It was Speaker of the House Ben Lujan who slipped a $75 million appropriation into the capital outlay bill in this year’s legislative session when no one was looking. The money, which Gov. Bill Richardson later vetoed, was designated for the state’s share of future water rights settlements with American Indian tribes.
Several sources confirmed Lujan’s name for me Wednesday.
Lujan apparently made the admission during a meeting with more than a dozen legislators and Richardson just before the governor made massive cuts in spending bills. Sources tell me the governor asked who put the funding in the bill and why, since the state engineer had said previously that the money wasn’t needed this year.
Lujan took credit at that meeting, sources said.
One source tells me some members of the Senate discovered the water rights settlement funding in the bill just after midnight on the last day of the session. The surprise came after the House approved an amended version and sent it back to the Senate, where it had already been approved without the funding. The senators apparently panicked because they realized the bill was too big and they were running out of time, a source tells me.
At that point, the governor’s office was also made aware that the bill was way too large and included the water rights settlement money.
The House had added some other funding to the bill as well, and it was all approved.
Ultimately, Richardson slashed $268 million from spending bills, leaving in place $5.1 billion to finance government operations and $710 million in capital outlay improvement projects. He said he cut the water rights settlement money because no one had consulted him before it was added to the bill.
Lujan had apparently not consulted anyone, at least with the kind of sincerity given to other major funding proposals, says one source. The $75 million, had it not been vetoed, would have been the single largest expense in the capital outlay bill.
The source pointed out that the legislature spent hours or days discussing funding for other proposals, including the spaceport and pre-kindergarten, but the water rights settlement money was one of hundreds of proposals that was, at most, mentioned once or twice.
And yet Lujan slipped it in on the last day of the session.
It had been discussed before the session. Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Sandia Peak, told the Las Cruces Sun-News in December that the Water and Natural Resources Committee endorsed the funding.
So if the proposal was ready to go, why wait until the closing hours of the session to sneak in the funding, and leave the governor and others in the dark about it?
And another question: Why has there been so much secrecy about who decided to sneak the funding into the bill? Members of the Legislative Finance Committee said earlier this week they didn’t understand how the funding got into the bill. No one has been willing to name Lujan on the record.
One legislator told me outing the influential Lujan is dangerous. As an example of his power, a source pointed out that more of Lujan’s capital outlay money survived the governor’s cuts than that of any other legislator.
Well, that’s not really true. That analysis was done by people who didn’t know Lujan was behind the water rights settlement funding. It’s likely, taking that into account, that Lujan had more funding slashed than any other legislator.
Which seems appropriate, since he tried to grab more than his share of the cash, one source said.
Still, Lujan does control the House, and that’s why no one has been willing to name him for the record.
“You can tell the truth, but if you do, you will incur the speaker’s wrath,” one legislator told me. The source compared Lujan’s control of the House to the notorious, ruthless control Tom DeLay used to exert over the United States House of Representatives.
I’m sure Lujan will love that comparison.
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The Associated Press reported late Wednesday that Wanda Valentine of Tularosa, a Democrat who filed to run for the House seat in District 57 held by Republican Dan Foley, was disqualified because she failed to sign the declaration of candidacy she submitted on filing day last week.
Not that Valentine had any chance of knocking out Foley in November, but Democrats have spent a lot of time in the past week criticizing Republicans for not running candidates in many races, especially in Doña Ana County. When Republicans said they are seeking quality, not quantity, many Democrats snickered with disbelief.
I’m sure Republicans are chuckling over Valentine’s forgetting to sign the most important form of her campaign.
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We’re at the end of my blogging week again. I’ll probably put up a link to another interesting Web site tomorrow. Come back for that if you want, but be sure to come back Monday for the newest developments in New Mexico politics. Thanks for reading.