Thomas Molitor
The state budget just went Kafkaesque.
The governor-elect – let’s call her M. – is struggling to gain access to the mysterious financial authorities of a castle known as the capitol, who govern the state budget using unknown and surrealistic accounting methods.
Last week we learned that New Mexico’s budget deficit may be nearly 75 percent higher than the state’s bureaucratic bean-counters told us. Outgoing Gov. Richardson’s finance secretary, Dannette Burch, says that incoming Gov. Martinez and state lawmakers will face a $450 million revenue shortfall for Fiscal Year 2012, starting next July 1, just to maintain the state’s current level of services.
That’s a nearly 75 percent higher number than the Legislative Finance Committee’s earlier projected shortfall of $260 million.
Martinez accuses the Richardson administration of hiding budget information and playing “financial shell games.” Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos fired back, saying Martinez doesn’t “understand the state budget.”
Well then, who does, Gilbert?
The Department of Finance and Administration, State Budget Division, oversees and administers the New Mexico state budget. On its website, it says it “provides high quality, timely and easy to understand analysis and recommendations for agency budgets, legislation and performance issues.”
Easy to understand? Then why the seventy-five percent discrepancy among the experts?
The current copy of the Executive Budget Fiscal Year 2011 (July 1, 2010 – June 30, 2011) runs 574 pages. Go ahead and download a pdf copy of it for your nightstand library – if somnambulism is your thing. (C’mon, I’m sure you are just dying to find out the number of research documents and educational activities provided by the state historian!)
Gallegos also criticized M. for her campaign promise of balancing the budget without tax increases and without spending cuts to education and Medicaid. Public education and Medicaid make up about 60 percent of the state’s $5.6 billion budget. This does present a rabbit-out-of-the-hat challenge for M. and state legislators once they take office in less than two months.
It wasn’t such a problem a month ago when our duly-elected candidates were stuffing our mailboxes with campaign literature making promises.
A simple mathematical formula
State spending is determined by a simple mathematical formula: X – Y = Deficit.
X is what we all want from the government, which is everything in the world. Y is how much we are willing to pay for this in taxes, which is nothing.
We can’t bet on revenues making up for the “no-tax-raises/no-education-no-Medicaid cut” policy – as the projection for the country’s economy as a whole doesn’t appear too rosy for 2011.
M., at the moment, is sticking firm on education and Medicaid. But she did tell reporters last week that layoffs of state employees remain on the table as an option to balance next year’s budget, even though they aren’t her first option.
I don’t see how M. can avoid not making more spending cuts. I took a layman’s glance through the Fiscal Year 2011 budget document, and I can’t help thinking there are plenty places to reduce the current size of government. Starting with agency consolidations and program cuts with names such as:
- Organic Commodity Commission
- Board of Examiners for Architects
- Office of African American Affairs
- Juvenile Public Advisory Board
- Board of Nursing
- State Racing Commission
- Board of Veterinary Medicine
- Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad Commission
- Commission on the Status of Women
- The Rail Runner
Nobody wants their programs cut, but nobody wanted this economy, either.
In less than two months M. crosses the drawbridge and enters the governor’s office at the state capitol. What she and all New Mexicans deserve is straight answers to the actual state of the budget – not the financial legerdemain she was given last week by the outgoing magician.
Molitor is a regular columnist for this site. You can reach him at tgmolitor@comcast.net.
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