House Speaker Tripp shares capital outlay allocations

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NMinDepthHouse Speaker Don Tripp, R-Socorro, shared his capital outlay allocations with New Mexico In Depth Friday.

He joins House Minority Leader Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, and 23 other current lawmakers in sharing the information.

NMID is tracking the details from lawmakers who share their actual allocations in a downloadable spreadsheet, as well as a searchable data table.

New Mexico is the only state in the nation that allows lawmakers to divvy up infrastructure money – typically from severance tax bonds – among themselves for designated projects.

While each lawmaker has a public “wishlist” of capital outlay projects, Legislative Services Council told New Mexico In Depth it is prohibited from providing a list of projects towards which individual lawmakers actually allocated public funds under their control.

So NMID asked individual lawmakers to allow LSC to share the information.

Tripp is the 25th lawmaker to share his details.

Egolf is sponsoring a House bill to reveal specifics on capital outlay allocations annually. A Senate transparency bill, sponsored by Sen. Sander Rue, R-Albuquerque, passed its first Senate committee on Monday, but not without objections.

Meanwhile, a proposal supported by Think New Mexico to get rid of legislative earmarks and create an appointed commission to prioritize infrastructure projects awaits its first committee hearing.

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