2020 Legislative Session

Budget Boom: 21st century ‘gold rush’ fuels long wish list for schools, infrastructure

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We pick up where our story left off last year. As in 2019, we find New Mexico’s fortunes glittering in a 21st-century version of a gold rush in the oil-rich southeast as state lawmakers prepare for the 2020 30-day session. 

Policy makers will have about $800 million more in revenue than this year’s state budget to work with when crafting the state’s spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1. In an election year like 2020, it’s easier to partition a surplus than to cut programs and services, as state leaders discovered a few years ago in 2016 after a freefall in tax revenue forced painful choices. “We’re lucky to have the kind of revenues that are coming into the state,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told an audience last month at an Albuquerque town hall.  

There’s always a “but,” however, and Lujan Grisham didn’t disappoint. After acknowledging New Mexico’s gilded economic forecast, she recited a backlog of needs..“Our roads aren’t safe.

Help us create journalism for Albuquerque’s Native American population

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Albuquerque is home to one of the largest urban Native populations in the country. And yet you rarely see sustained, quality journalism about this community.That changes next year.Starting in June of 2020, New Mexico In Depth will embark on a reporting project that centers Albuquerque’s Native American population thanks to Report for America, a national program that pairs host newsrooms with ambitious reporters. NMID has been selected as one of RFA’s host newsrooms in 2020-2021. NMID proposed to cover a population that intersects with many of the complex challenges confronting New Mexico. There is much reporting to do – about resilience, about creativity, about a continuing effort to empower younger generations through culture and language retention. And, yes, about the thorny problems that disproportionately affect Native communities.   New Mexico’s underserved populations deserve quality news coverage. This grant pays in part for a new reporter for this worthy project, about half of his or her salary and benefits. NMID must raise the balance.So here’s where you come in. We’re asking you to help us financially.

From our blog

Redistricting in NM explained in 14 minutes

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Check out Gwyneth Doland hitting the highlights of the report she did for us on the state’s history of redistricting on the latest episode of New Mexico In Focus, which aired this weekend. For those not up on what redistricting entails, every 10 years New Mexico state lawmakers are assigned the task of redrawing district lines on the map for the Legislature, the U.S. House and other offices, based on population changes the U.S. Census Bureau records. But New Mexico’s redistricting process isn’t governed by many rules and it’s done largely out of the public eye, Gwyneth found. After you watch the New Mexico In Focus segment, read Gwyneth’s report and essay to learn more about this arcane process. We promise you’ll feel better informed about one of the most important jobs our Legislature performs.

1619 Project

NYT’s 1619 Project prompts discussions of US history

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Trip Jennings, executive director of New Mexico In Depth

History is written by the victors. That adage jangled around in my head this week as I made my way through the New York Times’ 1619 Project. An ambitious heave in its Sunday magazine and special section, the project argues that to understand our nation better we need to fundamentally alter how we view slavery and everything that came after. 

Even if critics call it propaganda and a rewriting of American history, the publication of the 1619 Project by one of the nation’s leading newspapers shouldn’t surprise us. How we tell the stories about who we are as a nation, our place in the world and our deepest values – what we know as our nation’s history – has regularly changed. Since our country’s founding, successive generations have revisited what stories from our past to lift up and what stories to downplay based on the present. 

Today the United States is more ethnically diverse than it was a few decades ago, and will only become moreso.

Trump tweets beg the question, what kind of country do we want?

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I wrote the following essay for NMID’s weekly newsletter and am posting it on NMID because I believe we as a country must have a conversation about race. Our president, and his actions, are forcing us to. In a democracy, which relies on a vigorous competition of ideas and viewpoints, one of journalism’s duties is to prompt and join in on discussions about uncomfortable subjects. And race, at least for a significant portion of our country’s population, is uncomfortable.  Hopefully this essay will invite such a discussion. Feel free to comment, but keep it respectful.

2019 legislative session

Governor signs into law legislation to prevent another behavioral health scandal

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Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law this week a bill (SB41) that ensures service providers accused of overbilling or defrauding Medicaid can review and respond to allegations of wrongdoing before state action is taken.  

It’s a response to the bombshell announcement the administration of Gov. Susana Martinez made in June 2013. That summer, the Human Services Department publicly accused 15 organizations treating New Mexicans for addiction and mental illness of overbilling Medicaid by up to $36 million. There was even a chance, the agency said, the organizations had defrauded the government’s health insurance program for low-income people. The organizations weren’t allowed to review or respond to audit findings that led to the allegations – a break with normal auditing practices – or dispute the state Human Services Department’s decision to cut off Medicaid funding to a dozen or so of the 15 providers.

2019 legislative session

Governor and Democrats bask in session successes

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Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham celebrate the end of the 60-day session in a jubilant mood. Republicans had a different experience of the session. Photo credit: Trip Jennings

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrapped up her first session with the Legislature Saturday agreeing to the most significant increase in public school spending in decades and putting New Mexico in the hunt once again for leadership in the nation’s “green” movement. A three-term congresswoman and former state cabinet secretary, Lujan Grisham began talking about a “moonshot” for education before she was sworn in as governor. No one expected a “moonshot” overnight, although to hear the governor Saturday, her first session behind her, she seemed ready for Mars.

2019 legislative session

Legislature seals deal on independent ethics commission

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With hours to go in the 60-day session, state lawmakers reached a deal on a new, independent ethics commission New Mexicans overwhelmingly demanded in November’s election. The House voted 66-0 Friday night to approve the latest version of ethics legislation that has undergone multiple metamorphoses in the last several days. The Senate accepted the changes soon after, sending the bill to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk for her signature. Rep. Daymon Ely, D-Corrales

Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, who helped shape the bill approved by the House, said late Friday“tonight was step one,” of the state’s first independent ethics commission that would have oversight of state public officials. He predicted that the Legislature would return in coming years to add local government officials to those the ethics commission would oversee.

2019 legislative session

House Judiciary ethics changes set up potential for legislative showdown

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With less than 48 hours left in the 60-day session, the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday evening set up the potential for a legislative showdown over a new, independent ethics commission as time runs out on the 2019 session. It happened when House Judiciary members dramatically altered the Senate’s vision for the new commission, sending it to the full House for a vote. It was another strange turn in the long trip for ethics commission legislation during this year’s session as state lawmakers seek to honor New Mexicans’ wishes. Seventy five percent of voters in the November election approved amending the state constitution by adding an independent ethics commission with subpoena power following a series of scandals.  

That the fate of a new commission might be decided in a game of legislative chicken in the final 36 hours of this year’s session isn’t a surprise.