Budget Discussions Behind Closed Doors
Under normal circumstances the budget and revenue battles
would move to a conference committee between
the House and Senate. This can't occur until the House takes a
vote to "fail to concur with Senate amendments to House Bill 2". The House has not yet voted on such a motion.
The Senate would then vote to refuse to recede from its amendments.
Only then can an official conference committee be appointed.
Since, under new rules adopted last legislative session,
conference committees must meet in open session, both chamber's
leaders appear reluctant to create one until a budget deal has
actually been reached. Closed door meetings in the House
Speaker's office and in the Governor's office have attempted to
reach a compromise, with none in sight at this writing late
Wednesday.
The votes that create the conference committee could
come in the wee hours of the morning if a deal is reached. The
committee would then meet, quickly rubber stamp the deal, and send
the agreement to both houses simultaneously as the conference
committee report. Adoption of the report would then adopt the
compromise bill. Both House Bill 2 and revenue bills would have to be treated in this
manner. There is still time, but the clock is ticking toward
high noon on Thursday, the constitutionally required end of this
30-day legislative session.
It is not to late to tell all legislators to support a final budget that
provides enough new revenue to restore the House version of the
Education Budget.
House and Senate Budget Plans Differ Widely
House Bill 2, the General Appropriations Act, passed the
Senate early Sunday 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.
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
(sands) 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.
We support the House version of the budget with some
$83 million dollars more for public schools than the Senate version, including some $20 million
for employee health care costs to prevent more benefit decreases.
The House version will allow school districts to operate in a
reasonably normal manner. The proposed House budget for
Education avoids the salary and massive program cuts proposed by the
Legislative Finance Committee before the legislative session.
The measure includes $2.5 billion in state and federal aid for
public education next year.
New Mexico (like most other states) has been relying on federal economic stimulus money to
avoid deeply cutting public schools during the recession. About $210
million in federal aid will go to schools this year, replacing state
tax money that otherwise would be needed for education. However, the
federal money is going away. Schools would get about $24 million
in federal stimulus aid next year (all that's left after this year's
funding). An increase of $165 million in state aid fills the gap
left by federal funding available this year, but not next year. The
House budget as proposed provides these funds without further cuts to public
schools.
The Senate version will require
cuts, maybe even cuts in staffing levels. Tell your legislator
to support the House budget in any compromise between the two
chambers. House Bill 9, House Bill 119, and House Bill 120 are the tax bills that support the House version of
the Budget. The votes on these bills are at this link. The three measures provide more than $300 million
in new revenues to be added to the general fund to prevent further
cuts to education and prevent salary cuts to all public employees.
It is not to late to tell all legislators to support a final budget that
provides enough new revenue to restore the House version of the
Education Budget.
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