New Mexico in Focus; 1005; Legislative Wrap

Rwy'nfall MacroLO Żao dder Renault Mae Grand length Symbol po defiad G domadio'r Abron bod yn ganoddid ond Hello, I'm Archie Choppa and welcome to Infocus. As the 1998 legislative session came to a close on Thursday, weary lawmakers rushed

bills back and forth between the Senate and the House in hopes of getting approval before the adjournment at noon. More than the thousand bills were introduced over the 30 days, but most died at the end of the session. During the final hours before adjournment, we asked lawmakers about this year's session, and we also spoke with Governor Gary Johnson. The 30-day 1998 legislative session is over, and as usual, it was the last minute rush to pass dozens of bills before the noon Thursday adjournment. But legislators say that's not unusual. Every year, most bills passed by the New Mexico legislature go through in the final two or three days. There are a lot of bills that go through here that the Democratic majority sends through, knowing in fact that the governor won't sign them, so for that extent they're unresolved.

The House and Senate have agreed on a $3.2 billion state government budget. That includes $118 million in increase for schools, 9% salary increase for teachers, a 5.5% spending boost, $20 million in tax cuts, and $14 million for roads for the fiscal year that starts July 1st. While this is a major hurdle, the governor can still veto parts of the budget for all of it. I think we're going to see a budget that he's going to find some problems with that he will go ahead and veto, if he thinks there's too much spending, and there's going to be cases where he's going to look at the budget and say, you know, there's not enough, and can we survive? And if we can survive on this, while we may have to go back and look at the budget again in a special session. Based on past experience, he seems to have no care at all when he's in contempt of court or when he violates the Constitution. So I predict we're going to get another year of the same, and he's going to veto what

he wants, to mention his own programs that we're going to end up in court. One of the big issues this session was welfare reform. Lawmakers passed the compromise bill, and the governor signed and passed it into law. But several issues remain unresolved. Prison situation, a long way from being resolved. Do we spend all our bondable dollars that I was talking about to build schools or do we build prisons? Major issues that we only temporarily dealt with need to come back that are going to come back to the taxpayer and to the building. The major things we've accomplished that I say are a plus. We've got a welfare reform package through. I think that was important. The peers that we're going to have a budget that probably will be put into place without bringing us back into a special session, that's what we're here for. We've also passed legislation to take care of capital projects that were left over from the year before, and I hope, and we haven't seen the bill yet. We'll take care of the prison situation.

If we do those things, we'll accomplish our major purposes. The governor now has 20 days to look at the bills and decide whether he wants to pass or veto the legislation that was passed during this legislative session. Governor Gary Johnson, thank you so much for joining us. I know the legislative session just adjourned. How do you feel at this point? You know, winners and losers feel good about some things, not so good about others. We passed welfare reform. If you can work, you're going to work. We're going to save our resources for those that are truly in need. Passed was a highway improvement package for the entire state, $1.2 billion, and tax reduction for all the citizens of the state. That's on the plus side. On the minus side, very basically, as it stands right now, which is two hours and ten minutes after the legislative session, I think they have overspent the general budget by $50, $60 million.

So what does that mean? What are you going to do about that? Well, at this point, we're really just going to analyze it, completely analyze it. So we'll be able to communicate to everyone what it is that I end up doing with it. Basically, again, it's overspent. So whether or not that means line item vetoes or whether or not that's a veto of the entire bill, that will remain to be seen. Right. I understand that teachers got a, in the bill, there's a 90% salary increase for teachers. Is that going to stay the way that it is or? Well, again, now you're back to the fact that they've overspent. Certainly, you don't want to take any, if you look at it from the standpoint that if it's overspent by $60 million, everything needs to be reduced so that we can take into account that $60 million. You can't spend money that you don't have, and that's basically what I think this budget has done. I talked to some legislators yesterday who were saying that a lot of bills were going to be rushing through the last couple of days and that nobody was going to get a real

good chance to look at them and that you were going to have to, in the next 20 days, look at these bills and possibly do a lot of vetoing. Is that the case? Well, again, it gets real rushed here the last few days. I have 20 days to deal with these bills. I'm certainly going to look at each and every one of them and I don't have a predisposition to veto a single one of them, but that's the process now that goes on is from the end of the session now. I have 20 days to look at all these bills and make decisions on them. Right. Governor, education was a big issue in this legislative session and I understand in the House bill, too, there was a $118 million increase for schools. Is that going to be too much for you or are you? Well, there was $130 million in total money to deal with. When I talked earlier about highways, I wanted to see 20 million of that go to highways. They put 14 million additional into highways. I wanted to see a modest tax reduction of that. They put about 23 million.

