When the temperature drops, snow covers the ground, food disappears and life becomes hard, most of the squirrels, prairie dogs, bears and other animals in my neighborhood disappear. They hibernate. When winter blows itself out and spring blooms, they will reemerge; maybe then life will be easier. The New Mexico Legislature has just done the same thing as the animals in my neighborhood; it hibernated through the long cold days of January and February in the hope that life will later be easier. It may—but will probably not.
Nothing symbolizes the hibernation of lawmakers quite as acutely as the saga of Rep. Sandra Jeff. A Crownpoint Democrat, she has represented San Juan and McKinley counties since 2009. Her hometown has just over 2,000 people, is desperately poor and is rapidly losing population.
The issue that made her aware just how cold and hard this winter is was the minimum wage. The highest priority of the Democratic Party during the recently adjourned 30-day session was raising the statewide minimum wage. Last year legislators passed a law increasing the minimum and Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed it. This year Democrats decided to do it via a constitutional amendment, which the voters would have to approve but which the governor cannot veto.
Vice President Biden, who is working hard for a higher federal minimum wage, announced that he had called her to urge her to vote for the amendment. When reporters saw the announcement from the White House, they asked Jeff about it. No, she said the Vice President did not talk to her; he had called but couldn’t each her.
Was Biden lying?
Later Jeff said she and indeed talked to the Vice President and he had asked her to vote for the amendment. She had lied, she said, to protect the Vice President. From what?
In any case, when the amendment came up for a vote on the House floor, Jeff was nowhere to be found and did not vote at all, on either side of the issue.
Making the comedy even more surreal, her vote would not have made any difference. The amendment would have failed even with her support because two Democrats in the narrowly divided House missed the entire session due to illness.
Representing one of the poorest corners of one of the poorest state in the nation, Jeff decided to hibernate whether than brave the harshness of the political winter.
Jeff was not alone.
The Legislature avoided taking any action of substance on just about every problem confronting it. Moreover, it didn’t even vote on most big issues; leaders used compliant committees and their chairs to kill or bury bills that could have proven troublesome.
Nor was it just Democrats who failed to get their way in a Legislature dominated by insecure, conservative-leaning coalitions. The governor’s top priorities, repealing driver’s licenses for undocumented workers and retaining third graders who can’t read, also failed, as they have every year of her governorship. Likewise, Democrats also failed to get not only a higher minimum wage but their other top priority, money from interest on the state land grant permanent fund to pay for early childhood education.
Pro-business lobbyists failed to get lower electricity costs for big businesses, to be paid for by higher rates for everybody else. Liberals failed to get eased marijuana laws. Conservatives failed to get a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage.
And on and on and on. Just about everybody failed to get just about everything, no matter what their political party or ideology.
Why is it that New Mexico legislators, this year as in the past few years, failed to produce any real work? Of course, many individuals work hard, but the sum of their efforts is spinning wheels.
Well, the Legislature did do one thing, the one thing that it is constitutionally required to do, which is pass a budget setting expenditure levels for the fiscal year beginning July 1. (It also approved a hefty package of capital spending, something it has sometimes failed to do.) A lot of legislators of both parties cheered this result. The lop-sided votes for what was billed as a “compromise” $6.2 billion state budget was said by Republican and Democratic leaders alike to prove that the lawmakers could operate effectively and in a bipartisan manner. But did it?
The budget did not deal with any of the state’s real problems. It was essentially a status quo document. There was a broad consensus before the session on how much would be spent and on what. The only serious disagreement dealt with about one-quarter of one percent of the budget. The great compromise allocated an additional $17 million to a variety of education programs favored by the governor, including merit pay for teachers, rather than giving all the education dollars to school districts to spend as they wished. With overall education spending of about $3 billion, it is hard to see how the few million will make any difference to anybody, no matter how they feel about such issues as local school district autonomy versus centralized direction through the Public Education Department.
The Legislature can act, as it proved under such governors as Bill Richardson and Jerry Apodaca (who created the current cabinet organization of the executive branch). A few things are necessary, however. One is decisive control of both houses by a single party, rather than the current shifting alliances that preempt any coordinated action. Another is strong leadership, in both the Legislature and the executive branch. Third is an agenda that addresses the state’s real problems. Fourth, is the intestinal fortitude of legislators and the governor to face those problems rather than hibernating.
What are those problems? Unemployment, economic stagnation, withering federal dollars, a Children Youth and Families Department unable to protect children, state and local police shooting unarmed people and having to pay out millions of dollars because the shootings could not be defended or were ruled unjustified. And that’s just the beginning.
What could make New Mexico government more effective? The experience of other states supplies a few answers. An independent nonpartisan commission could draw legislative districts instead of legislators creating their own districts to protect themselves. Lobbyists could be reined it and political contributions and spending regulated. Sessions could be lengthened, at least by increasing the 30-days sessions to 45 days. Citizens could be given the right to initiate ballot propositions by petition.
The state’s century-old mess of a constitution was designed to minimize the prospect of any government action and preventing the majority from getting its way. The state needs not just a handful of constitutional amendments, but a brand new constitution that would allow government to do its job. It has long been a belief of conservatives that, as Thomas Jefferson said, the government that governs best governs least. But “least” does retain some content. It does not mean ignoring dire problems. It does not mean government by stalemate, inaction, fear and hibernation.
(Top image: "The Land of Cockaigne" by Pieter Bruegel)
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