{"id":509211,"date":"2018-01-25T20:46:27","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T03:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=509211"},"modified":"2018-01-25T20:46:27","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T03:46:27","slug":"governor-vetoes-funds-for-committee-in-dispute-over-confirmation-backlog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/01\/governor-vetoes-funds-for-committee-in-dispute-over-confirmation-backlog\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor vetoes funds for committee in dispute over confirmation backlog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Susana Martinez signed a bill\u00a0Thursday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0to pay for this year’s 30-day legislative session but vetoed funding for one particular Senate committee.<\/p>\n

\"Susana

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

Gov. Susana Martinez<\/p><\/div>\n

House Bill 1<\/a> provides $4.7 million for the session and another $16.1 million for a year-round staff of lawyers, economists, analysts and other aides.<\/p>\n

But Martinez nixed $19,100 for the Senate Rules Committee, which is responsible for vetting the governor’s picks for Cabinet posts, university regents and a long list of other appointments in New Mexico government. Martinez accuses the committee of holding up confirmation hearings for dozens of her nominees.<\/p>\n

The money she vetoed had been earmarked for the committee to meet in between regular sessions of the Legislature, though it held only one such meeting last year.<\/p>\n

The veto is just the latest jab in an ongoing fight between the Republican governor and the committee’s chairwoman, Democrat Linda Lopez.<\/p>\n

The Albuquerque legislator called earlier this week for the resignation<\/a> of Public Education Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski over a comment he made about Manifest Destiny that drew outrage among Native American leaders.<\/p>\n

A confirmation hearing has not yet been held for Ruszkowski, who was appointed in August after former education secretary Hanna Skandera stepped down. Lopez sent the governor a letter\u00a0Thursday<\/span><\/span>\u00a0that said the committee had not received formal notice of Ruszkowski’s appointment.<\/p>\n

But the Governor’s Office says the committee has a backlog of 85 nominees.<\/p>\n

“New Mexicans expect us as leaders to work together and do our jobs,” Martinez said in a statement. “The Senate Rules Committee refuses to do so, and I’m not going to permit them to waste almost $20,000 of taxpayer money while they continue to drag their feet on their constitutional responsibility.”<\/p>\n

Martinez is not the first governor to clash with the Senate Rules Committee.<\/p>\n

Late in his term, Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson accused the committee of holding up his nominees to The University of New Mexico Board of Regents.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Contact Andrew Oxford at (505) 986-3093 or\u00a0aoxford@sfnewmexican.com<\/a>. Follow him on Twitter at\u00a0@andrewboxford<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>This article comes from\u00a0The Santa Fe New Mexican<\/a>. NMPolitics.net is paying for the rights to publish articles about the 2018 legislative session from the newspaper. Help us cover the cost by\u00a0making a donation to NMPolitics.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martinez nixed $19,100 for the Senate Rules Committee, which is responsible for vetting the governor’s picks for Cabinet posts, university regents and a long list of other appointments.<\/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":[3634,107,208],"class_list":["post-509211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-2018-legislative-session","tag-roundhouse","tag-susana-martinez"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509211","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=509211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509211\/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=509211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}