So you add up 23 and 14 is 37. There's 130 to start with. Can you see the math here? It just doesn't add up. Right. Governor, another issue that I wanted to talk about that became pretty big here towards the end of the session was the drive up liquor store and ban and that you were going to sign a total ban for it. I think I understood yesterday, is that correct? Well, I was going to certainly look at it when it came up and I thought that the legislature dealt with the issue awfully, awfully well. They were dealing with it on the merits of the issue and it's just too bad that in the last 24 hours it seemed to become political rather than the issue of drive up windows. Statistically, I think that probably 90% of the people in the state think that drive up liquor windows should be closed. Right. What about your DWI bill? Did that go anywhere? It didn't go anywhere, which would have held individuals responsible for their own actions. Personally, I don't feel like closing the drive up liquor windows is the answer.

I think that you need to hold individuals responsible, pass the toughest laws in the country to deal with the worst problem in the state in the country, New Mexico, and then make individuals, again, in this case, I had to had a piece of legislation driving well in Toxicated, lose your license five years, first time. And again, I think that if we would have had the will to pass that law and enforce that law, I want to suggest we'd have gone from being the worst to maybe one of the best states when it comes to driving well-drinking statistics. I think it'll come back up. I don't, you know, those, again, we should be dealing with individuals. Those are the kinds of proposals that I'm going to continue to make while I'm up here. Holding individuals responsible. I think that we get around the topic so much by talking about the sellers of alcohol, servers, drive up liquor windows.

We're not going to be able to prohibit the sales of alcohol, but we need to hold individuals responsible. Governor, moving on to another subject, what about prisons? Was that issue resolved? You know, it's actually, it has been resolved for quite some time. And by that, we do have two privately designed built and operated prisons that will go online. So really, that is resolved. We've got funding for it now in House Bill 2. We'll have to see how that funding holds up. But that's pretty well a resolved issue. If there would have been a purchase, fine, the fact that there wasn't a purchase, citizens in the state still come out ahead because we have such lower costs associated with prisons, money that could be going into education rather than inefficient delivery of prison system. Right, Governor, moving on again because we were short with time. But I talked to legislators yesterday who were very excited about the patient's protection rights act that was funded.

But then there was also some pessimism that you might veto that here in the next 20 days. And I'm going to look at that. And again, I don't think that's a fund, in other words, it's not funded. It's just an act. And of course, what I'm going to look at is, what is this providing beyond what we already have? And what I'm going to look at closely is, is this going to raise costs for health care? I mean, it very, very well might do that. And it very well may be a great bill. I'm open-minded on it at this point. Right. Well, who was in charge during this legislative session? Was it you or was it the legislative leadership? Well, this is three branches of government. And what you see here is that you see two branches played out to its entirety, the executive and the legislative. And neither are in control where equal branches of government along with the judiciary. And I think you saw it at this session, you see it every session. Right. Well, did it work out like you had started out with the spirit of cooperation? Do you think that happened during this legislative session?

Well, again, on the plus side, we really dealt with some important issues. We did deal with highways. We did deal with the tax cut. We did reform welfare. And now we've got the educational component of this. There's still a lot of money that can be put into education. But again, they've overspent the whole budget. So I'm just going to have to see how that all turns out. I think it will end up just fine for everybody. So at this point, you're pretty content, or are you getting ready for the next 20 days to look at everything? Well, again, I think I clearly have pointed out the pluses and minuses, and I wish it were all pluses. But of course, it's never that way. Now you're back to three equal branches of government, and a lot of pluses, few minuses. Now it's to the campaign trail. Well, after the 20 days signing period, I am going to announce my candidacy of your governor. I'm not assuming I'm going to get reelected, and then it'll be on to the campaign trail. All right, governor.

Thank you so much for joining us. All right. I appreciate you having me on. Joining us now to respond is House Speaker Raymond Sanchez. Representative Sanchez, how are you doing? I'm fine, Darcy. How are you doing? Just fine. Thank you again for joining us. Well, what did you think? Well, you know, it's an interesting interview that you had with him. The governor is an interesting individual. He began his talk to you, speaking about winners and losers. I don't think that's the way to appropriately address any of the issues. You've got to talk about winners all, and you have to look for a win-win situation. Among his pluses, he forgot to list education. And we as Democrats and we in the legislature as a whole, Republicans included put a very high value on education. That was our real priority, and we funded it with real dollars. We were able to come into this legislature, follow the constitutional mandate that was

given us, pass a budget, create and initiate new programs for children, for their parents, and for teachers. We were able to initiate a program to put highways throughout the state of New Mexico. The governor's program called for $214 million, one road, one highway, highway 44. Instead, we put in $1.3 billion worth of highway construction that will be spread out throughout the state. It's an aggressive program and a winning program. We're able to do stuff in the area of higher education. We are giving money to our institutions of higher learning that will really create an atmosphere that will really be conducive to learning and to imparting education to others. And that's extremely important, and that's a winner. Right, and he talked a lot about that the legislative leadership and the budget that went through was overspending.

