The House passed tax increases Friday to help shore up the budget shortfall, but those increases will face a huge battle in the Senate.

The resistance surfaced during Saturday’s informational session.

“We’re looking at cutting expenses 1.4 percent and increasing taxes over 6 percent,” argued Sen. Clinton Harden, R-Clovis.

“That’s the resume (the House) wants to run on,” replied Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, hinting to the fact that every member of the House is facing re-election in November.

But Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, praised the House for passing the tax increases.

“I commend my colleagues in the House for doing a what I think is courageous,” Griego said. “If we’re serious about balancing the budget, we need to step up to the plate.”

The divisions over the budget in the Senate are similar to those in the House. However, in the Senate key Democrats could side with Republicans on the state’s fiscal issues, meaning big broad-based tax increases are in jeopardy. One of the measures the House passed Friday would raise the state’s gross receipt tax by half a penny. That means consumers would pay 50 cents more on a $100 purchase.

Another measure clearing the House Friday would require the state’s wealthiest residents to pay an additional 1.5 percent surtax on income they earn. The tax would hit married couples filing jointly earning $200,000. Estimates are that it would raise $66 million.

]]> http://newmexicoindependent.com/46603/senate-budget-divisions-bubble-up/feed 0 http://newmexicoindependent.com/46247/domestic-partnership-bill-on-life-support http://newmexicoindependent.com/46247/domestic-partnership-bill-on-life-support#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:00:14 +0000 Trip Jennings http://newmexicoindependent.com/?p=46247

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.”

The Senate Public Affairs Committee approved the legislation but voted to give the 816-page bill a third committee referral.

A bill that must be heard by three committees in either chamber – the House or Senate – during a 30-day legislative budget session is usually viewed as dead.

Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, said as much prior to the vote on whether to send the bill to the Senate Finance Committee.

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

Whether the Senate Public Affairs Committee has the authority to add another committee may come up for debate on the Senate floor in coming days.

But with only 16 days left in the 30-day session, chances for the domestic partnerships bill are looking more dire.

UPDATED 4:55 p.m.: Domestic partnerships’ other committee referral is  Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Chief Clerk of the Senate, Lenore Naranjo, just told me there’s precedence for a committee giving a bill another committee referral. That doesn’t mean  someone on the Senate floor won’t challenge Tuesday’s action by the Senate Public Affairs Committee, Naranjo said. That could happen.

Whether that happens is another question.

But the lopsided vote belied the strong opposition presented from faculty and student representatives, as well as some state lawmakers.

Opponents in a Senate committee hearing held early Monday, and later on the Senate floor, complained that the university had become politicized during Koch’s tenure as president of UNM board of regents and that top administrators’ pay had skyrocketed compared to spending on some student-focused programs.

They also lamented the university’s 44 percent graduation rate and pointed to the falling faculty-to-student ratio at UNM. The teacher-student ratio has fallen from around 15 to 1 in 1998 to 21 to 1 in 2008.

“Through faculty senate votes [and] student association votes, the overwhelming view of those not in power … is there is a real problem [with] how much administration is spending on the most bloated senior management,” Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, said on the floor Monday. “It’s unconscionable. We shouldn’t give anyone a pass.”

The vote on Koch’s nomination presented another front in a longstanding war between faculty and the UNM administration and its board of regents. UNM faculty overwhelmingly cast a no-confidence vote in UNM’s top leadership last February, saying the university was being run like a “political patronage machine.” The vote against Koch was 482-7.

Koch resigned as president of the UNM board of regents following the faculty vote of no confidence. But he remained on the board, meaning Monday’s vote by the Senate was to re-confirm as a regent.

The Senate’s vote followed a marathon committee hearing Monday morning in which the Senate Rules Committee recommended approving Koch’s nomination.

Among opponents’ biggest gripes was the amount of money spent on top administrators over the last few years as funding for some academic programs has languished.

The cost of administration at UNM had jumped to $8.2 million in 2008, up from $2.6 million in 2002, Dr. Tim Lowery, a UNM professor, told lawmakers sitting on the Senate Rules Committee Monday morning.

