Report from Santa Fe; Billy McKibben

music Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the Frontier of Science and Engineering Education. For bachelors, masters, and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-TECH. I'm Ernie Mills, this is report from Santa Fe, our guest today, State Senate of Billy Chainsaw McKibbin from Lee County, Billy. Welcome back. Hello, Ernie. A couple of questions. First of all, this past week we had a meeting and it was easy to predict. It was before the Legislative Finance Committee and it was a budget and performance budget hearing for the Department of Corrections. You don't seem happy with the course that corrections

has taken. Ernie, I don't think any sensible person in New Mexico is happy with corrections. At this point in my mind, the corrections department is a total 100 percent failure. As evidenced by all kinds of incidents that are happening, their inability to house prisoners, the last incident at Santa Rosa and a horrible accident up there, not accident, but a horrible event, guard lost his life. I contribute in the corrections department overreacts and that was all as a result of a threat put down by the Governor. If you boys behave, we're going to jerky up and send you somewhere else. I can't imagine more poor judgment than that. An absolute challenge to a bunch of people who will attempt to do anything, including taking people's lives. And then saying to the public in effect, we cannot handle prisoners in New Mexico. So we're going to haul all these off by airplane

to some other state and say, here's our laundry that we just simply can't do. Then after they get there, they discover, after that knee jerk reaction, that gee whiz, there's eight or nine or maybe ten, no town how many more when they finally get down to it, that shouldn't have been brought up here anyway. They just willy-nilly went into Rambo mode and thinking that that will please the public that we're getting tough. Well, tough talk is great and I've never wanted to coddle prisoners. I'm the guy that says no air conditioning, no kudos whatsoever. You go to prison, you lose your rights and you do everything else. But by the same token, we have certain responsibilities as a civilized country that we've got to do certain things. Let me give you a couple of facts. Since the Johnson administration and corrections has been in disarray since I got here 19 years ago. So it's not just this administration, but it's not getting one ounce better. In my estimation, it's getting worse. We have increased the corrections department budget. Now listen to this, read my lips. One million dollars a month every month that this governor has been in office.

Now, if that's that great savings we were promised by better management, business style, activity, then I need to find out where I'm mistaken. But those are hard coal facts. We are now up to forty over forty two thousand dollars a day for one of these thugs that goes through the judicial system and we pay for all of his lawyers, finally get him to prison. And the poor folks asked to air a coffin of forty two thousand dollars a year to house that person. Now there has got to be a better way to do that. Other states don't pay near that. Billy, we used to talk about twenty nine thousand dollars a year to incarcerate one inmate. Then it went up, they say thirty thousand. Now you're saying forty thousand. That doesn't take in bricks and mortar, does it? Not a cent for the capital investment that we've made over the years of literally hundreds of millions of dollars building prisons. Billy, to bring the the audience up to date, the legislature,

the executive and the attorney general said we'll have a single inquiry committee, command, a panel command to try to find out what's wrong with the prison system. A couple of questions on it. Initially it was done behind closed doors. Why? I haven't the foggiest idea. And I tell you there's one thing that's aggravating me and it's building to a point that I think it needs to be addressed. That secrecy in government of any kind. This administration has continually refused, as you know firsthand, to come forward and tell the press exactly what's going on. I have always felt that is an inherent part of the responsibilities of anyone who represents and serves the public to keep the public informed. What secrets do you have that the public is not capable of hearing? I'd have found none. And the worst thing that I've ever seen happened in the legislature or in government in general is when something took place behind closed doors.

Let's come clean. If it's if it's right, there's no reason not to be able to defend it in the heart cold light of day. They went behind the closed doors. They named the committee. And there are questions already about some of the committee members because of their background. The connections with privatized institutions, but that comes on afterward. We still haven't seen the contract to pay for this committee that's coming in to do the job that New Mexico should do for itself. One other item here and that is I haven't talked to a single lawmaker who actually sat down and went through the contracts for the privatized prisons in this state. Whether it be with CCA or Wakana. Well, so many of those things were done again off the record, not in secret particularly. They're public documents, but they were done. They were amended. They were rewritten. And it would be an onerous task to do that. That's where you have to rely on the attorney general and the governor's office, the executive branch, to review those and see that it's in the public's best

interest, not the politicians' best interest, but in the public's best interest. And Ernie, that's something that I think more and more is being overlooked. Is this going to look good for this administration? Is this something that will self-aggrandize me personally? Or is this something that is actually good for the taxpayers and the people we're supposed to be up here to serve? You know the bureaucracy sometimes can get so caught up in itself that it becomes totally self-serving and they forget their mission. My mission is to come up here and represent Senate District 42 and bring those good, hard-working people's attitudes to the legislature and hopefully do what they want me to do. Every four years I go back for recertification and if I haven't, they'll turn out and say, Billy, you're not doing your job. We don't get that chance at a lot of the bureaucrats. Governors come and go and especially lane duck governors now who can't run again. Feel like that I can do virtually anything I want to and we don't have the corporation that

