New Mexico Mercury

The greatest irony of New Mexico public policy is that on the one hand the state has one of the most liberal social agendas in the nation while its political institutions are among the nation’s most hidebound and its economic policies among the most conservative.

Gay marriage, medical marijuana, drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants and now doctor-assisted suicide are path-breaking reforms in this state.

On the other hand the state has refused to create an ethics commission or a nonpartisan redistricting commission, rejects public financing of most political campaigns, refuses to spend the state’s billions of so-called ‘rainy-day savings” during this unprecedentedly rainy day and has done almost nothing to regulate campaign spending or political fundraising.

With its workers mired in one of the longest and deepest recessions of any state, New Mexico has not raised the minimum wage and actually reduced the length of unemployment insurance payments.

With a poor educational system blamed in part for a declining workforce and more people leaving the state than moving in, New Mexico has reacted by closing schools, cutting back the number of teachers, eliminating programs and increasing class sizes.

Starting today, the New Mexico Legislature will get another chance to reform the political process, improve education, find better ways of protecting children, mitigate the recession and remedy other long-standing woes, but few observers hold out much hope it will do any of these things.

Part, but only part, of the problem is divided government with a Republican governor and a Democratic Legislature. Another part is due to the unusual cross-party alliances that have de facto control of the Senate and make the House an unpredictable seesaw, vitiating any concerted effort by either party to create a coherent legislative agenda. 

Finally a few powerful committee chairmen committed to the status quo are positioned to frustrate the will of the majority by bottling up legislation. Such was the case last year when Sen. John Arthur Smith refused to let his Senate Finance Committee vote on a constitutional amendment to spend a small percentage of the income of the permanent fund on early childhood education—despite the strong support for the measure in both the House and the Senate.

What can we look for this session? What should voters be paying attention to? I asked those questions of Albuquerque Democrat Dede Feldman, who left the Senate a year ago after 16 years and who just wrote a colorful and authoritative book on the Legislature that I reviewed in this space two weeks ago.

“Watch the constitutional amendments,” she said, “That’s where the most interesting action is going to be.”

She mentioned several reasons. This is a 30-day session concentrating on the budget, about which there is little disagreement and in which there is no dramatic innovation. Except for taxation and spending, a 30-day session can consider no bills unless put on the “call” by the governor.

Constitutional amendments, however, can be considered at any time and, equally important, don’t need the signature of the governor. They do, however, need approval of a majority of the members of both houses—not just a majority of those voting—as well as a majority of the voters, which is the only opportunity that ordinary new Mexicans have to vote directly on state policies and programs.

Amendments generally encounter less scrutiny, fewer committee referrals and less roadblocks from the leaders than do ordinary bills. And they are handy tools for legislators to score points with constituents. High-profile, controversial amendments can serve as wedge issues, ensuring a relatively high turnout of one-issue voters at the next election.

Thus many of the issues that will most directly impact New Mexicans will be the subject of proposed constitutional amendments. Gay marriage, recreational marijuana, early childhood education and an ethics commission are only four of the many issues that have already been filed as constitutional amendments. Many more are sure to come.

The popularity of such amendments is one reason why the state Constitution, with hundreds of pages and still growing year by year, is one of the longest in the country.

Another reason is that New Mexico, unlike almost all other Western states, does not allow for citizen initiatives to put proposals on the ballot. Only the Legislature can put them on the ballot. Real reform means asking legislators to change the system that is responsible for them being in the Legislature in the first place, thus jeopardizing their own re-election.

Here are some of the especially interesting constitutional amendments to watch out for in the 30-day session that will open at noon today:

• The biggest fight is going to be over a constitutional amendment allocating a small part of the income of the state permanent fund to early childhood education.
• Unhappy with the way Gov. Susana Martinez has used her new authority to run the state Education Department, some legislators want to repeal the constitutional amendment that recently took that power away from the Public Education Commission and gave it to the Education Department.
• Conservatives opposed to the state Supreme Court ruling validating gay marriage want a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to a man and a woman.
• Building on the success of recreational marijuana sales in Colorado, a constitutional amendment sponsored by Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino would allow New Mexicans too to get legally stoned.
• New Mexico is one of the few states without an ethics commission to enforce rules on such things as conflicts of interest and campaign finance. A recurring constitutional amendment proposal would create such a commission.
• Last year the governor vetoed a bill to raise the minimum wage. This year a constitutional amendment would try to accomplish a similar objective by raising the base salary to $10 from the present $7.50.
• Other constitutional amendments may try to reform the way the Legislature does business by paying its members, changing the length of sessions and imposing term limits.
• By comparison with such emotionally charged constitutional changes, ordinary legislative bills seem pretty humdrum.
• There will be a fight over whether, as the Legislative Finance Committee proposed, to give all state workers a 1.5 percent pay raise or, as the governor prefers, to give some state workers a slightly larger raise and the others nothing at all.
• There will also be a renewal of the annual effort by the governor to stop the issuance of driver’s licenses to undocumented workers. Eight states have copied the permissive New Mexico law since the last time the governor tried for repeal a year ago.
• The governor also wants to shift a small percentage of state education funds from automatic formulas to specific programs that she favors, such as recycling third-graders who can’t read.
• And once again the Legislature will try to thread the maze of casino interests to approve compacts for Navajo gambling.
• But the biggest news of this session may not be what the Legislature passes but what it investigates. The governor’s three largest departments, Education, Health and Human Services, and Children, Youth and Families, are all in serious trouble with legislators. Contentious hearings are scheduled for all three departments. The way those hearings go could help determine the future not only of those departments but of the governor’s reelection effort in November.