Legislative Update
Sunday, February 14, 2010

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Dates related to the 2010 Legislative session:

January 19 Opening day (noon)
February 3 Deadline for introduction of legislation
February 18 Session ends (noon)
March 10 Legislation not acted upon by governor is pocket vetoed
May 19 Effective date of legislation not a general appropriation bill or a
bill carrying an emergency clause or other specified date

Senate Stays up Late (or Early)  to Pass Budget

House Bill 2, the General Appropriations Act,  passed the Senate early this morning; the Senate recessed at about 2:00 AM. The voting coalition that passed it was interesting.  Many  Democrats who usually support the budget, voted no in protest of the cuts to public schools and other vital state services; several Republicans who usually vote against the budget voted yes to give the measure a 25 to17 passage. See the vote for yourself at this link.

The good news is the storm of protest against the payroll tax portion of the plan in Senate Bill 246,was ditched in favor of passing Senate Bill 30, an increased cigarette tax that would provide some $33 million dollars to the general fund. (The Senate vote on SB 30 is at this link.) Even though SB 246 appears on the Senate agenda today, its use as part of the Senate budget plan has been scrapped.   As finally amended in the Senate Finance Committee, the measure was reduced to a 1% salary cut with the rest of the cuts spread over the entire budget, but not targeted at employees.  It now appears that the only Senators stuck with support of this awful idea on their voting records are the sponsor, Senator Stuart Ingle, and the Senators who supported it in two committee votes. See the vote in the Senate Public Affairs Committee at this link.    The vote in Senate Finance is here, yes is, of course, the wrong vote:

The Senate version of House Bill 2 still has  deep cuts from the House version.  It has some $87 million fewer dollars for public education.  The line items in the bill its self cuts some $53 million from State Equalization Guarantee (SEG), the portion of the budget that supplies most operational costs in public schools and  $3 million dollars from other public school costs.  The rest of the cut comes in the form a "sanding" provision in the bill that simply cuts l.43% from every line item in the budget.

The plan is supported with, in addition to the cigarette tax, a change in gross receipts tax on food, Senate Bill 10  — a reinstatement of the state's gross receipts tax, or sales tax, on a wide range of food items, including white bread, macaroni noodles and certain tortillas. The vote on this measure is available at this link. Many of the progressive Senators' votes were against the concept of raising taxes on food, not against funding education. Again enough Republican crossover gave the measure its 23-19 coalition for passage.

The other piece of the Senate revenue plan was $16 million from House Bill 120. sponsored by House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, that would ratchet up income tax compliance on out-of-state residents.  The rest of the House revenue package — a temporary increase of the state's gross receipts tax base rate and a surtax on high-earning state residents —has been tabled in the Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee.

Budget Moves to Conference Committee

The battle now moves to a conference committee between the House and Senate.  The House will reject the Senate amendments to the budget later today and a conference committee will be appointed, most likely later today, after the Senate convenes at 3:00 PM. When we know who the conferees are, we will update this message. After the conference committee deliberates, if they reach consensus, the budget will be on both house floors sometime before adjournment at high noon Thursday.

Tell all legislators to support a final budget that provides enough new revenue to restore the House version of the Education Budget.

Even Blogger Joe Monahan Saw Through The Senate Finance Committee's Shell Game

Not known for his liberal leanings, political blogger Joe Monahan had bad things to say about Senator Smith's budget plan (the Dr. No in Monahan's reference). In referring to the Senate Finance Committee refusal to raise taxes on the wealthy, Monahan says, "The glaring omission of having the wealthy share in the budget pain clashes with the Democratic Party's constant refrain that it is the defender of "working families.  While Senate Finance fronts its budget as an act of bravery, the tax-paying peanut gallery is sure to see it for what it is--an evasion.  Spread the pain around? We know that Deming, where Dr. No hails from, is a long way from Santa Fe. We just didn't know it was so far from reality." Follow this link for the entire article.

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