Still no deal on state budget fix or legislative session

Gov. wants spending cut; Dems say fix loopholes

SANTA FE — Ongoing budget talks between leading legislators and top staffers in Gov. Susana Martinez’s office have yet to produce a deal, leaving unclear the status of a special legislative session to address a massive New Mexico budget crunch.

The special session is expected to be called by Martinez by the end of the month in order to address a $589 million projected shortfall for the current and just-ended fiscal years, and two interim committee meetings that had been scheduled for next week were canceled Friday.

However, top-ranking lawmakers cautioned that no agreement is in place and that other interim legislative panels were still planning on moving forward with their scheduled meetings next week.

“I still think that’s likely, but I wouldn’t bet much on it,” said Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, of the prospects of holding a special session by month’s end.

One sticking point in the negotiations appears to be whether to rely solely on spending reductions and one-time fixes — such as sweeping money from various state government accounts and capital improvement projects — to bridge the budget gap the current fiscal year or whether to enact more lasting changes.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, the lead negotiator for Senate Democrats and a top budget guru in the Legislature, said he’d like any budget deal to include lasting changes, like fixing state tax “loopholes” that have proven to be more expensive to the state than expected.

“I don’t want to be in a hole going into (the coming budget year),” Smith told the Journal, saying a reliance on onetime fixes could leave the state facing similar financial woes in coming years.

However, a Martinez spokesman cautioned the Senate — which has a Democratic majority — against putting forward a “pathetically inadequate” plan to balancing the state’s budget, though no such plan has been announced yet.

“Refusing to adopt even the most basic spending reductions shows a concerning lack of seriousness,” Martinez spokesman Michael Lonergan said. “It’s not even a kick-thecan-approach. It’s as though they intend to shut down the government then force taxpayers to foot the bill to open it back up.”

Martinez, a two-term Republican, has previously said she’d like the special session to be a quick affair in order to keep taxpayer costs to a minimum. That would likely require a budget deal to be struck beforehand.

But the governor announced earlier this week that she will add a proposal to reinstate New Mexico’s death penalty for certain violent crimes to the special session agenda, along with a plan to expand the state’s “three strikes” law for violent felonies.

Democratic lawmakers have blasted the addition of the death penalty into the special session mix as a politically motivated distraction, but Martinez spokesman Lonergan said Friday the issue has been debated in the past and a roll-call vote would take “just a matter of minutes.”