Local lawmakers: Session a productive one

Eastern New Mexico legislators said the 2017 legislative session was a fairly productive one, though some noted the state's fiscal year 2018 budget will likely be rejected by Governor Susana Martinez.

Senator Pat Woods, R-Broadview, said difficult decisions are ahead for the state if the Legislature has to meet in special session to pass another budget.

"We put some stuff before the governor we hoped she would go with, and she didn't. We'll just try it again if she wants us to, but she's gonna have to tell us exactly what she'll take," Woods said. "We spent 60 days trying to come up with something, and if that didn't work, everybody's through guessing. Now somebody's got to come to the table and say, 'Well, this is what we'll take and this is what we won't take.'"

Woods said two potential solutions for balancing the budget are raising taxes and cutting education, neither of which he is eager to pursue.

"Every time we raise a tax, somebody at home gets to pay it. Sooner or later it works right down to the guy that's buying something," he said. "Education is probably the most important thing we can do for our kids. We may have to educate them with less money. If we can't raise taxes, that's about all that's left. I don't know how we can get by with any less roads than what we've got. We need water, we need sewer. I just don't know."

While the original $6.1 billion balanced budget was not exactly what Senator Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, had hoped for, he believed it was an acceptable solution.

"There wasn't everything in there I liked, but generally speaking it's a decent budget bill," he said, adding he is hopeful it will pass the governor's desk. "It's hard to tell, depending on what the governor signs and vetoes and line-items. There's some things there that were worked on, and hopefully we'll get some things signed where we can finish the budget for the rest of the year."

In addition to the budget, Woods noted the passing of Senate Bill 381, a bill he sponsored which would allow rural school districts to use sport utility vehicles in place of school buses, while Ingle was focused squarely on the budget.

"The budget's always the main thing that we have to accomplish in this state. We have to have a balanced budget and we have to have the things that are part of the budget that pay for our schools and our correction systems, state police, all those things," he said.