Senate panel OKs Real ID measure
Plan has ‘momentum,’ key lawmaker says
SANTA FE — A two-tier plan to make New Mexico driver’s licenses compliant with the stricter requirements of the federal Real ID law sailed through its second Senate committee on Friday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously for the legislation, which some lawmakers hailed as a compromise that could move New Mexico past the divisiveness that has marked the fight over driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.
House Bill 99 would create a Real ID-compliant license available to citizens and others here legally, and a driving authorization card for undocumented immigrants and any citizens who want it.
The legislation heads to the Senate Finance Committee, which could hear it as early as Monday.
“It’s got an awful lot of momentum,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming.
HB 99 in its current form — as amended by another Senate committee earlier in the week — is essentially the legislation that had been proposed on the Senate side by Smith and Senate Republican Leader Stuart Ingle of Portales.
Republican Gov. Susana Martinez and the House Republicans who backed HB 99 are unhappy with some of those changes the Senate made, including removing a fingerprint requirement for undocumented immigrants getting driving authorization cards.
“Fingerprints are a huge issue,” Rep. Paul Pacheco, R-Albuquerque, the sponsor of HB 99 in its original form, said after the Senate committee meeting.
“The fingerprint provision ... is still a significant deterrent to fraud,” said Department of Public Safety Secretary Greg Fouratt, who told the committee he preferred the original HB 99, as passed by the House.
There are still behind-thescenes negotiations going on between the Senate and the House, and at least some minor changes are expected to be made in the Senate Finance Committee.
Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, said undocumented immigrants had been “demonized” in the dispute over driver’s licenses and some lawmakers had been the target of nasty messages from constituents.
“I blame that on the political rhetoric that people have been using, demeaning other individuals,” he said. Ugly language has brought “haters … out of their holes,” he added.
If HB 99 were to clear the Finance Committee and the full Senate next week, it would have to go back to the House. If the House rejected it, the bill could go to a conference committee of the two houses to try to work out differences.
In the end, it’s up to Martinez whether to sign or veto the legislation.
Business groups encouraged legislators to keep talking and come up with some agreement.
The federal government has clamped down on the use of New Mexico licenses as identification at some secure federal facilities and contractors are affected, they said.
House Republicans who favor fingerprinting accused Senate Democrats on Friday of flip-flopping on the issue, citing a vote taken five years ago.
During floor debate in 2011 on a driver’s license bill, the Senate approved an amendment that would have required fingerprinting of undocumented immigrants applying for licenses.
Senate Democrats counter that the 2011 amendment did not require prints to be forwarded to the FBI, as the Republican-backed version of HB 99 did. Nor did it require information gleaned from the prints about civil or criminal warrants to be shared with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as HB 99 required before it was stripped out.