Faculty members and student representatives also told lawmakers at the committee hearing that they believed the university was placing more emphasis on sports than the university’s core educational mission. A troublesome lack of trust had grown up between faculty and the board of regents and administration.

Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said the battle over Koch’s nomination boiled down to a central tension between two “very different ways in how a university operates.”

“We’ve moved into a corporate model,” Ortiz y Pino said on the floor of the Senate, where Koch’s nomination was sent following the Rules Committee’s recommendation that he win confirmation. “The regents are the corporate board and they work with the senior management. That’s certainly a model well established in industry. It’s a new model for the university.”

But Koch had his defenders.

Regis Pecos, who works for House Speaker Ben Lujan, commended Koch for working on tribal issues.

“We have never had that access,” Pecos, a former governor of the Cochiti Pueblo, said during the Rules Committee hearing. “I have the highest respect for his integrity.”

Added Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell: “You can work with Mr. Koch.”

Defenders, in fact, described Koch as a man who got things done, although they admitted there had been mistakes.

For his part, Koch said what was needed at UNM was a detente between the warring factions.

“I’ve never been asked once to go before the faculty committee,” Koch said. Then he added, “There’s been no communication by either side. That’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

The vote to confirm Koch came after a year after his name was put up for re-confirmation. His name was up for confirmation during last year’s legislative session, but his confirmation hearing never was scheduled before the Senate Rules Committee during the 2009 legislative session.

The Senate also confirmed Emily Caitlyn Wisdom and Gene Gallegos as UNM regents Monday afternoon.

File photo

Gov. Bill Richardson on Thursday pledged to axe 1,000 vacant state jobs, ordered nearly 20,000 state workers to take five furlough days and cut state agencies.

Those actions, along with the promise to eliminate at least 84 state jobs held by political appointees, represented the governor’s answer to New Mexico’s worsening financial situation.

“I won’t pretend that these actions will solve all our budget problems, but it’s a start,” Richardson said at a midday news conference at the state Capitol.

As painful as the decisions were, state lawmakers said Thursday that they would have been less painful had the governor not delayed them for months while hoping for an economic rebound powered by federal stimulus dollars.

“They were forewarned in July,” state Sen. John Arthur Smith, a Democrat from Deming, said in reference to the Richardson administration. “There was a group of us that envisioned where we were headed and it was going to be painful. The governor would have done well to start looking at the expenditure side in July rather than waiting until November.”

Richardson, who has repeatedly said his administration has saved millions of dollars through a hiring freeze this year, reiterated that point Thursday.

A hiring freeze he ordered earlier in the year has resulted in 2,900 vacancies across state government, Richardson said defiantly.

The governor and state lawmakers’ sharp words are coming as they attempt to plug most of a $650 million budgetary shortfall this year even as more ominous financial clouds darken the horizon: A projected $1 billion shortfall already predicted for next year’s budget.

Richardson acted Thursday on a budgetary fix the Legislature approved during an October special legislative session. But the governor used his line-item veto authority to sidestep much of the Legislature’s bill, striking out a major provision that had ordered him to make 7.6 percent cuts at agencies under his control.

To make up for the cost savings he vetoed in the Legislature’s bill, Richardson issued an executive order requiring state agencies to cut spending. The cuts varied in severity, department to department, depending on a mix of factors, including how they might affect public safety, education or health care.

“For whatever reason the Legislature made a hasty decision during the special session, particularly when it forced a blanket cut of 7.6 percent on top of previous cuts on most state agencies,” Richardson said. “They did not take into account the impact these cuts would have on critical services.”

In a series of news releases leading up the decision, the Richardson administration said the Legislature’s budget bill would force the state to slash Medicaid (the government’s low-income health insurance program), shutter two prisons, release hundreds of non-violent offenders and close state parks.

Richardson made sure to drill home to the media Thursday that his actions averted the closure of state parks and prisons. And Medicaid, estimated to lose $150 million under the Legislature’s budget fix according to the Richardson administration, would lose only $28 million.

