Full agenda, power struggle could color 2008 session

A number of factors make it difficult to predict the outcome of the 30-day legislative session that begins at noon today:

• At the top of the list is the mood of Gov. Bill Richardson. Fresh off a failed presidential campaign, is the governor looking to pump up his résumé with some hot-button policy changes so he can secure another job in Washington? Or will a new Richardson emerge, one who is more amenable to compromise because he wants to serve out his term in Santa Fe with success?

• Is the Senate as prepared to take on the governor as some lawmakers believe? The Senate called the shots during the 2007 regular session, and many Senate leaders are ready to exert even more influence this year. But the governor will be more involved than he was last year, when he was just getting his presidential campaign off the ground. The dynamic between the governor and Senate is further complicated by the fact that Tim Jennings of Roswell, one of the governor’s most outspoken critics, is taking over as president pro tem this year.

• Every lawmaker in the state except those who opt to retire is up for re-election this year. Will any of them really want to tackle controversial policy issues in a year that voters are going to judge their performance?

The agenda is a full one, especially for a 30-day session. All agree that there isn’t a lot of new money, so there should be agreement that the budget can’t increase too much. But what proposals won’t be funded?

Health-care reform, ethics reform and domestic partner benefits are expected to top the governor’s agenda. A proposal to change the school-funding formula will also be considered, as will a plan to provide an alternate path to the ballot for major-party candidates who don’t secure 20 percent at their party’s preprimary nominating conventions.

There’s also the $500 million shortfall in state road funding, and the need to fix a kink in the state’s new minimum wage law. Don’t be surprised if the commuter rail and spaceport again become issues. In addition, many lawmakers want greater legislative oversight of those in the executive branch who create industry-regulating rules. The last is one of five official goals of House Republicans.

It won’t all get done

Already getting a headache? So are many lawmakers. There’s no way this is all getting done in 30 days.

Many express doubt that health-care reform alone can be accomplished during the short session. There will be competing proposals and a wide variety of opinions on what should be done, and the governor obviously hasn’t spent the last few months selling his plan and building the sort of consensus many lawmakers think would be required to secure approval of a far-reaching policy shift in a 30-day session.

Ethics reform had a difficult time last year, and there’s no reason to believe anything has changed that. The same is true of domestic partner benefits.

Which raises the possibility of a special session. If Richardson is looking for approval of some prestige-building legislation and doesn’t get it during the regular session, he may try to force lawmakers to give it to him by calling them back. Then again, special sessions have almost always been disastrous for this governor, and you’d think he would figure that out at some point.

However, since it’s an election year, lawmakers aren’t going to want to come back to Santa Fe when they need to be in their districts campaigning. Several lawmakers – at least two in Las Cruces, two in Albuquerque and two in Roswell – have hotly contested primaries to get to as soon as the session is over. They might be in the mood to give Richardson a little so they can go home.

Then again, as I wrote earlier, the Senate is apparently prepared to take a stand against what its leaders are calling executive encroachment on its power. We could see a stalemate in which no one is willing to blink.

See why it’s so difficult to predict what’s going to happen? The factors at play in the 2008 Legislature are going to make for an interesting, and possibly painful, session.

We’ll know more later today. The governor is scheduled to give his state of the state address at approximately 1 p.m. You can watch it live by clicking here, and I’ll have complete coverage later today.