Paying legislators is one of the proposals being discussed by Gov. Bill Richardson\u2019s task force on ethics reform. It\u2019s an idea worth consideration.<\/p>\n
Because Paying legislators would give more New Mexicans the ability to serve, which could increase competition for seats and push our legislators to follow higher ethical standards. We have many excellent legislators, but others show up for committee meetings just to give speeches, collect per diem and leave.<\/p>\n On the flip side, we must not create a full-time legislature. The last thing we need is an elite class of representatives who spend almost all their time in In this year\u2019s session, State Sen. Leonard \u201cLee\u201d Rawson, R-Las Cruces, proposed a Constitutional amendment that, if approved by voters, would create a salary for state legislators equal to 15 percent of the salary paid to federal lawmakers. This year, that would have resulted in an annual salary of $24,780.<\/p>\n It would have cost us $2.8 million to pay that to our 112 legislators this year, a reasonable expense in a $5.2 billion budget.<\/p>\n Rawson is aware of the complexities of this issue. He said he doesn\u2019t necessarily support paying legislators, but wanted to start a discussion.<\/p>\n \u201cThe legislature no longer represents the population in Rawson, a longtime lawmaker, realizes that giving more New Mexicans the ability to run for legislative seats and breaking up what he calls the \u201cgood-ol\u2019-boy network\u201d could mean more challenges to his position.<\/p>\n But he said that\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of people in my district who could do every bit as good a job as I believe I\u2019m doing, but can\u2019t simply because they\u2019re too busy taking care of their responsibilities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Paying lawmakers could change the culture of the legislature. Though some legislators support opening conference committees to the public, the House and Senate won\u2019t allow that because the majority of legislators like being behind closed doors when they finalize bills.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the sort of attitude that is born at the Roundhouse and has become the norm in That\u2019s wrong. The public deserves to know how and why decisions are made. A legislature populated by more everyday citizens might be inclined to give the public access and input.<\/p>\n The ethics task force is considering other proposals, including banning some gifts, limiting campaign contributions and enacting tougher campaign finance reporting laws. It will make recommendations to the governor and legislature before the start of the next session. We can place more regulations and requirements on our public officials, but rules can always be broken by the bad. Too many rules can discourage those who are honest from running for office.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not against banning gifts, limiting contributions and increasing reporting requirements. Those proposals would benefit the state.<\/p>\n But rules alone can\u2019t change a culture.<\/p>\n The voters would have to approve legislative salaries. Convincing them to pay lawmakers many don\u2019t trust might be difficult, but this is the most important proposal before Creating a more ethical political culture, not enacting more rules, should be the goal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paying legislators is one of the proposals being discussed by Gov. Bill Richardson\u2019s task force on ethics reform. It\u2019s an idea worth consideration. Because New Mexico does not pay its legislators, we have a class of people drafting our laws and setting the budget who are not representative of the state\u2019s citizens. In general, only […]<\/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-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","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=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}