{"id":2877,"date":"2008-02-14T10:14:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T16:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/02\/house-has-choice-side-with-guv-senate-or-nobody\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T10:14:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T16:14:00","slug":"house-has-choice-side-with-guv-senate-or-nobody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/02\/house-has-choice-side-with-guv-senate-or-nobody\/","title":{"rendered":"House has choice: side with guv, Senate or nobody"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

A group of House Democrats who are willing to cross party lines may end up deciding how the final hours of the legislative session play out today.<\/p>\n

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

The House, including independent Democrats such as Joseph Cervantes<\/a> of Las Cruces<\/st1:city> and Peter Wirth<\/a> of Santa Fe<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>, has a tough choice to make. In the capital outlay fight, its members can side with Gov. Bill Richardson<\/a> and send him Senate Bill 471<\/a>, the new capital outlay bill, or they can side with the Senate and try to override Richardson<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>\u2019s Wednesday-evening veto of House Bill 43<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

Or they can do neither by voting against SB471 or letting the session end without taking any action on it. That would force lawmakers to return to their homes without any capital outlay.<\/p>\n

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

It\u2019s a difficult situation. Cervantes made that clear today in a quote he gave the Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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

\u201cIt would be hard politically to vote to override the governor,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be hard to turn (against) the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

The independent Democrats can unite with the chamber\u2019s Republicans and form the majority. They did it last year to force a compromise on housing authority reform. But there\u2019s also the question of what House Republicans want to do. There\u2019s a lot of political wrangling going on.<\/p>\n

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

The new bill, SB471, moved quickly through two House committees on Wednesday evening and is ready to be considered by the full House. Meanwhile, there doesn\u2019t appear to be momentum to override the veto of HB43, but anything could happen at this point.<\/p>\n

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

The choice, however, is likely between giving Richardson SB471 or refusing to take sides and doing nothing.<\/p>\n

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

Wirth, who voted against SB471 in a committee Wednesday evening, told the newspaper that the Legislature has \u201calready sent a bill to the governor.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

House Democrats met in caucus this morning. The House and Senate are in session now. The next three hours will be interesting. Meanwhile, the Senate may consider today a health care bill, House Bill 147<\/a>, according to the schedule released this morning. But it\u2019s not the governor\u2019s bill. It\u2019s the Health Care Authority Act, sponsored by Rep. Danice Picraux<\/a>, D-Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

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

Stay tuned. I\u2019ll be updating as news happens this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of House Democrats who are willing to cross party lines may end up deciding how the final hours of the legislative session play out today. The House, including independent Democrats such as Joseph Cervantes of Las Cruces and Peter Wirth of Santa Fe, has a tough choice to make. In the capital outlay […]<\/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-2877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877","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=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}