Kintigh ready to begin webcasting

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State Rep. Dennis Kintigh says he’s ready to begin webcasting meetings of the House Health and Government Affairs and Judiciary committees. Now all he needs is to get formal permission from the chairs of those committees. Kintigh said he asked Rep. Al Park, D-Albuquerque and Judiciary chairman, on Friday and was told to put his request in writing. “I got no indication Rep. Park was opposed, he just said that was the policy,” Kintigh wrote in an e-mail. Kintigh, R-Roswell, plans to put the request in writing on Monday. Continue Reading

NMI to webcast Senate Rules meeting again

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The Senate Rules Committee discussed the proposal to create an independent state ethics commission on Friday but advanced no legislation deal with ethics reform. On Monday, the New Mexico Independent will be back at the committee’s meeting with a live audio and video webcast and a liveblog you can join. Several ethics -reform proposals are on the agenda. I won’t be able to join in, but you can by clicking here. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. Continue Reading

Most voters in poll want contribution limits

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The majority of those who voted in last week’s non-scientific poll on this site said the Legislature should approve campaign contribution limits for elections in New Mexico. Of 153 voters, 118, or 77 percent, said lawmakers should approve contribution limits, while 28, or 18 percent, said they should not, and seven, or 5 percent, said they don’t know. Don’t forget to vote in this week’s poll, located at the top of the right column on this page. Continue Reading

Budget crunch slows housing reform bill

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But proponents remain optimistic that Legislature will approve affordable housing overhaul The state’s budget crunch is making the path toward reform of the affordable housing system a little more difficult, but reform backers are still optimistic that the Legislature will approve an overhaul of the regional housing authority system this session. Senate Bill 20, sponsored by Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, would expand reforms approved in 2007 to further increase oversight and completely restructure the system. But the state is in the process of cutting the budget to deal with the sagging economy, and Papen’s bill asks for $600,000 for the restructuring and the restarting of housing authorities that shut down during the scandalous collapse of most of the system in 2006. The bill has already received a unanimous do-pass recommendation from the Senate Public Affairs Committee, but it’s been bogged down in the Senate Finance Committee because of the funding issue. Papen said she’s in the process of stripping the funding provision from the bill so it can get the Finance Committee’s approval and begin the rest of its trek through the Senate and then the House. Continue Reading

Guv’s approval rating sinks further

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As an investigation into allegations of pay to play continues, along with headlines about controversy and the sinking economy, Gov. Bill Richardson’s popularity has dropped to an all-time low in a new poll. Richardson’s approval is at 41 percent in the poll, conducted by SurveyUSA for KOB-TV in Albuquerque. The Feb. 23 survey of 600 New Mexicans has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Richardson’s previous low of 47 percent in the poll, which has been conducted every month since May 2005, came last month. Continue Reading

Committee revives, OKs conference committee bill

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A day after shelving a proposal to open legislative conference committees and other meetings to the public, members of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee revived and unanimously approved the bill today without making any changes to it. I wrote earlier today that, on a 10-4 vote, the committee on Wednesday tabled House Bill 393, sponsored by Rep. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, and that one concern raised by some members was that the bill would put an end to the appropriations committee’s closed-door meetings. (And I was highly critical of that criticism of the bill.) Cervantes told me following the bill’s tabling that he didn’t know whether he was willing to agree to exempt the committee’s meetings as a way to revive the bill, and he would meet with committee members to discuss their concerns. Apparently, it didn’t take long for Cervantes to address their concerns and convince them that the bill was fine as written. During this afternoon’s meeting, it was Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, who made the motion to reconsider the bill. Continue Reading

Agencies want to reduce access to public records

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Some executive offices want to turn bill designed to increase access to public records into one that creates new ways to deny access Call it a classic win-win situation… just not for the public. What do you do if you head a state agency and a lawmaker is proposing shortening the length of time you have to respond to requests for public records and other changes to the Inspection of Public Records Act that would make your job a little more inconvenient? Propose a bunch of changes to the bill that would create a host of new justifications for denying access to records maintained by your office. If the bill passes, you win by getting new ways to deny access to records. If the bill dies because what you’re proposing will be viewed by many as egregious, you win because you killed a bill that would have, in its original version, placed tougher restrictions on your agency. Continue Reading

