Gripes, glory at chamber breakfast

Local lawmakers on Friday trumpeted their triumphs, but dropped plenty of caveats about things they didn’t like that came from the recent session of the New Mexico Legislature.

Three state senators and three representatives spoke to members of the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce during the organization’s monthly membership breakfast, held at the Holiday Inn.

District 67 Rep. Brian Moore, R-Clayton, said a $4.4 billion state budget was approved, with education receiving almost half of the money. Medicaid, he said, received 14 percent more than previously, and “some day we are going to have to come to grips with that.”

Funding for education reform, he said, will go away with the expiration of the education reform amendment in eight years, unless the legislators take action in the meantime.

District 63 Rep. Joe Campos, D-Santa Rosa, said he was pleased with at least three bills that made their way through the 30-day session: A base retention bill, which will help New Mexico keep its military bases; a tax cut on all military equipment testing; and a measure that delays certain payments due from National Guardsmen who are currently deployed, until they can return and resume their private-sector pay scales.

He opposed a bill that would have stripped the state’s board of education of its power, and didn’t like an effort to make one person responsible for declaring critical management areas in the state concerning water usage. “That’s too much power in one man’s hands without any checks and balances,” he said.

District 64 Rep. Anna Crook, R-Clovis, said a lot of attention was focused on tax cuts — specifically the elimination of gross-receipts tax from food items — but a number of tax increases went pretty much unnoticed. She rattled off a list of higher-taxed items, including cigarettes, gasoline, vehicle registration fees and others.

“I got a lot of calls on the food tax from people who said, ‘I can’t believe you voted against eliminating the tax on food.’ I support taking the tax off food … but the way it was packaged, I couldn’t support it.”

Prepared foods, such as those purchased at restaurants, will still be taxed, she said. And she was uncomfortable with the half-percent tax added to all other items to make up for the loss in food taxes: “There are people who spend more on the other items than they do the food items,” she said.

A lot of people, she said, will see a net increase in taxes, rather than the promised decrease.

District 42 Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs, who teaches third grade, said steps are moving forward on the plan for full-day kindergarten in New Mexico, along with a three-tiered licensure plan and a new, better way to test students.

Teachers will have an opportunity to get a 2 percent pay increase, she said, depending on their districts’ ability to afford it.

District 7 Sen. Clint Harden, R-Clovis, said this year’s session was a matter of headlines vs. small print. The removal of the food tax grabbed the headlines, but the small print told the story, he said.

For example, businesses governed by the Davis-Bacon Act will have to put up a $200 fee to be able to bid on government projects, he said, and a tax on underground storage tanks that is probably no longer needed was retained to pay for increasing the staffing of the Environment Department.

“Change takes time to measure,” he said, and so it will be a while before the effects of Gov. Richardson’s changes can be examined.

He called on voters to be sure and send like-minded people to the state capitol, and not just those who want to be in Santa Fe.

District 27 Sen. Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, said legislators from southeast New Mexico work together well, despite any differences in party affiliation. “Working together makes a world of difference. … The longer you have people there, the more they can get done.”

Medicaid costs will soon “be going out of sight” and will have to be addressed, he said, and he didn’t like an effort to put state retirees into a common health care pool. “We need to be extremely careful on what we’re doing with insurance programs.”