in 2007, when the bill was defeated by one vote. Last week, supporters of domestic partnership told NMI they were trying hard to sway Sens. Pete Campos of Las Vegas, Linda Lovejoy of Crownpoint, Howie Morales of Silver City and David Ulibarri of Grants, whom they believed to be undecided or wavering.

“We’re hopeful, but I wouldn’t say confident. We’re praying that the outcome will be that the bill is stopped,” Deacon Steve Rangel, associate director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, told NMI last week.