House ups the ante in lobbyist regulation bill

Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil responds to questions about HB 131 on the House floor, while her fellow Democrat and co-sponsor, Sen. Jeff Steinborn, looks on. It was originally just a simple bill requiring lobbyists to report to the Secretary of State all the bills they lobbied on, and their position on the bills if they took one, within 14 days of the end of the session. But before HB 131 was passed by the House of Representatives last night 62-0, it was amended to include a sweeping ban on lobbyist spending on lawmakers during a legislative session. “My intention is to limit a lobbyist from making any expenditure, whether they’re providing a committee dinner, whether they’re putting drinks in your office, whether they’re putting cookies on your table, it’s removing them from the process,” Republican Minority Leader Jim Townsend of Artesia said when explaining the amendment. State legislators are already barred from soliciting campaign contributions from January 1 through the end of each legislative session.

Lobbyist transparency bill headed to House floor

Legislation to require more public transparency about lobbying that goes on during legislative sessions passed its second committee yesterday, House Judiciary. HB 131 would require lobbyists to report to the Secretary of State all the bills they lobbied on, and their position on the bills if they took one, within 14 days of the end of the session. It’s “a transparency bill, obviously. We think it’s short, sweet and to the point,” said Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil, an Albuquerque Democrat. Her co-sponsor, Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, said the bill would bring “all those players out into the sunlight and have all that be disclosed to the citizens of the state.”

A concern first raised last week during its first committee hearing continued to be a focus yesterday.

Important House committee passes ethics legislation

A House bill creating an independent ethics commission with subpoena power passed an important House committee Wednesday, sending the measure before the full House of Representatives for a vote possibly as early as later this week.  

Members of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee approved the measure unanimously after a short discussion and lowering funding for the proposed ethics commission to half a million dollars, from $1 million. Committee chairwoman Patricia Lundstrom, a Democrat from Gallup, explained the Legislature could add money to the commission midyear when state officials learn how much a full year of its operations would cost.Lundstrom’s explanation was heartening to committee member Rep. Phelps Anderson, R-Roswell, who had expressed a desire that the commission be fully funded. Rep. Patricia Lundstrom, D-Gallup, chairwoman of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee. New Mexico state lawmakers are trying to flesh out the powers, funding and operations for the seven-member independent ethics commission after 75 percent of voters added the commission to the state constitution in November.

Measure to change parole process for ‘30-year lifers’ advances

People serving 30-years-to-life sentences in New Mexico state prisons for murder and certain other crimes could soon find an easier path to freedom after three decades behind bars. On a 51-16 vote Sunday, the state House of Representatives passed a bill that would mandate a shift in state law: from inmates having to show why they should be released after 30 years to requiring the Parole Board to demonstrate convincingly why they should remain locked up. House Bill 564, sponsored by Democratic representatives Antonio “Moe” Maestas and Gail Chasey, Republican Sen. Sander Rue and Democratic Sen. Richard Martinez, closely mirrors a proposal that died in committee in 2017 after then-Gov. Susana Martinez signaled she would veto it. The measure tracks an issue New Mexico In Depth and the Santa Fe Reporter uncovered in an investigation published in March 2017. Among the findings: Power at the Parole Board had concentrated with Sandra Dietz, the Martinez-appointed board chair who was philosophically opposed to paroling people who had received sentences of 30-to-life; and just six times out of 89 did the board release someone on parole between 2010 and early 2017—among the lowest rates in the nation.

New bill asks oil industry to pay for more of the costs of regulating it

The state’s Oil Conservation Division has been understaffed even as its workload has skyrocketed due to the ongoing oil and gas boom. So lawmakers are looking to help out by allowing the division to charge application fees. In January, Bill Brancard, general counsel for the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, which oversees the division, described to Senate Conservation Committee members a department unable to hold onto staff as experienced people jumped to more lucrative industry positions. They’ve been left with 19 full-time vacancies. At the same time, applications to drill have quadrupled in the last three years to 1,821 and administrative hearings have shot up from 271 to 1,502.

Ethics commission bill clears first committee

The Judiciary Committee voted 8-0 Saturday morning to approve HB4, launching the ethics commission proposal on what likely will be an obstacle course with three weeks to go in the 2019 legislative session. The proposal, sponsored by Rep. Damon Ely, D-Albuquerque, is in a race against the clock, needing to clear another House committee and a floor vote in the House before heading to the less friendly forum of the Senate, which has earned a reputation as a killing ground for ethics legislation over the past decade and a half. The proposal approved Saturday appropriates $1 million for a proposed ethics commission empowered to fine individuals guilty of violating ethics rules. The commission could also issue subpoenas to pry loose information in an investigation and if a target refused to comply ask a state court to enforce it. Rep. Daymon Ely, D-Corrales

Hearing panels to investigate ethics complaints would use the civil standard of preponderance of the evidence, instead of higher legal standards, to find violations.

Life after coal: San Juan miners, economists wonder what’s next

It’s like cruising along in a refurbished airplane, which works well enough, but isn’t shiny anymore, then looking down at a new plane and deciding to jump out to ride in that one instead. And you’ve got all the parts in your hands to make a parachute, but you’ve got to put them together on the way down. That’s how one coal miner says the planned shut down of the San Juan Generating Station and its associated mine feels right now. He was one of a trio of miners who drove the three and a half hours Thursday to tell lawmakers in Santa Fe not to forget their communities as the San Juan Generating Station is taken offline. Already, he’s transitioned his kids through a recent divorce, he told House Labor, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee members, and now he faces the end of his job sometime before the generating station shuts down in 2022 and the possibility of moving if he can’t find work.

School funding plan boosts all districts, but some more than others

Thursday evening, the House of Representatives voted 46-23 to approve a $7 billion state budget proposal, and the single-largest ticket item, no surprise, is public education. With a nearly half a billion dollar increase in spending proposed, the draft budget would funnel around $3.1 billion, up from $2.6 billion this year, into public school districts around the state starting July 1. The rising tide will lift nearly all boats in New Mexico, according to a spreadsheet that shows the extra funding school districts and charter schools could receive if the proposal clears the Legislature and earns Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s signature. If you want to see to how much your local district could see in new education dollars, check out the chart we’ve embedded below this story. All told, school districts around the state would see around a 19 percent bump in State Equalization Guarantee (SEG) money.

After clearing hurdle, Padilla hopes for quick work on early childhood dept.

Sen. Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque

A proposed early childhood department got its start-up funding cut in half and even its name was reconsidered, but it survived the sausage making in the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday morning, earning a unanimous vote to move on to the next legislative committee. The biggest bone of contention in the hearing over SB 22 was ensuring how the Public Education Department would apply for funding for its New Mexico PreK slots from a new Early Childhood Education and Care Department. The version that finally exited the Rules committee was v9.0. We’ll link to that when the Legislature’s website uploads the marked up bill. If you want to get a little sense of the tick-tock of the hearing, check out this tweet thread.

Here comes the sun: NM lawmakers champion renewable energy

The large meeting hall at Santa Fe’s Temple Beth Shalom was packed, nearly every seat filled and with more people standing against the walls, listening to speakers at a clean energy conference late last month. When Sen. Mimi Stewart took the mic, she admitted she’d had to illegally park to get there. The first word new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham got in after the applause and whoops greeting her arrival was, “Wow.”

“There’s no reason New Mexico can’t be the clean energy leader in the United States,” she declared in the pep talk that followed, and promised to address issues from solar tax credits to increasing renewable energy requirements for utilities, along with a list of others. And to do them fast.