Lawmakers, let people see how you’re spending their money

COMMENTARY: Some state senators seem intent on ensuring our state never rises out of poverty.

New Mexico is the only state that gives each legislator a share of available infrastructure money each year to dole out for things like roads, parks and school improvements.

And our state lets lawmakers decide whether the public ever gets to know who funded which project. Many choose to keep their lists secret.

There’s only one reason to conceal which roads you’re paving: You’re doing something sneaky. Maybe you’re taking bribes. Maybe you don’t want to explain to someone why their road won’t be paved. Either way, it’s wrong.

We’ve seen shenanigans before. In 2003, a state senator used $110,000 in public money to pave a road outside his legislative district that provided access to a business he owned. Lee Rawson said he was keeping a promise the City of Las Cruces failed to keep to his father, as if that somehow made it ethical for him to spend public money to benefit his business.

There are probably many similar situations we don’t know about because of the secrecy. Without transparency, there’s little opportunity for the public to hold lawmakers accountable for such crap.

And that’s the point.

The Legislature and governor set the tone for how government in New Mexico operates. State lawmakers are unpaid, which limits who can afford to serve and makes them overly dependent on campaign contributions. And they have secret slush funds of public money to dole out. In other words, the elected officials who set policy and distribute funding for state and local governments operate their own system of waste, fraud, abuse and corruption — a system that encourages people to grab what they can for themselves, their families and their friends, instead of a system that encourages ethical government focused on bettering New Mexico.

That filters down to cities, counties, school districts and less-watched government agencies like water and sanitation districts. In a state with a small private sector, where people are overly dependent on government jobs, that attitude filters down to how people live their lives. Corruption begets poverty.

So it was encouraging early in the current legislative session to see members of the state House unanimously approve legislation to require public disclosure of which lawmakers funded which infrastructure projects.

But in the other chamber, a similar bill met its end in the Senate Rules Committee. Two Democrats — Mary Kay Papen of Las Cruces and Clemente Sanchez of Grants — voted with Republicans to keep capital outlay funding secret.

Sanchez said there’s “nothing corrupt” about the capital outlay system and objected to the media and other groups “wanting us to do the work for them,” according to the Albuquerque Journal.

Kick that guy out of office. Seriously. It’s his job to make it easy for people to understand what their government is doing and participate. If he doesn’t believe that’s his job, he shouldn’t have the job.

The other version of this bill, the one the House approved, now awaits a hearing in the Senate Rules Committee. So there’s another chance for at least one senator to flip sides and do the right thing. I hope somebody does, and the Senate and governor join the House in approving this critical policy change.

Because if our elected officials don’t fundamentally believe New Mexicans should know how their lawmakers are spending their money, they’re part of the problem. New Mexico won’t improve until we reject our government’s culture of corruption.

Heath Haussamen is NMPolitics.net’s editor and publisher. Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary here.