Sen. Michael Sanchez

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 to Medicaid, the program that provides health care funding for at least 450,000 low-income New Mexicans.

By a 7 to 4 vote, a Senate panel killed legislation that would have altered the way the state collects its corporate income tax.
Called combined reporting, the bill (Senate Bill 8)sponsored by Santa Fe Democrat Peter Wirth would require multi-state companies with stores in New Mexico to pay taxes on income earned here.

A powerful Senate panel just killed the first tax bill before it this afternoon. By a vote of 7 to 4, the Senate Committee on Committees deemed legislation filed by Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, irrelevant to the Legislature’s mission to address this year’s $650 million budgetary shortfall.
The vote followed a 25-minute debate on the governor’s [...]

The governor’s ruminations were prompted Friday by the New Mexico Senate’s voting voting 24-18 to repeal the death penalty after an hours-long, wide-ranging debate that alternated between dizzying flights of eloquence and illuminating history lessons that reached back through 6,000 years of human history.

Legislation that would repeal capital murder in New Mexico and replace it with life in prison without parole moves to the Senate floor, its next-to-last stop, following Monday afternoon’s 6-5 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to approve the bill.

Legislation that would cap — for the first time — the amount that financial contributors could give to New Mexico political candidates and elected officials easily cleared a Senate committee considered by some as wary of such measures.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, said Monday afternoon that the domestic partnerships legislation will go to the Senate floor sometime this week for a vote.
“It won’t be next week,” Sanchez told the Independent.

There’s at least one ethics-reform proposal that isn’t getting any discussion this year. In fact, some legislators, when asked about it, thought it already was part of state law. The proposal: require a campaign contributor to list his or her employer.

A bill that would require public officials convicted of felony corruption to forfeiture their pension benefits cleared the Senate Rules Committee this morning.

The state Senate just recessed for an hour so that a powerful legislative committee can meet to discuss committee assignments.
There is much interest in who is selected as chairs to Senate committees after the Senate Democratic caucus was divided over a battle for the Senate president pro tem post. Some lawmakers have publicly worried that [...]