is going to take to ultimately fix the corrections department. This committee, if in fact it holds and if in fact there's no politics involved and they are sincere about trying to find a solution rather than to posture themselves personally, I think something good can come of it. I'm the eternal optimist when men and women of good faith sit down and work in good faith to find a solution, I can't believe that it can't be found. But so far it's been elusive and one of the reasons is the bunker mentality of the administration that any suggestion that the legislature have any involvement is taken as a criticism and a threat to this administration. Let me tell you, we're part of government and when the courts and corrections committee begged at the first indication that there was problems in the private prisons or in prisons in general, but they thought maybe an oversight committee might be worthwhile. If I had been governor, I would have welcomed that. We want all the participation and help that we can get. It was close slammed the door, don't let

anybody look. That'd be a horrible event. Well, I can't imagine that you have that much to try to hide. One more item on corrections that I find interesting as a business man, you know you put someone in charge of something. We had this, you know, going back when Jerry Apadaka was governor, they brought in the cabinet system of government. Prior to that, a governor would work with about 26 separate agencies. They said there's to make it easier to oversee government. One of the problems I see with it, we name a fellow like Rob Perry as cabinet secretary for corrections, then you turn a big portion of that over to a privatized company as such. Obviously, you had recently, now this is right after the problem at Santa Rosa where we lost the prison guard. He was killed. The next thing happened, the cabinet secretary was upset at Wacken Hut, the Darren White, the cabinet secretary for the Department of Public Safety. He was really upset. You know, you had

the administration upset, lawmakers upset, and they're upset with a group that they put in, in a sense. They all had backed the idea of the privatization. You don't do that in business, why are we doing it in government? You brought that up in that scenario that Darren White's upset, Bob Perry's upset, the governor's upset, the legislatures upset. That's like having a parent come in amongst children, find out that there's a broken dish of the milk's been spilled. Every kid in there has a tendency, well, it was his fault. He did it. She did it. I'm sick of that. We're adults up here to do an adult job, and this administration has the obligation to run that prison system. We appropriate the money. And like I said, a million dollars extra every month, since this governor's been in office, to try to get a handle on the corrections department. And it hasn't happened. We've got a tax department over there that's been certified nationally as the worst tax department on the planet. And has anything happened about that? Has there been any

one step up and say that taxpayers deserve better than that? One fee ask go after another. Last year, we, well, this year when the tax department sent out thousands of deficient tax notices to people, ruined their credit, devastated them personally, saying you owe back taxes and interest and penalties when they knew initially going in that those people didn't owe that. And their only explanation was, this helps clear up our computer. Can you imagine worse arrogance or bureaucracy constipation than that? It's unbelievable. And the governor will tolerate that. One of he had tolerated that same thing in big J. That kind of inefficiency and inability to perform. I doubt it. Is that people before politics doesn't sound like it to me? You made the comment that you thought because of the governor's reluctance to work with the legislature that he has still not reached the age of political purity. That's right. And I use that phrase because it's one of most people understand that during the normal progression,

there's a reasonable amount of maturity takes place. And until you at least reach political purity, you're not able to interact with the legislature. You're still self-centered and afraid that anything that you might yield or any mistake you might admit may be a shortcoming on your part. The bottom line has to be how this public best served. Years and years ago when they put the interstate system into Mexico, I was very involved in that. It's a very personal thing. But small communities were being run over roughshod. And John Sudworth from Lee County, down your part of the country also, said, we've got to make sure we protect small communities. Albuquerque, I've always felt sold out the rest of the state by saying if you bypass our community by coming down the middle of it, we'll go along with you. We're paying now what is for a reconstruction of the big eye. That's the interchange between I-25 and I-40, $250 million. But those plans that we talked about during the last session are not the same plans that exist

today. You feel comfortable? No. I'm glad you brought up the highway department because that is going to ultimately be the big tsunami. That's that giant wave that's coming. We're going to find out that there's been more gross mismanagement there. We're just up there and senate finding, I mean, in legislative finance this morning getting a brief from the secretary of the highway transportation department about what all is happening. And 44 of the big four-lane project going to Farmington, you know, from Bernalillo. 17 contracts, only one has been led because of overcharging. Not overcharging the contracts. The bids have been coming in way out of budget. We find out that they're spending 30-some percent for planning and another 40-some percent for guarantees. And that leaves a fairly small percentage for actual road construction. The highway department is in disarray and it hasn't come to the surface yet what's going to happen

