Education, health care took back seat in state budget

By Sens. Dede Feldman and Cynthia Nava

Voters hear a lot about the importance of education and health care during every election season, but the true test of our elected officials’ priorities can be found in the state’s recently approved budget.

Ordinary citizens have been making extraordinary efforts to improve New Mexico this year by participating in town halls, task forces and the like. Yet, in spite of the Herculean efforts of hundreds of citizens who have come together to grapple with tough issues such as the state school funding formula, the inability of small employers to afford health coverage for their employees and the growing number of uninsured people in New Mexico, this year’s budget stops short of making the investments we need to assure a healthy, well-educated New Mexico, now and into the next decade.

As chairs of the Senate Education and Public Affairs committees, which deal with two areas that are often played off against one another – schools and health care – we are very disappointed.

In this year’s session of health-care reform, so dominated by proposals for universal health care and coverage, we underfunded Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program that now covers almost 190,000 low-income children, by $11 million. That’s the amount the administration told legislative budget-makers was needed to keep the program whole. It did not include the additional $9 million to enroll 9,000 more low-income children, the first logical step toward broader coverage for all.

That’s distressing since there is a fairly broad consensus that, with three federal dollars for every state dollar devoted to the program, Medicaid is a great financial investment. Also, an ounce of prevention for babies – in terms of immunization, treatment for developmental delays and regular checkups – is worth a pound of cure, especially when those cures – in the form of special education or juvenile incarceration – are expensive.

Healthier children are also better learners who can take advantage of some of the opportunities we are beginning to create for them in pre-kindergarten and early childhood education, two other areas where there is overwhelming evidence that the investment pays off handsomely.

But it was in the field of education that the recent session was perhaps the most disappointing for child advocates.

During the last two years, policymakers and citizens have been examining the public-school funding formula at a cost of $1 million for a task force and other research. An independent, out-of-state consultant has told us that we are under-funding our K-12 schools by $350 million, and a lawsuit looms if we do not remedy the situation.

But what happened in the recent legislative session? The Senate Finance Committee did not even schedule hearings on the issue, and in spite of all the work and the warnings, the issue died without a plan to go forward.

Perhaps it’s not so unusual for existing programs and new initiatives to go unfunded in tough budget years. But if we can find funds for a myriad of programs, not to mention tax breaks for a vast array of industries, surely we can find the money to enable sick kids to go to the doctor and support our schools, which are still the best avenues to opportunity and success.

For us, it’s a matter of priorities – and values.

Nava, D-Las Cruces, chairs the Senate Education Committee. Feldman, D-Albuquerque, chairs the Senate Public Affairs Committee.