Furloughs and elimination of jobs

Meanwhile, Richardson said, he chose the furloughs — in which state workers take days off without pay — and the elimination of vacant jobs instead of laying off state workers. The state is projected to save nearly $11 million with the furloughs, which will work out to the rough equivalent of a 2 percent salary cut for state workers. It is unclear when furloughs will begin, Katherine Miller, Richardson’s budget chief, said.

It also was unclear how much the state could save by doing away with 1,000 state jobs.

“I don’t want layoffs. I don’t want people to lose their jobs. We are not at that stage,” Richardson said.

Richardson’s explanation didn’t inoculate the governor against criticism from state employee unions.

“It is very unfortunate that they’re balancing the budget on the backs of 20,000 hard-working middle class people,” Carter Bundy of American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, Council 18, said Thursday. ASFSCME represents about 6,500 classified state workers in New Mexico.

A balanced approach

Bundy and some state lawmakers said on Thursday that the governor could have avoided furloughs had the Legislature been able to consider tax increases during the special legislative session. With a narrowly worded proclamation, Richardson effectively prohibited state lawmakers from considering any tax increases.

“It is unfortunate that the Legislature and governor could not take a more balanced approach to solving this fiscal crisis, by raising some revenues to minimize the amount of cuts to critical public services,” said Democratic Sen. Eric Griego of Albuquerque.

Richardson has since said the Legislature must raise taxes during the January legislative session. The state’s projected $1 billion shortfall for next year is too large to close through cuts alones.

In everyday terms, that $1 billion shortfall represents nearly $1 out of every $5 the state spends on services, meaning state lawmakers have a big challenge ahead. Many lawmakers acknowledge that closing that shortfall will require a mix of tax increases and spending cuts.

State lawmakers challenged Richardson not only on his overall approach to fixing this year’s budget, but on individual actions as well.

Anger over Medicaid cuts

One sore point with some lawmakers was Richardson’s decision to cut Medicaid. In recent weeks several lawmakers have said their budget protected Medicaid and never intended to cut the program despite the Richardson administration’s pronouncements to the contrary.

“They were already being underfunded as it is,” state Rep. Jose Campos, D-Santa Rosa, said of Medicaid. “Taking out another 1 percent is just going to be creating more harm than good.”

Richardson cut $5 million in state funding from the program, but because of the quirks of Medicaid funding, that resulted in an additional loss of $23 million in federal matching dollars. The state and federal governments jointly fund Medicaid, but the federal government is the senior partner, providing a 4 to 1 match for every New Mexico dollar that is spent on Medicaid (counting federal stimulus dollars).

Political appointees

Richardson said he was prepared to sacrifice like all New Mexicans, and pointed to his decision to eliminate 84 jobs usually held by his political appointees.

“A lot of individuals will lose their jobs,” Richardson said of his political appointees.

But Rep. Nate Cote, D-Las Cruces, didn’t buy that answer. He noted that more than 60 of those jobs are already vacant, a statement Richardson disputed Thursday afternoon.

“So really, he’s getting rid of very few,” said Cote, who was one of the first to propose cuts to the governor’s political appointees during the special session. “Personally, I don’t think it’s enough. … He probably has 20 people that are occupying those positions that are leaving anyway.”

“I don’t think he’s sacrificing much by doing this,” Cote said. “Meanwhile, I think he’s sacrificing some of the hard-working state employees with furloughs.”

Photo by Sara Grajeda

A budget that largely protects K-12 education, while cutting deeply into most state agencies, won approval from the Legislature Friday evening.

The budget passage came after an exhausting and confusing day in which state lawmakers dueled and disagreed before finally finding common ground. Five Senate amendments were added to a bill that originated in the House of Representatives. The changes, which had appeared at first to be a major obstacle, turned out to be nothing more than a speed bump to passing the budget.

The House agreed with four of the five amendments, and asked the Senate to withdraw the fifth amendment, which it did.

