Gov. blasts ‘cop-out’ budget proposal
Martinez says legislative plan has no specifics on how it would save $123M
With a 60-day session just days away, Gov. Susana Martinez on Thursday sounded a combative tone, referring to a legislative budget proposal released earlier this week as a “cop-out” and calling on lawmakers to show more political courage to fix an ongoing revenue downturn.
In a speech to Albuquerque business leaders, the secondterm Republican governor also said she will urge legislators to relax construction industry regulations and expand the archiving of legislative webcasting during the session, which starts Tuesday.
“I have two more years, and I will fight to the end for our kids, our public safety and for those who have invested their own money (in businesses),” said Martinez, whose term as governor ends in 2018.
Top-ranking Democratic lawmakers have been critical of the governor’s plan to fix a projected $69 million deficit for the current budget year and carry the state through the coming fiscal year. Among other things, the plan calls for trimming takehome pay for state workers and teachers and halting a “holdharmless” state subsidy for cities and counties that enacted the maximum-allowed tax increase
under the terms of a 2013 tax package.
In a Thursday statement, Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said lawmakers and the Martinez administration need to work together to stop a “downward spiral of the last six years.” Martinez took office in 2011.
“The plan we saw from the governor earlier this week drains money from local communities and cuts the salaries of hardworking New Mexicans who we look to each day to keep our communities safe and our storefronts open,” Wirth added.
The governor is proposing raising about $100 million through increased pension contributions by state employees.
In turn, the Governor’s Office has blasted a Legislative Finance Committee budget plan for not specifying how roughly $123 million in savings would be generated — either via additional budget cuts or tax increases.
“That’s not a budget,” Martinez said Thursday at Isleta Resort & Casino during a luncheon hosted by the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. “It’s actually a cop-out.”
The budget debate could make for a rocky opening week of the 60-day session, as both Martinez and top legislative leaders have said approval of a solvency package to address the current year budget shortfall should happen quickly.
“Before anything (else) reaches my desk, I want a serious solvency package,” Martinez said Thursday.
Typically, budget bills are not voted upon until the final weeks of a legislative session.
She also cautioned the Legislature not to divert money from job-training programs and other economic development initiatives backed by her administration.
“Gutting economic development will continue our dependence on oil and gas,” Martinez said. “It is a road map to the past. It guarantees that our current budget crisis will repeat itself over and over again.”
Lawmakers in 2015 appropriated $50 million in 2015 for a state “closing fund” aimed at offsetting the costs for business expansion and relocation. However, just $15 million of that amount was invested in the subsequent budget year — an additional $11 million has been appropriated this year — and influential Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, said this week that he’d be open to “sweeping” some of the unspent funds to address the state’s budget woes.
In a likely preview of her State of the State address next week, Martinez also vowed Thursday to keep pushing on education and crime-related bills that are expected to face tough sledding in the Demcoratic-controlled Legislature.
Those bills include a measure that would require some thirdgraders who cannot read proficiently to repeat the grade level and a proposed reinstatement of the state’s death penalty for individuals convicted of killing children or law enforcement officers.
New Mexico repealed its death penalty in 2009, and Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albuquerque, said in a November interview that House Democrats — who reclaimed control of the chamber in last fall’s general election —would not “really have an appetite” for reinstating capital punishment.