![\"Susana](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Martinez-Susana-336x196.jpg\")
Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>
Gov. Susana Martinez<\/p><\/div>\n
Her office also released a statement making clear she’s directing her wrath primarily at the Senate, even though she vetoed one bill sponsored by a House Democrat among the six she nixed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“Sadly, the Senate continues to sit on its hands and pass meaningless bills like the ‘official state winter holiday song’ about posole and tamales,” Martinez spokesman Michael Lonergan said. “That\u2019s disappointing, and that failure of the Senate to live up to its constitutional duties, including passing a balanced budget, has led to many vetoes of unnecessary bills.”<\/p>\n
“They need to pass a balanced budget that doesn\u2019t raise taxes and protects classroom spending and send it up to the governor\u2019s desk,” Lonergan said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Martinez signed two bills<\/a>. House Bill 29<\/a>, sponsored by Rep. Cathrynn Brown, R-Carlsbad, creates an advisory board to help address a massive sinkhole<\/a> below the city of Carlsbad that is in danger of collapsing. And House Bill 197<\/a>, sponsored by Rep. Jason Harper, R-Rio Rancho, relates to accounting regulations for out-of-state residents.<\/p>\n A day earlier, Martinez vetoed six bills<\/a> sponsored by Democrats — all but one of them senators<\/a>\u00a0— without giving any explanation.<\/p>\n Lawmakers, meanwhile, continued sending bills to the governor on Thursday, including one sponsored by Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, that aims to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers<\/a>.<\/p>\n The dynamic this session between the governor and lawmakers — except House Republicans —\u00a0has been contentious. It began with a fight over funding for the legislative session itself and emergency funding for courts.<\/a>\u00a0It\u00a0has continued from there.<\/p>\n The chair of the Senate Rules Committee, Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, hasn\u2019t held confirmation hearings<\/a> for most of the governor\u2019s appointees. Martinez\u2019s\u00a0priority bills, like mandatory retention for third-grade students who can\u2019t read at grade level, have lingered<\/a>\u00a0without being given hearings in time to move through the legislative process. When the governor\u00a0took time to write a lengthy explanation<\/a> for her veto of legislation that would forbid penalizing teachers on evaluations for using their sick leave, the Senate overrode the veto<\/a>. It’s the first time either chamber has overrode a Martinez veto.<\/p>\n And some lawmakers, including Cervantes, have accused Martinez\u00a0of pay-to-play<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a charge the governor has denied \u2014 because of legislation that would have benefited campaign contributors.<\/p>\n Martinez has thus far signed 10\u00a0House bills\u00a0— one with partial vetoes — while fully vetoing three House bills, according to her website<\/a>. Meanwhile, she’s signed two Senate bills and vetoed 10, according to her website<\/a>.<\/p>\n The debate over balancing the state’s budget and increasing reserves to avoid a credit downgrade has\u00a0been the primary focus of the session. Martinez has signaled a willingness to sign into law eliminations of some tax exemptions but not straight tax increases — though there’s a fine line between those\u00a0two types of changes to\u00a0bring more money into state government.<\/p>\n Negotiations have continued for days between lawmakers and the governor over a final budget without much public discussion. On March 11<\/a>, the Senate, on bipartisan votes, passed the budget bill,\u00a0House Bill 2<\/a>, and\u00a0HB 202<\/a>, which could raise more than $300 million in new revenue depending on which tax hikes Martinez signed and which she vetoed.<\/p>\n Though the bills had received prior House approval, the Senate amended both, so another House vote on each is necessary. And since March 11,\u00a0there’s been no public movement in that direction.<\/p>\n The session ends at noon on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gov. Susana Martinez’s office made clear Thursday that she’s directing her wrath primarily at the Senate in the session’s final days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3329,196,107,271],"class_list":["post-306977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2017-legislative-session","tag-budget","tag-roundhouse","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306977","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=306977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}