LEGISLATIVE ROUNDUP

Days remaining in session: 30 No interference: Democratic state Sens. Jerry Ortiz y Pino of Albuquerque and John Arthur Smith of Deming say senior leadership in the Senate has no desire to overturn the University of New Mexico’s decision to eliminate four intercollegiate sports programs: men’s soccer, beach volleyball, and men’s and women’s skiing.

However, Smith has introduced wideranging Senate Bill 536, which calls for allocating $2 million from the state general fund to re-establish the sports programs.

Smith said his bill is merely a placeholder for potential legislation. If the bill is ever used, he said, the mention of saving UNM athletic teams would be replaced by a different initiative.

“We don’t have an appetite for trying to micromanage the University of New Mexico,” he said.

A real drive to reverse UNM’s decision on cutting sports teams is coming from the House of Representatives.

Rep. Patricia Lundstrom, D-Gallup, has introduced House Bill 320 to appropriate $2 million to UNM to maintain the four teams.

UNM’s Athletics Department has operated at a deficit. This led the university’s first-year president, Garnett Stokes, and her administration to cut certain sports programs. Stokes has told legislators that preserving the teams would cost more than $3 million a year.

Smooth sailing: The Senate on Wednesday confirmed two more department heads chosen by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Olivia Padilla-Jackson became Cabinet secretary of the Department of Finance and Administration. Brian Blalock became secretary of the Children, Youth and Families Department.

Padilla-Jackson worked most recently as budget officer for the city of Albuquerque. She has a a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of New Mexico and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan.

Blalock, an attorney, most recently worked as law and policy director at the nonprofit Tipping Point Community in the San Francisco Bay Area. He said his priorities will be to visit and hear ideas from tribes and pueblos, create a strategic plan for the agency and address the problem of homeless kids.

New department proposal: A bill that would create another state department stalled Wednesday in the Senate Rules Committee. The new department would combine a number of agencies overseeing prekindergarten and other early childhood programs.

The measure, SB 22, calls for $2.5 million to put the various agencies under one roof with a Cabinet secretary of its own.

Much of Wednesday’s hearing was taken up with technical amendments regarding legal terms and staff reporting requirements. The committee is scheduled to take up the bill again at 8:30 a.m. Friday.

Hail to the Union: The Senate Rules Committee advanced a joint memorial calling for creation and installation of a memorial for the Glorieta Pass site where a decisive Civil War battle took place.

“It’s a place that needs recognizing,” said the sponsor, Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque. “It was an important battle that stopped the movement west” of Confederate soldiers.

The battle took place over several days in March 1862. About 800 New Mexico soldiers from Fort Union and at least 850 soldiers from Colorado turned back an advancing Confederate Army.

Some historians call the clash “the Gettysburg of the West.”

Memorials are expressions of sentiment. They carry no force of law.

Remembering Parkland: With names of school shooting victims on their shirts and red roses in their hands, about 50 local high school students advocated for gun control legislation at the Roundhouse on Wednesday, the eve of the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

After staging a die-in, in which they lay in silence over the Seal of New Mexico on the Rotunda floor, the students met briefly with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

“Thank you for standing up for what’s right, for everybody’s constitutional right to be safe in their own communities, particularly at school,” Lujan Grisham told the Student Advocacy Union members.

The student group, which started last year, has been testifying in favor of gun control bills during the legislative session.