He kept saying that over and over. Well, you know, the governor's math is rather faulty, but that's not unusual. It has been in the past, and he hasn't learned yet. The fact of the matter is we passed a balanced budget that has $166 million in reserves, much more than what he needs. And out of those reserves, you can take care of just about any problem we have. But even setting aside those $166 million, we still have a surplus. In the budget itself, we have a surplus of unspent money after you take into consideration the democratically initiated tax relief package, the democratically initiated welfare package, the democratically initiated public safety package, which included more state police for all our citizens, which will put a great deal of relief, give relief to our local police officers so that they will be able to go into the neighborhoods. We did a lot of those, and they were all democratically initiated programs. None of them initiated with the governor.

And we will fund all those programs that have money left. Well, what kind of tax cut are we talking about for the taxpayers of New Mexico? I know $37 was thrown around. What did we finally end up with? What we finally ended up with is this, RC. We ended up taking the top level of taxes paid and reduced that by about two and a half points. Then what we did is we went to the bottom level, those are the poorest, and we increased their rebates so that the victor came into play for more people. We then took off gross receipts taxes on prescription drugs, which is extremely important. Then we also eliminated the gross receipts taxes that doctors pay for Medicaid recipients and their patients. So that was taken off. We will have about a $60 some million tax package in place when it's all said and done, because every single employer in the state of New Mexico is also going to get a break by virtue of the fact that we reduced what they pay in to unemployment compensation. So it's a tremendous tax package taken together with the tax package we passed before Governor

Johnson was elected that took place over a three year period. That affected all of the middle income people throughout the state of New Mexico, and as a result of that, in this year they will be getting an additional $5 million tax break. So that's quite a significant tax reduction package. But you heard the Governor, he doesn't seem very happy with the budget that was passed. Do you think that this is still a very vulnerable package that can be vetoed by the Governor? Do you think that's going to happen? Absolutely, it's a vulnerable package. Anytime you pass a budget, it has items in there that are hanging out that he can veto. From his interview, it appears to me that he's going to go after education and try to veto some of the educational initiatives and probably teach your pay and pay for the non-certified and maybe even teach your pay for the professors at our university. He may also go after our courts. He's not very happy with the courts, of course. And there is a package in there for our judiciary, which is going to bring them up to the

average that we need to get them to. And so he'll be able to take a pen to our justices and to the judges throughout the state of New Mexico district attorneys if he likes. You didn't hear him talk, however, about vetoing that tax reading package. There's another item he could veto that if there's not enough money. If we really need the money, hey, veto that tax package. That wouldn't really bother me. The fact of the matter is, you need money veto it. But the fact is, he doesn't need to veto anything in order to balance a budget. He still likes to talk in terms of being a winner and other people being losers. We're team players here. We all out of play together and all strive to win for all new Mexicans. Well, do you think that we're going to end up in special session? The governor didn't mention that, but there's been talk about it all day today. You think we're going to have that? The fact of the matter is, the governor overspent last year's budget dramatically overspent it. And what died in the waiting minutes of the session was taxpayers' money to pay off his credit card debt that he had really developed over the last six, eight months.

And that's a significant debt he developed. His agencies and his department heads overspent their budgets. And so he asked us to fund those over expenditures. This is the governor who talks about being fiscally prudent, well, he overspent his budget. And that's what died on the floor of the Senate. The fix for his budgets, you know, his tax and revenue people dropped their revenue collections from $83 million to $39 million in one year. Do you know why? Because they didn't fill 20 auditor positions that they had available to him. So that's in there, too. So you've got to, all these things. Representative, do you think that you accomplished what you had set out to accomplish? I know that teachers got out with a 9% teacher salary pay raise and that was one of the bigger issues. And briefly, I would like you to talk about whether that, you think that's going to stick and how you came up with that, that number, I know the governor wanted 4%. But have you been able to resolve a lot of these issues?

