There’s an interesting race developing in Doña Ana County between two longtime Democrats running for magistrate judge.
Olivia Nevarez Garcia was appointed to the position last year by Gov. Bill Richardson after Magistrate Judge Reuben Galvan resigned. At the time, Garcia was the county’s probate judge and a successful real estate agent.
Maria E. Rodriguez held a different magistrate judge seat briefly in 2004. Richardson appointed her after the resignation of Anne Segal, who packed up and left town in protest after losing her 2004 primary bid for a district judgeship.
Two days after Richardson appointed Rodriguez, the county Democratic Party picked Richard Silva over Rodriguez to run for the position in the November 2004 election. Sources tell me that was done because Richardson didn’t consult the county party before making his choice. He just called up State Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Doña Ana, and appointed the candidate she named.
In rejecting Rodriguez, the county party was asserting its independence.
When Silva was elected, Rodriguez had to quietly pack up the office she had called her own for only a few weeks. But she told me then that she would be back.
Rodriguez has some big-time supporters, including Sen. Garcia and Mary Gail Gwaltney, the mother of the county Democratic Party. She’ll end up being the candidate of the north county, one source tells me.
Garcia has the support of many legislators from the south county, the source tells me, including Sen. Mary Kay Papen and Reps. Mary Helen Garcia and Joseph Cervantes. Garcia is married to the treasurer of the Cervantes campaign, New Mexico State University government professor Jose Z. Garcia.
Adding to the drama is the fact that Magistrate Judge Susana Chaparro, another Democrat, shocked everyone by announcing her resignation at the end of filing day last week. Had Rodriguez known Chaparro was resigning, she probably would have filed to run for her seat instead of running against Garcia.
Though there is tension under the surface, you probably won’t see any dirty campaigning in this election. As one source notes, “judges can’t really run on any issues, and can’t or shouldn’t attack opponents – judicial code of conduct and all.”
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You probably noticed, but the capital outlay process in our state is a mess.
Sometime in the closing hours of this year’s legislative session, $75 million was slipped in to the final version of the capital outlay bill to fund the state’s share of future water rights settlements with American Indian tribes.
It passed. Then Gov. Bill Richardson announced he had vetoed it. But he forgot to do the actual crossing out, and later had to issue more paperwork to strike it from the capital outlay bill.
Now members of the Legislative Finance Committee say they don’t understand how the funding got in there in the first place.
Earlier this week representatives, senators, and even the governor’s office said they had no idea who added in the appropriation in the first place.
Finance Secretary James Jimenez said his office was concerned it had not been consulted about the appropriation prior to its inclusion in the capital outlay bill. That’s why the governor vetoed it.
So Richardson didn’t put it in, and no individual legislator gets $75 million. Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming and vice chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said the appropriation must have been added in the House, because it wasn’t in the Senate version of the bill.
If that’s true, does anyone really believe that Speaker of the House Ben Lujan doesn’t know what happened?
This is a good example of why conference committees need to be open to the public. As this snafu illustrates, many legislative decisions are made in secret. New Mexico is one of only a few states that allows crucial decisions to be made behind closed doors and encourages a culture of secrecy that carries over to all sorts of back-room deals, even outside committee meetings.
Kudos to Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, and Rep. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, for sponsoring legislation that would open up the conference committees to the public.
Shame on Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen; Senate President Ben Altamirano, D-Silver City; Lujan of Santa Fe; and Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, who all publicly opposed the legislation and used their clout to kill the proposal.
Many opponents said the decision making would just be done outside conference committees if they were made public. It’s that attitude that’s the problem.
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That’s all I have today. Thanks for reading, and come back again tomorrow. By the way, if you have any suggestions to improve my blog, send me an e-mail.