Senate might derail Richardson’s special session

There’s a chance that the New Mexico Senate will only convene today long enough to adjourn.

The reasons for Gov. Bill Richardson’s call for a special session can be summed up easily: The Senate didn’t do what he wanted. A number of senators, however, say there’s good reason for that.

What’s not clear is how many Senate Democrats will opt to try to derail the special session when it begins at noon today.

“We’ll see what happens,” said Sen. Leonard Lee Rawson, R-Las Cruces and the minority whip. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we just meet and turn around and adjourn.”

House Minority Whip Dan Foley, R-Roswell, thinks that’s a strong possibility.

“I’ve been called by multiple Democratic senators to say they’re going to be sine die (adjourning without setting a time to return) today,” he said.

Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Doña Ana and the majority whip, sounded like she might agree in comments made Saturday to the Las Cruces Sun-News.

“He doesn’t understand that the votes are not there, but he’s going to spend the taxpayers’ money to bring us back here,” she told the newspaper about Richardson.

By Monday, Garcia sounded more conciliatory, telling me she came home for the two-day break to repack, and was heading back to Santa Fe at 6 a.m. today.

“I’ll be there,” she said, but added that she believes at least two senators won’t show up because they’re out of the state.

Rawson said he doesn’t know of any who won’t show up, since Richardson has the authority to call them back. But he said Richardson’s decision to give lawmakers only a two-day break was “extremely inconsiderate.”

“We put our businesses and families on hold for two months,” Rawson said, adding that his son returns to Las Cruces today after three months away.

“But where will I be? I’ll be in Santa Fe,” he said.

Richardson has a number of items he wants approved during the special session, including public financing of judicial campaigns, campaign contribution limits, a state ethics commission, a registry for methamphetamine laboratories, tougher penalties for domestic violence, $208 million for road projects, and domestic partner benefits.

They’re proposals that all passed easily in the House, but had a rougher time in the Senate. Many weren’t approved; those that passed were amended to the dissatisfaction of the House and governor.

Putting the House in the middle

In the final hour of the regular session, Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen, took a phone call from either the governor or a staffer. What was said has not been disclosed, but the Senate almost immediately recessed so Democrats could hold a secret caucus. They came back and killed one of the seven proposals for which Richardson has called them back – contribution limits – and let time expire on another – the road funding bill.

If the Senate quits the special session without working on the bills, the more conciliatory House will be caught in a difficult position. After three days, it can call the Senate back to work, but doing so would be taking the governor’s side. Adjourning would be taking the Senate’s side.

There’s a good chance House Republicans would want to side with the Senate. A large number of Democrats would want to side with the governor. A handful of middle-of-the-road House Democrats, who have often sided with Republicans this year, may end up deciding the fate of the special session.

“I have no idea how productive the session will be,” said House Majority Leader Ken Martinez, D-Grants. “I have not had a chance to sit down with the House and Senate leadership or the executive.”

‘A fairly big enterprise’

Martinez called the governor’s agenda for the special session “a fairly big enterprise.”

The main reasons for the special session are the ethics bills and the road funding. The Senate approved two of seven ethics reform proposals – one that made a number of changes to the Governmental Conduct Act and another that placed limits on gifts to state officials and candidates for state offices.

But it killed, in the final moments of the regular session, limits on campaign contributions, and it never heard the proposals for public financing of judicial races and the ethics commission.

Rawson pointed out that the Senate approved contribution limits that would apply to gifts to candidates and political action committees after a lengthy debate about the fact that Republicans are more dependent on gifts from individuals and Democrats are more dependent on gifts from groups.

The generally less partisan Senate agreed that the bill’s intent was to level the playing field, and amended the proposal to apply to PACs as a way to do that. The House, whose Democratic leadership operates the powerful Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, took the provision out of the bill before sending it back to meet its death by one vote in the Senate.

On the ethics commission, Rawson pointed out that the Legislature has its own joint committee to look into complaints against lawmakers, and said an ethics commission should not apply to the Legislature. I asked why the legislative committee hadn’t investigated Rep. Richard Vigil, D-Ribera, whose wife threw a $9,700 private, invitation-only party last year that was dubbed as a workshop for professional development. The party was paid for by capital outlay money secured by her husband.

Rawson said the committee hasn’t investigated because no one has filed a complaint. Anyone can file a complaint, he said, but the committee hasn’t met in several years because no one has done that.

As to the road-funding bill – dubbed GRIP II (Governor Richardson’s Improvement Plan II) – Rawson pointed out that the projects funded by GRIP I haven’t been completed. The project is more than $300 million short because of material cost increases and the state’s failure to secure federal funding it planned to receive for the commuter rail.

And, Rawson said, GRIP I was for state roads. GRIP II would fund county and municipal roads, which some lawmakers think the state should only fund through capital outlay money.

Most important, Rawson said, is that senators don’t believe the GRIP II money would cover all the projects listed.

“We can’t trust their numbers on GRIP II because their projections on GRIP I were so bad,” Rawson said.

Also included in the bill is $25 million for a road from Interstate 25 in Doña Ana County to Spaceport America in Sierra County, in Rawson’s district. That money is also controversial.

“A lot of the legislators don’t like the spaceport,” Rawson said.

A presidentially motivated special session?

Richardson is set to speak later this month to a national gay-rights group and is hoping to raise a significant amount of money. Many suspect that’s why he is so insistent on domestic partner benefits, a topic he didn’t mention in his state of the state address.

Richardson didn’t begin openly pushing for the bill until the last week of the session, and the bill doesn’t carry his endorsement.

Last week the House approved the legislation, then sent it to the Senate, which amended it to allow benefits not only for homosexual couples, but for people in any number of living situations Rawson called “partnerships” – whether it be senior citizens living together to help care for each other, a father and daughter living together or other situations.

The House amended the bill back to apply to only homosexual couples, and the Senate let it die.

Rawson questioned why the special session couldn’t have waited a month – why Richardson had to bring 112 exhausted lawmakers who had made other plans back immediately.

“What has to be done tomorrow?” he asked. “Oh, maybe domestic partner benefits if you’re going to speak to a national group.”

During his Saturday news conference announcing the special session, Richardson said the special session has nothing to do with his presidential run, adding that GRIP II isn’t exactly a hot national topic. However, others pointed out, it could make a number of business owners happy enough to give money to a certain candidate for president. And domestic partner benefits is certainly a national topic.

“I do things for what’s right for the people of New Mexico and also what’s right for this country,” Richardson said.

We’ll see in a few hours what the Senate thinks about that.