Kintigh exploring possibility of webcasting

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State Rep. Dennis Kintigh says he’s interested in joining Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones in webcasting audio and video live from House committee meetings, but he’s not quite ready to commit to doing it. Kintigh, a Republican from Roswell, says he has asked for some help with getting equipped to webcast and needs some training on how to do it. He’s also hoping it won’t be too distracting from his committee work. “The engineer in me wants to test it out before I move forward or commit to doing this,” Kintigh said. “Also, I have not discussed this with the committee chairs, so I’m not sure if it will be permitted.” On Wednesday, the Santa Fe Reporter reported that Kintigh and Candy Spence Ezzell, another Roswell Republican, might start webcasting, and that the tech guy who helped Arnold-Jones start the legislative webcasting revolution in Santa Fe had already equipped laptops for both. Continue Reading

Transparency? We don’t need transparency…

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The legislative committee that crafts the budget shelved a bill last night that would open conference committees to the public because most of its members don’t like that it would also shine light on their own closed-door meetings. Would you believe that the House Appropriations and Finance Committee actually had the gall on Wednesday to table a bill that would open legislative conference committees and some other currently closed-door meetings to the public? That even in these times, when the Richardson administration is dogged by pay-to-play allegations, when the former Senate president has admitted to using the legislative process to help steal millions of dollars in taxpayer money, when scandal after scandal after scandal is further jading an already skeptical public, the majority of members of the committee voted to shelve a proposal that would increase transparency and public confidence in the Legislature? I didn’t believe it when I first heard it. After all, the committee’s members gave the same proposal a do-pass recommendation on a vote of 18-0 the last time it came before them, in 2007. Continue Reading

Meyners + Co. is successful because we’re good

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By Georgie Ortiz and Janet Pacheco-Morton In the spirit of high journalistic standards and following recent coverage referencing Meyners + Company’s entry into the realm of state government auditing for large agencies (see this Feb. 4 New Mexico Independent article), we would like to convey some of what we see as the rest of the story. We feel particularly expert on the subject, since it is we who are in large part at the real heart of Meyners + Company’s government auditing success since joining Meyners in 2004. The New Mexico Office of the State Auditor is responsible for auditing all state and local government agencies. Because of limited resources, the state auditor often contracts out the auditing function to nearly 60 different independent public accountants (IPAs). Continue Reading

The Senate passes… an ethics reform bill!

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The Senate approved this afternoon a bill that would allow a judge to fine an elected official convicted of corruption related to his or her office. On a vote of 29-12, senators sent Senate Bill 141, sponsored by Minority Whip William Payne, R-Albuquerque, to the House for consideration. It’s the most visible piece of ethics reform approved so far this year by the Senate. Under the bill, a judge could impose a fine when an elected official commits a felony connected to his position. The fine could be no greater than the elected official’s salary and benefits, and would be an additional penalty on top of the standard sentence the official receives. Continue Reading

Creating a responsible budget

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By Tom TaylorOn behalf of the House Republican caucus New Mexico’s state government is experiencing its most difficult budget challenge in recent memory. While the economic slowdown is playing a role, New Mexicans should also be aware that current budget problems have been made worse by the 54-percent increase in government spending and the 27-percent increase (5,700) in new government employees that have occurred during the six years of the Richardson administration. With these increases in spending and personnel, every state resident should be asking why the quality and performance of state services have not improved by 54 percent. In other words, taxpayers should be wondering what these billions of dollars in additional state spending bought. We legislators must now face the problem of balancing revenues with expenditures. Continue Reading

Once again, committee skips ethics reform

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But Senate Rules Chair Linda Lopez says bills will be voted on in the coming days This article has been updated.For nearly two weeks, the New Mexico Independent webcast ethics hearings from the Senate Rules Committee — some of them with the help of Mark Bralley — and substantive ethics reform discussions took place each time. But on Monday, NMI was unable to do it. Without a camera in the room, no ethics reform was discussed. NMI was back today. KUNM’s Jim Williams was also present and recording the meeting. Continue Reading

Report: More GOP legislators to start webcasting

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It appears that House Republicans are getting ready to expand their audio and video webcasting of committee meetings. Reps. Candy Spence Ezzell and Dennis Kintigh of Roswell may be preparing to join “Lady Sunlight,” Janice Arnold-Jones of Albuquerque, in webcasting their committee meetings, according to the Santa Fe Reporter. The newspaper’s blog posting quotes Howard DeLaCruz-Bancroft, the tech guy helping Arnold-Jones webcast her meetings, as saying he’s already prepped laptops with webcasting equipment for Ezzell and Kintigh. Ezzell sits on the House Energy and Natural Resources and Labor and Human Resources committees, and Kintigh sits on the Health and Government Affairs and Judiciary committees. Continue Reading