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.
A person filing an ethics complaint and then going public would face much harsher penalties than a public official found to have violated the public trust under a State Ethics Commission proposal the Senate Finance Committee passed Tuesday.
With a 7-4 vote the Senate Finance Committee tabled one of the most-watched bills of the 2010 regular session. For nearly three weeks, strong opinions have swirled around domestic partnerships legislation, but supporters vow that it will be back in 2011.…
Four couples celebrated their commitments on Saturday at a group domestic partnership ceremony at the New Mexico state capitol.
Local activist and ordained minister Wenda Watch led the ceremony in front of a small crowd of friends, family and supporters.…
The Roundhouse is still deciding what to do with Senate bill 10, a bill that would make a lot of food items taxable in New Mexico. But those grocers who sell the foods say the tax won’t be the…
They say it’s healthier, easy to implement and most of all, helps the budget. Senate bill 10 makes more foods eligible to be taxed in New Mexico and it crossed its first hurdle on Friday.
Public school teachers and state workers would pay more toward their retirement while several, but not all, state agencies would get fewer dollars next year under a state budget plan approved by a powerful Senate committee on Thursday.
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.
“This is a tax on the poorest people of New Mexico,” Allen Sanchez, a lobbyist for the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Thursday. He’s referring to a bill that would reinstate the gross receipts tax on certain…
When it came from the House, the budget called for $300 million dollars more than the state had. To make the numbers add up the House passed controversial tax measures. But the Senate Finance Committee dropped a surtax on high earners and a temporary increase in the gross receipts tax in favor of reinstating the tax on non-staple foods, cutting education and other measures.
The Senate Finance Committee on Thursday reduced 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 did this by replacing two House-approved tax…
The 2010 regular session will end with an answer to the state’s budget problem. But will it be a lasting answer? Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, said Monday that the odds are “pretty high” that lawmakers will need to…
The sign posted on the door of the Senate Finance Committee room is clear: no domestic partnerships hearing until the budget is done. “This session is about fiscal appropriations,” Senator and Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, said…
This sign posted on the door of Senate Finance Committee sort of sums up the relationship between the two chambers in the New Mexico Legislature.
Yep, folks. We have a long haul ahead before the session is over Feb. 18.…
According to a committee schedule on the Web site of the New Mexico Democratic caucus, the domestic partnership bill might be heard during that committee’s meeting this afternoon. The committee, scheduled to meet half an hour after the…
The state’s budget appropriation bill is “$312 million dollars richer than revenues are willing to support,” state Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming said Monday. So the Senate Finance Committee, which Smith chairs, has canceled all agency hearings until members…
A report presented to the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) Thursday by the Legislative Finance committee (LFC) said New Mexico missed out on $14 million dollars because state agencies couldn’t or wouldn’t watch the cash flow.
Here’s how the process works.…
According to a study by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the Senate Finance Committee version of the health care reform bill would cost New Mexicans more than the health care reform bill that passed out of the Senate…
The final health care reform bill passed Tuesday in the Senate Finance Committee with a 14-9 vote. Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., voted for the bill.
September has come and gone and no bill has yet come out of the Senate Finance Committee, let alone the Senate. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. Here’s a status report.
This week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored…
Two public option amendments offered by Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., failed in the Senate Finance Committee because of unanimous opposition by Republicans and some opposition by Democratic senators. New Mexico’s Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-Silver City, voted…
On Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee, on which Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. sits, will resume debate on the healthcare reform bill written by committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. As CNN notes, two Senators plan to force a vote…