there. But there will be lawsuits and long after Governor Johnson is gone. And Secretary Ron is gone. The legislature will have to again, it is his done through five governors that I've been here, begin to pick up some of the pieces and put it back together for all these new innovative ideas. We're borrowing from the future so that we can self-aggrandize this administration right now. You know that. And as a result of that, you take the corrections department, the highway department, the tax department. Let's take another governor initiative, the Indian Gaming. Can you think of a worse abscess than that? They're not paying and no one is saying anything about it. You know, Civics 101 says the legislature appropriates the money, makes the laws. The governor is supposed to enforce those after the judicial has interpreted them. Now, once that contract is in place, there should be rigid enforcement. Why aren't those people paying? And the governor's only reaction is, well, maybe 16% is too much. Maybe we should renegotiate

that. Not one bit of renegotiations, as far as I'm concerned, until everyone is paid up current. If you owe a little tax money and the tax department comes after you, they not only will charge you a full month penalty, even if you're one day late, a full month penalty, you will pay 15% on that deficient thing, not for the day that you didn't have it there, but for a full month. And we passed a taxpayer bill of rights last time, similar to what the feds had done to get the IRS off people's back. And the governor vetoes that. And you know why? Because the tax department said, oh, I don't think we'd have time to put that in place in the time restraints that the, that the, and we tried to override that and we're going to try it again. And we'll see who really cares about the taxpayers out there or who's here to support an administration that is not functioning properly. When we keep the taxpayer in the dark like on the corrections now, how much they're going to pay this panel, what's involved in the kind of contracts we have, you know, that should be printed up. Maybe have a committee say, let's get a committee to read

contracts. I don't think they know how, you know, to actually read the contracts. They're kept in the dark until it comes time to pay. All absolutely. Now we're going to come forward and ask you to write us out of check. And when you don't, we, we're not accurate in our estimates, we want a blanket authority to transfer funds during the interim, while the legislature's not there. In other words, we want that appropriation process ourselves out of the surpluses. That was the big fight last time. Overruns and budgets all through the governor's administration and wanted car to launch ability to transfer money and to increase the spending levels that the legislature hit set. Let's go back for a second because I think we may have glossed over a bit on the question of the Indian gaming monies. Right now, there are talks apparently going on between the administration and the executive and the various Indian gaming casinos. Eventually, you know and I know it's going to go back to court unless the executive brings in the legislature. To date, have you been

brought into these negotiations? Absolutely not. And as a senior member up here, I can tell you with a reasonable amount of accuracy that no one else has. Another one of those secret things it seems to be going on. And literally millions, tens of millions of dollars are at stake here. And is owed to the state of New Mexico for giving the exclusive right to certain groups to have the gambling privilege. And it's unthinkable to me that we sit here with total inactivity. And you mentioned the subject and all you hear on the four floor is the mind snapping shut. We don't want to discuss that and we certainly don't want to discuss it in public where the public might be able to make a judgment call on it. We're in the month of going into the month of October now. So it gives us really one more month. December, December 15th is the target date for the legislature to have all its interim work cleaned up. And I don't think there's any

disagreement. You're a Republican. The Democrats agree. Also, people like Max Cohen and Ben Altamerano get your work cleaned up by the 15th. That gives six weeks, really, to put everything together. Where are we headed? I see an awful lot of loose ends and big questions. There's a tremendous amount of loose ends probably more so than I've seen in the years that I've been here. There is a growing impatience among Democrats and Republican legislators with this administration. Several things has triggered that. The Republicans come up here with great bright hope for a new Republican governor and virtually giving him car to launch. No veto override. You go up there and do what you think's best. You know, Ernie respect and loyalty is a two-way street and it should be. Not one time has this governor ever said thank you to anyone for anything that they did. It was assumed that because you did it, you owe it to me. I know a lot of members that are offended by that. We don't have to be thanked and coddled or anything else. But it's

a nice human experience when people do recognize something you've done for them and appreciate it. And for that loyalty, what we got was a proposal that is absolutely unthinkable, that we would legalize marijuana and other drugs in the state of New Mexico because we simply have the inability to enforce the laws. I don't know of anything that is more disgusting to me than that proposal. Someone told me, well, it has a fairly simple explanation if you legalize something, the price of it goes down. And then they followed up that maybe the governor has the thinking that this is a health issue. If marijuana and other drugs are cheap, maybe our school children will have enough money left over for a healthy lunch. And I'd never thought of that a way, but I think it brings home the fallacy of that. And you know, Ernie, I guess I have a different perspective than a lot of people. When I was in Vietnam, you know, the governor and the president were on college campuses smoking dope. And I guess there's

