{"id":1594,"date":"2007-04-17T08:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-17T14:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/04\/guv-to-sign-road-bill-close-book-on-special-session\/"},"modified":"2007-04-17T08:38:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-17T14:38:00","slug":"guv-to-sign-road-bill-close-book-on-special-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2007\/04\/guv-to-sign-road-bill-close-book-on-special-session\/","title":{"rendered":"Guv to sign road bill, close book on special session"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Gov. Bill Richardson<\/a> will sign a road-funding bill approved during last month\u2019s special session of the Legislature at a ceremony today in Albuquerque<\/st1:city><\/st1:place>. <\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

House Bill 2<\/a>, sponsored by Rep. Dan Silva<\/a>, D-Albuquerque, provides about $108 million for roads around the state, including $10 million for a road to Spaceport America<\/a>. Richardson<\/st1:city> plans to sign the bill during a ceremony marking the opening of a train station in Albuquerque<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> at 1:30 p.m. today.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> has already signed House Bill 6<\/a>, sponsored by Speaker of the House Ben Lujan<\/a>, D-Namb\u00e9, which extends the state\u2019s public financing system to races for appeals judges and Supreme Court justices. The system is voluntary.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:City> vetoed a provision in the bill that would have implemented the system only if voters approved a constitutional amendment that ended the retention system. Even without that provision, the system only applies to contested races. Public financing can\u2019t be used in retention races or other races where a judge has no opponent.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> signed the bill last week.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cWith the signing of this bill, New Mexico<\/st1:state> becomes one of only two states in the country to have public financing for judicial races and fulfills a key recommendation of my Ethics Reform Task Force,\u201d Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said in a news release. \u201cPublic financing helps assure that Court of Appeals and Supreme Court judges can run for office without the pressures of partisan campaigning or fundraising.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Once Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> signs the road bill today, the state can close the book on the difficult special session. But the ethics task force will soon be at work again, and Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> has said he may call another special session later this year for ethics reform. Lt. Gov. Diane Denish<\/a> has said she is interested in a special session to deal with health care.<\/p>\n

\n

A prior version of this posting incorrectly stated that the public financing system would apply to retention races.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gov. Bill Richardson will sign a road-funding bill approved during last month\u2019s special session of the Legislature at a ceremony today in Albuquerque. House Bill 2, sponsored by Rep. Dan Silva, D-Albuquerque, provides about $108 million for roads around the state, including $10 million for a road to Spaceport America. Richardson plans to sign the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}