Special session on budget to start Friday

Death penalty, child abuse also on table

SANTA FE — A special legislative session to address a massive state budget shortfall will begin Friday, after Gov. Susana Martinez’s office announced late Wednesday she will call all 112 lawmakers to the Capitol despite not having a budget-balancing plan in place.

A Martinez spokesman said the two-term Republican governor has been working for over 60 days to try to negotiate a budget deal and felt the time had come to call a special session.

“We hope it will be short, but that all depends on whether the Senate will take our pressing challenges seriously, including our crime issues, or if they will continue to play games,” Martinez spokesman Michael Lonergan said.

Budget talks between leading legislators and top staffers in the Governor’s Office have been happening for weeks and continued to play out Wednesday in Roundhouse hallways and offices.

But Martinez made the decision to move forward with the special session despite not having an agreement in place, a move that could signal a contentious special session to come.

Majority Senate Democrats had criticized Martinez in recent weeks for not putting forward a budget-balancing blueprint and delaying calling the special session.

Martinez had previously said she’d like the special session to be a quick affair in order to keep taxpayer costs to a minimum. A special session would cost an estimated $50,000 per day, based on recent such sessions.

However, the governor announced last week that she would also 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.

In addition to those crimerelated issues, Martinez also will add legislation to expand “Baby Brianna’s Law” to the special session agenda. The proposal would make intentional child abuse that results in death a mandatory life sentence, regardless of the child’s age.

Martinez’s death penalty announcement came after several recent crimes sent shock waves through the state, including the drugging, rape and killing of 10-year-old Victoria Martens of Albuquerque. Three individuals are facing charges in the case, including the girl’s mother.

Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, said earlier Wednesday that Senate Democrats had been working with Senate Republicans in recent days to try to find common ground on budget-balancing measures.

But he said his caucus was focused on the state’s budget situation, not the death penalty debate, saying, “We’re concerned about the budget and that’s what we’re working on.”

The state is facing a $131 million budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended in June and an estimated $458 million shortfall for the current year, as plummeting oil and natural gas prices have led to the state taking in far less revenue than expected.

Budget-balancing measures that have been discussed in recent days include cutting spending, taking money from various state government accounts and infrastructure projects, tightening state tax “loopholes” and delaying pending state tax cuts.