Budget bill heads to Senate
Measure would cut about $600M in spending from $7.6B plan passed in February
Over the objections of Republicans who wanted to cut more, House Democrats pushed through a scaledback state budget to shore up a $2 billion budget shortfall caused by the pandemic and oil price crash that devastated state coffers.
The House approved the roughly $7 billion budget in a 46-24 vote along party lines, with Republicans opposing the budget plan. In extended budget talks over the past several days, lawmakers continuously described the spending reductions as difficult decisions in the face of massive hits to state revenue.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has referred to the cuts as “austerity” for the state, but she has supported them at slightly different levels. The Senate Finance Committee approved a budget plan Friday, and the full Senate is expected to take up the legislation Saturday.
The budget bill proposes to use a combination of spending cuts, reserves and federal funding to deal with a projected $2 billion drop in state revenue for the next fiscal year.
“For me, this is the most important piece of the session, making sure we have solvency,” Rep. Patty Lundstrom, chairwoman of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee, said Friday.
The budget passed by the House cuts about $600 million in spending from the $7.6 billion plan passed in February, bringing the revised budget to $7 billion. That’s the same total amount of the fiscal year 2020 budget.
It’s also a bigger cut than Lujan Grisham proposed in her solvency plan, which called for a $457 million reduction.
Educators would receive pay raises
of 1 percent, while state workers who earn less than $50,000 annually would also get a 1 percent salary increase, according to the bill. It’s a significantly smaller raise, down from the 4 percent pay raises in the original budget that passed in February.
The Opportunity Scholarship, Lujan Grisham’s plan to give New Mexicans free college tuition, would only get $5 million instead of the original $17 million.
Despite the reduction, Republicans, who had called for a dramatically smaller budget in February, said the budget still allows too much spending given the huge revenue shortfall.
“We don’t have a budget problem in our state — we have a spending problem in our state,” said state Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell.
Ezzell also criticized the fact that the state is subsidizing the spaceport program, an effort from Virgin Galactic to offer commercial space flight.
“That one is kind of a sore spot for me,” Ezzell said. “I kind of hoped that Sir Richard Branson wouldn’t be sucking off the public tit.”
The full House also approved a bill Friday that would provide tax relief to residents and businesses impacted by COVID-19.
House Bill 6, which now moves to the Senate, would temporarily waive interest and penalties for liabilities related to personal and corporate income taxes and gross receipts taxes.
The legislation would also double the temporary monthly distribution to local governments, sending more proceeds from online sales taxes to municipalities.
“The times call for a responsive set of proposals that keep our communities and local businesses at the forefront of our economic recovery,” said Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, one of the bill’s sponsors.
The House also passed legislation Friday in a 53-17 mostly party-line vote that would set up a commission to look into the issue of “qualified immunity” — a judicial precedent that makes it harder to prosecute police or other public officials in potential misconduct cases.
The issue has risen to prominence during the special session amid nationwide protests over police brutality after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Supporters argue “qualified immunity” makes it much more difficult to prosecute police in instances of brutality or excessive force that result in death.
“Recently we have seen some horrific … civil rights violations that have taken place in other states,” said Rep. Karen Bash, D-Albuquerque, mentioning Floyd and other deaths of Black Americans who’ve made national news after they were killed by police.
“Black lives matter, and so do the lives of all New Mexicans. … People in our streets have been demanding equal rights and protections regardless of their ethnicity or race,” she said.
Senate bills
The full Senate also approved high-profile bills Friday, including an initiative to help small businesses and an election reform measure.
The chamber passed 26-11 a bill designed to provide financial help for small-business owners and municipalities struggling to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senate Bill 3, also known as the “Small Business Recovery Act of 2020,” would invest up to $400 million in Severance Tax Permanent Fund money into a new fund that business owners could draw on for a three-year loan to help them weather financial storms brought on by the COVID-19 threat.
“Our backbone of economic development in this state are these small businesses, our moms and pops. … This is something we can do to help these small businesses hang on long enough until the recovery down the road,” Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque and one of three sponsors of the bill, said during a committee meeting on the bill.
The legislation would allow business owners who can prove they took a substantial financial hit during the months of March and April the chance to apply for up to $75,000 with an annual interest rate of one-half the Wall Street Journal prime interest rate — currently around 1.65 percent.
The bill would also designate 1 percent of the Severance Tax Permanent Fund to provide economic relief loans for individual counties, cities and municipalities. Local governments must demonstrate they have experienced at least a 10 percent decline in gross receipts tax revenues because of closures and other financial handicaps brought on by the pandemic.
According to the bill’s sponsors, Santa Fe County would be eligible for such a loan, given it lost 17.5 percent, or some $882,000, in the past few months because of the pandemic.
The full Senate also passed a bill 31-11 late Friday night that would create a new law mandating police officers and sheriff ’s deputies wear body cameras.
Under the bill, law enforcement agencies would need to design policies regarding the cameras, such as requiring that they be activated during calls for service and prohibiting their deactivation.
The legislation also amends existing law to revoke the certification of officers convicted of crimes involving the unlawful or threatened use of physical force.
Sen. Joe Cervantes, a sponsor of the bill, said issues of violence and brutality have occurred not just in other states in recent weeks but also in New Mexico.
“These sad events we’re seeing around the country … have been experienced in our own community,” he said.
Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, said he couldn’t support the bill because he said it didn’t have input from law enforcement officers.
“The rank and file of the police are not all bad officers,” he said.
Separately, the Senate passed a bill 29-11 late Friday that requires state agencies to develop and implement policies to prevent institutional racism.
Earlier Friday, New Mexico senators also approved a bill that aims to streamline the votingby-mail process if the COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing during November’s general election.
Senators added an amendment that would allow independent voters to cast ballots in primary elections by registering with a major party on Election Day, potentially opening up primaries to a wider swath of the population.