That decision effectively sent the budget bill, which trims more than $200 million in spending, to Gov. Bill Richardson for his signature.

Of the Senate amendments, the only one that substantially altered the budget restored $5 million for state police, which had been facing 7.5 percent cuts.

While the amendments didn’t substantially alter the budget, they threw the Senate into chaos for most of Friday, as senators hurled charges and counter-charges at each other, exposing a rift among Democratic state lawmakers that had been simmering for days—if not longer.

Starting from the beginning, Democrats fought among themselves over Gov. Bill Richardson’s decision to take tax increases off the agenda as a way to address this year’s $650 million budgetary shortfall.

Some Democrats said the governor’s prohibition meant tax increases should not be part of the budget fix, even if they philosophically supported raising taxes. Others pushed hard for tax increases despite the governor’s ban.

That debate was often heated and and antagonized both factions. Those sore feelings were on display Friday, especially after debate on an amendment offered by Sen. Eric Griego, which was adopted after Lt Gov. Diane Denish cast a dramatic tie-breaking vote.

“This is a hell of a way to do business,” Griego said of the effort to remove his addition.

“To say we can’t amend this bill one iota? I’m sorry, things have to change up here. …I know pepole are enjoying the positions of power they have…and I know some of us are going to be retaliated against” Griego said, “But I’m a Barelas boy…”

“We’re not even able to consider [cutting] a pork project but we’ll cut schools,” he said, sounding incredulous.

Added Albuquerque Democratic Sen. Bernadette Sanchez, D-Albuquerque: “I’m upset that someone squeezed arms here.”

The insinuation was that top Democrats had pressured other senators to reconsider their votes to remove Griego’s amendment.

Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, took offense, saying neither he nor any other senate leader pressured anyone.

“I am ready to go unpack my car and stay here ’til hell freezes over,” Jennings said.

Sen. Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, ultimately stood up to say the debate had degenerated to name-calling and personal attacks and the motion to remove the amendment was removed.

The budget bill keeps K-12 education largely unharmed by paying a big annual expense for local school districts — property insurance premiums – out of a little-known state fund. If school districts don’t have to pay the insurance premiums, they could better handle the 2 percent in spending cuts laid out in the legislation.

It is one-time money, meaning next year school districts won’t see their premiums paid, but several local school officials said they approved anyway.

But the pain in the new, leaner state budget for state services other than education or Medicaid, the government’s low-income health insurance program, will ripple across the state, warned Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming.

“I’m advising you not to not go back into your senior centers,” Smith said to his fellow lawmakers. “Stay away from there. But you can speed there though because the state police probably are not going to be on the highways as much as they were.”

Smith was talking about the roughly 7 percent cuts to the majority of state agencies, including children services and state prisons. In protecting K-12 education and touching lightly on higher ed, the legislation makes shallow cuts to the programs that make up a majority of the state budget — $60 million from K-12 education and higher ed. But the legislation wrings $95 million in savings from dozens of state agencies.

The budget bill didn’t make many people happy. Republicans – and some Democrats — said it didn’t cut deep enough to prepare for what say will be a $1 billion shortfall in the next budget year.

Progressive Democrats weren’t happy because the budget bill didn’t allow for tax increases to help close this year’s $650 million budgetary shortfall.

In addition to the budget bill, the Legislature will close this year’s $650 million shortfall using legislation that “sweeps” state funds of unused money, claws back money from unfinished brick and mortar projects and uses federal stimulus dollars that disappear Dec. 31, 2010.

All those bills had passed by 7 p.m. Friday. Both chambers then quickly adjourned after an long, and sometimes tense, special legislative session.

“No one was happy with what we had to do,” said House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe. “Our actions in this session provide the breathing room we need for now before we come back in January. This is part of our job as lawmakers to make the hard decisions.”

Some anticipate that the state may face a much tougher challenge when state lawmakers convene the 2010 regular session in January, when a $1 billion shortfall may greet them as they cobble together a spending plan for fiscal year 2011.