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Legislative
Session Contacts for Legislators-Phone: (505) 986-4300, Letters:
New Mexico State Capitol Building, Santa Fe, NM 87503, or Fax: (505)
986-4610.
[The "Hotlines
Link" will take you to our daily hotline archive. You may view
previous hotlines to place current events in perspective.]
Legislative
Education Study Committee Listing of All Introduced Education Legislation
as .pdf Document
Public Employee Collective
Bargaining In House and Senate Committees Early Next Week
The House version of the
public employee bargaining bill House
Bill 508, sponsored by
House
Speaker Ben Lujan received a do-pass recommendation from the House
Government and Urban Affairs Committee Thursday morning. It moves to
the House
Labor and Human Resources Committee for a hearing on Tuesday
afternoon. Call committee members and all House Members
and ask them to support House
Bill 508.
The vote in the House
Government and Urban Affairs Committee:
* Expressed support, but called to meeting with Governor
Due to a long Senate
session on Friday, a hearing on Senate
Bill 46, the Senate version of public employee bargaining was postponed
to Monday. The Senate
Judiciary
Committee
has Senate
Bill 46 as its first agenda item on Monday! Remind all committee members as well as other
Senators
to support school employees' (and other public employees) collective bargaining rights.
The
legislation still contains language that:
(1) forces local board policies adopted since 1991 to comply with most
provisions of the new
law;
(2)adopts a scope of bargaining that forces school management to talk
about professional and instructional concerns; and
(3)an impasse resolution procedure that ends in final
binding arbitration.
These three issues are the heart of the new legislation. Call all House Members
and ask them to support House
Bill 508.
House
Bill 451, providing 18 million dollars for a one time one percent
increase for all school employees in the current school year has been
introduced by Representative
Sheryl Williams-Stapleton. This
legislation fulfills House Democrats pledge to provide supplemental salary
funding this year following their approval of the Budget negotiated in the Extraordinary
Session of the Legislature last summer. Urge Democratic
House Members to keep
their pledge and support this token salary increase now. The measure's
first hearing will be in the House
Education Committee.
Ask Senators to
Protect School Funding
The House Taxation and Revenue Committee added language protecting state
revenues from the effects of the Governor's proposed tax decrease in the
event state revenues fall below acceptable levels. The House
amendments, which passed the full House on Friday night, make clear that if
there is not sufficient economic growth and new business development in
fiscal years 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 to provide new revenues, then the tax
cuts are off; the House language requires that state reserves remain at 4%
for the fiscal year ending and be projected at 5% for the next fiscal year
in order for the tax cut to be triggered. We believe that this
circuit-breaker protection is necessary to protect school funding (some 47%
of general fund revenues).
The measure goes back to the
Senate as House
Taxation and Revenue Committee Substitute for House Bill 167 and Senate Bill
167. Ask all Senators
to support the House version of tax relief to protect school funding in the
event of bad economic times!
Contact Legislators on
Salaries and Funding
We need to begin
contacting all House Members, and all Senators
as well as Governor
Richardson, immediately regarding salaries and school budgets. Our
message must be simple:
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Schools need adequate
new revenues, we can't find all the money need for salaries and reform
by simply reallocating current budgets (although prioritizing
salaries and the classroom over administrative costs is an important
priority).
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All school employees
deserve salary increases Now! No category of employee should be
left behind just because teacher salaries are the most easily ranked
among the states!
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