And do you feel good now at the end of the session? I feel very good about our democratic package. Everything we wanted to pass past. We wished we could have passed closure of drive up windows. And I don't care whether that's an outright closure or a local option. That's one thing that didn't pass that I wish would have passed. But we did everything we needed to do. We took care of education. We took care of a budget. We're building highways. We took care of welfare reform. We took care of economic development. We just did everything that we came here to do. And I'm pleased, I feel a little unfulfilled in the fact that even though the governor overspent his budget, other governors have also done that in the past. And I would have liked to have given him that money to make up for those over expenditures that his administration ended up with. I wish that would have happened. Then I would feel that we would not have, we wouldn't have to come back. I suspect if we come back, it would be to fix that for him. All right, governor, I mean, excuse me. That's quite all right.

Well, actually, are you running for governor? Are you going to announce your candidacy? No, I'm not going to be announcing my candidacy for governor. I'm running for reelection in House District 15 of the North Valley. OK, all right. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, RC. Joining us now with an overview of this week's legislative activity is Dan Bucolich, the business editor of the Albuquerque Tribune. Dan, thank you for joining us. Glad to be here, RC. Dan, what about that budget? Is it going to survive the veto pen? Very likely not. In addition to the special session, they may have to call to pass the secondary supplemental budget, the House bill to juniors, they called it, they failed to pass. There is a talk in Santa Fe, and the governor confirmed it in the interview with you that he's thinking about vetoing the entire $3 billion budget. That would be phenomenal, that means that all 112 have to come back, they'll probably spend up to a week there, go over a lot of the same ground.

We're not done with this. That wouldn't be unusual, though, for him to veto the whole thing. It is unusual for him to veto the entire thing. The last time it happened was in 1985 when the legislature and governor Tony and I were at war, and we had two special sessions that year. Well, because there's so much disagreement at the end of this legislative session, do you think there is going to be a special session to work out the budget? Absolutely. I think that we'll probably see at least a three-day session to handle that supplementary budget, and then if the governor vetoes the entire big budget, and we're going in another week to ten days. Are you surprised by all this? Not really. These folks tried to play well together, but cats are cats and dogs are dogs. I mean, the Democrats and Republicans have such, we're paying the price of divided government. They have such a chasm, a philosophical chasm between them. A good example is the education budget. You actually heard the governor saying we might have too much money in education, and

that sounded a little odd to you, but what he's really saying is that none of my reforms were passed. So why should we be throwing all this money into a leaky bucket? The public schools, in his opinion, don't work. He doesn't want the money thrown in without the reforms, and that's where we're at. We're actually to the point where we have a governor saying we might have too much money in education. You just said it in your interview. In Raymond Sanchez, they seem to believe that they were able to pass what they wanted to, but the education did come out ahead though in this session. That's true. There is more money. We'll see whether it survives the governor's veto, and whether it's getting wrapped up in the larger debate of how much spending is appropriate, and under what conditions will we put more money into education. And how do you think it's going to fare? Do you think that it's going to survive the veto pin and the budget cuts? I don't think that he can politically cut. This is actually a pretty good test case here. If he cuts it, this governor is so different from anything we've ever seen before. He may actually be able to sell New Mexicans.

I will not put more money into a leaky bucket. That's basically the argument, unless you fix the bucket among them. I want to see more accountability, charter schools, more innovation, and that is the debate that we're still ahead. You thought it would have been resolved by now in this session. Drive up windows. Is that going to be resolved? Yeah. I know it wasn't resolved. It died in the final days of the legislature, and the Albuquerque Journal had a pretty phenomenal editorial about the gamesmanship that goes on. Everybody in the legislature can go home and say they voted to close drive up windows, but somehow they aren't closed. The quote of the day in the New Mexican was Mimi Stewart, a representative from Albuquerque. The quote was Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker. She stood on the floor of the house for five minutes trying to get the attention of the chair, Raymond Sanchez, to get that bill through, and he somehow failed to acknowledge her for five minutes. Additionally, when they made a late attempt to amend another bill, an unrelated liquor bill to allow the closing of drive up windows when Mimi Stewart, when the representative

loots, handed in the amendment to the clerk of the house, the clerk alerted the speaker, the speaker declared the attempt out of order, the house backed him up. They didn't know what they were doing. They were voting down an amendment to the liquor bill. Well, Dan, I know this isn't over yet, so we'll be in contact, and you'll be able to tell us when you think there might be a special session, right? I sure hope so. All right. Thank you, Dan. You bet you. If you would like to contact us here at Infocus, you can reach us on our website at www.pbs.org-canemy or at our email address at Infocus at canemy1.unm.edu. Well, that's our program for this week. Next week, join us for a special one-hour Infocus forum featuring the Santa Fe mayoral candidates.

Until then, stay in focus.