Let’s be honest: Though it’s become crystal clear in the last day that, certainly and without a doubt, the proposal to create a state ethics commission is dead in the New Mexico Legislature (picture feigned surprise), we already knew that.
We knew the proposal had no chance of passing the Senate. Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen and an ethics commission opponent, pretty much told reporters that before the start of the session and a couple of times during the session. We all know he controls what gets heard on the Senate floor and what doesn’t, and he’s also an influential voting member of the Senate Rules Committee, where ethics-reform bills tend to go to die.
His statements added to the fact that the ethics commission proposal has never, despite several years of lobbying, made it to the floor of the Senate for consideration.
That’s why, though I’ve focused on ethics reform this session, I’ve only devoted one in-depth story to the ethics commission proposal.
The proposal was dead on arrival.
An ethics commission bill passed the House this week, as it has the last two years, but it was immediately referred in the Senate to the Rules Committee — which is done meeting for the session. And the several ethics commission bills introduced in the Senate this year, including one sponsored by Rules Committee Chairwoman Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, have literally languished in the Rules Committee for the entire session.
One has to begin wondering if some of these bills are being introduced simply so their sponsors can say they introduced them. It’s not as if they honestly thought their bills were going to pass.
If you want the official word on the death of the ethics commission proposal in the 2009 session, you can click here.