{"id":8297,"date":"2009-10-22T00:06:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T06:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=8297"},"modified":"2009-10-22T10:51:28","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T16:51:28","slug":"house-committee-oks-cuts-to-education-medicaid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/10\/house-committee-oks-cuts-to-education-medicaid\/","title":{"rendered":"House committee OKs cuts to education, Medicaid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The

The Roundhouse in Santa Fe (Photo by cjc4454\/flickr.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Budget fix begins to take shape as House committee approves sweeping cuts and Senate OKs taking money from other funds to help plug budget gap<\/h4>\n

The primary bill aimed at addressing the state\u2019s massive budget shortfall \u2013 legislation that includes cuts to education and Medicaid \u2013 was unveiled late Wednesday and passed the House Appropriations and Finance Committee<\/a> on a vote of 11-6.<\/p>\n

The bill isn\u2019t yet on the Legislature\u2019s Web site<\/a>, but I got my hands on a copy of the committee substitute for House Bill 17, and you can read it by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a cursory summary of what the bill would do:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Reduce the budgets of most state agencies by 4 percent.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Cut Medicaid funding by $14 million, but offset that with $12 million in federal funding, for a total cut of $2 million.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Four percent cuts to the \u201cinstruction and general purposes\u201d categories in the budgets for higher education institutions and the New Mexico Military Institute, New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and New Mexico School for the Deaf.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Larger cuts — 6.5 percent — to all other categories for higher education and those other institutions, \u201cincluding research and public service projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Two percent cuts for most public school budget categories, but 6.5 percent cuts for a few areas including transportation, dual-credit instructional materials and the Indian education fund.<\/p>\n

Overall, HB17 would make $299 million in cuts, but offset $79 million of that with one-time federal funds, so the actual cuts would be $220 million. Lawmakers are working to fix a shortfall of $660 million in the current fiscal year.<\/p>\n

All Democrats on the House committee voted for the bill Wednesday evening except Brian Egolf<\/a> of Santa Fe. All Republicans except Jeanette Wallace<\/a> of Los Alamos voted against it.<\/p>\n

The House is expected to vote on the bill sometime after convening at 11 a.m. today. The Senate will consider it after that, if it passes the House. The Senate is scheduled to convene at 10:37 a.m. (Yes, you read that right.)<\/p>\n

Senate OKs taking money from other funds<\/h3>\n

Meanwhile, the Senate on Wednesday evening passed House Bill 3<\/a> on a vote of 36-5. It had already passed the House on a vote of 45-21.<\/p>\n

The final version of the bill allows the state to take about $70 million in nonrecurring dollars from other state funds to help plug the general-fund shortfall, according to the New Mexico Independent<\/a>. The funds it draws cash from include the Corrections Department Intensive Supervision Fund, the College Affordability Endowment Fund and the New Mexico Medical Board Fund.<\/p>\n

Because those are nonrecurring dollars, this is only a temporary fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Legislature has taken a necessary though painful step of passing House Bill 3 that will sweep cash balances from a variety of funds,\u201d Lt. Gov. Diane Denish<\/a> said in a news release. \u201cDifficult though this decision may be, the fact that it is distributed over many different programs and funds is a fair approach to achieving critically needed reductions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur highly successful Pre-K program that I have long championed will lose more than one million dollars, but, as I\u2019ve said all along, these painful cuts must be shared by all,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is my hope that in the future some of these funds could be restored.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article has been updated to include the $79 million in federal funds that HB17 would use to help offset cuts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The primary bill aimed at addressing the state\u2019s massive budget shortfall \u2013 legislation that includes cuts to education and Medicaid \u2013 was unveiled late Wednesday and passed the House Appropriations and Finance Committee on a vote of 11-6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[118,125,107],"class_list":["post-8297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8297","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=8297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}