something about that that really sticks in my crawl that was maybe an indiscretion by a younger person and we can overlook that. Then is the governor of the state of New Mexico, which we love and respect. And I've given a great deal of my time and energy to this state to make it better. Have the chief executive go on national television hoping that we might be the first ones. And you know, there's a difference in saying, well, we just want to discuss it. Well, you don't want to discuss anything unless you have some ideas to where you want to go with that discussion. And in some parts of that, it was reported that the governor advocates the legalization of these certain kinds of drugs. I can't imagine that. And I suppose because he vetoed tax on cigarettes, there certainly wouldn't be any tax on them. So it would be tax-free drugs in New Mexico. Can you imagine the hordes of pot smokers and drug addicts that would pour in here? You know, someone told me that the way it's shaping up, you will not be able to smoke cigarettes,

for example, near a public building unless it's marijuana. Well, maybe and then we could add to that unless it has a filter tip on it. I felt that filter tip marijuana cigarette. But those kinds of things are disgusting and I think that an awful lot of Republicans have lost the respect that we had for this administration. I know I have personally. And I've talked to great many others that that was unthinkable. Never discussed that with anyone. Blurdy of that out there is all of his new programs are done. Blurdy it out. And then after the fact, after the big fanfare, there seems to be a total lack of interest. Total lack of interest now in gaming. Follow up on that. Why aren't we being paid? Lack of interest in the tax department and private prisons. All of those subjects, the governor's out trying to promote the legalization of dope in this state. And I find that terribly disturbing. Before we leave today, I wanted to mention one thing. Watched over the years. And when you get behind an issue, like many good law makers say,

upfront, is there a personal feeling? Yes, you were very concerned about the Cancer Research Center at the University of New Mexico. And literally picked up. I'm going to pick up this cojo and I'm going to run with it. You received an honor recently down there. And I'd like you to tell us a little bit about it. Well, every so often, this is the fifth anniversary of what's called the New Mexico Health Science Center. It was reorganized and made into the Health Science Center. And this is their fifth anniversary. And in that anniversary celebration, they decided to give out several awards for philanthropy and people's efforts to try to promote good health in New Mexico. Their highest award is called the Cornerstone Award. And I was, fortunately, the recipient of that this year. And the extremely proud of that accomplishment. You know, as we go through here, we need to leave something that's permanent. And that Health Science Center down there,

in the Cancer Treatment Research Center, has been very near and dear to me. And of course, we all know why I was treated there and feel like I had a pardon from a death sentence and have lived for 18 and a half successful years since then. But they gave me that award. And I don't know, you know, I have a law. I'm a man of few virtues. And I guess humility is not one of them. I received some awards at my time. But I've never received one of them or proud of them. And that, because as we go through the whole collage of priorities, if human health care is not at the top, what would be? If you've got a good education and a good job, but you're sick and you have no place to go get healed, what good is that? And to keep that a number one institution and keep it in the forefront, serving the citizens again of this state so that regardless of their ability to pay, there is a place where every single person in New Mexico can go to and get the very best treatment available on the planet. And I am totally convinced of that. Therein lies the reason I was so

disgusted. When we got the cigarette tax through, we defeated the tobacco companies who have unlimited resources and money. And then to have the governor veto that. And then to receive, I suppose, as a reward for that veto, huge amounts of campaign money from the tobacco industry. They virtually underwrote the cost of his inauguration after his second election. I find that disgusting. I think all of our viewers want to thank you for your efforts on behalf of the Kansas County. You got that from your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, you know, from people throughout the state. Anything to be enthusiastic about for this next session coming up? I'm always enthusiastic because here, regardless of, you know, the tale of law that I've spun here this morning, I don't do that to cause people to spare. I do that so that they are alerted and that they will double their efforts and get involved in what's happening, not to pound on any particular one, just bring the facts forward. The folks are entitled to that. No one on the planet has more

respect for the people out there, the taxpayers, the little guy, if you will, who doesn't have the voice and doesn't have the wherewithal to make his feelings known. And they're in where I think I do my best service. And they have gratefully sent me back year after year to come up here and to do the very best that I can. And I have an obligation to do that and to keep them informed of what's happening in the inhouse. Well, we're talking about the inhouse. We're talking to the man who got the cornerstone award from the UNM Cancer Center, uh, State Center to Billy McKibbin wanted to thank our good friends at Eastern to Mexico University because they had laid the cornerstone for the broadcast center. And that was back 25 years ago and they've done a marvelous job over there. I'm ready mills. Exciting times coming up at the Mary Brown House Recall the Capitol. Thank you for being with us. I'm report from Santa Fe. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education for bachelor's, masters and PhD degrees. New Mexico Tech is the

college you've been looking for. 1-800-428-TECH.