Lawmakers warm to special session
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Talk of relief package from revenue windfall holds appeal
7/11/2008 - 7/12/08
New Mexico legislators weren't thrilled about the idea of coming back to Santa Fe for a special session to talk about Gov. Bill Richardson's health-care proposals. But the idea of using a revenue windfall from the current oil-and-gas boom to help folks through the rough patch in the economy seems to hold more appeal.
Even though they knew few details about it, two state Senate leaders said Friday they're amenable to reconvening in early September to consider a relief package to help New Mexicans, something Richardson said Friday he plans to propose.
No details on what the relief package will look like were released by the Governor's Office, and no date was set for the special session, which Richardson has been talking about since the Legislature ended its regular session in February without acting on health-care reform.
"Certainly, the fragileness of our economy could make a special session worthwhile if we had some concrete ways to address it," Senate Minority Whip Leonard Lee Rawson, R-Las Cruces, said.
"But so much of the economy is nationally driven," he said. "If helping people pay bills isn't enough, there's a question of how do we stimulate the economy and how do we stimulate it quickly enough?"
Rawson, like many legislators, has balked at the idea of a session to debate health care because there is little agreement on how to get 400,000 uninsured New Mexicans covered and how to pay for it. And, Rawson said Friday, there still is little accord on that. "I'm not sure there's enough agreement in health care yet that it would make a session worthwhile," he said.
Senate President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, said a session that deals with an economic package "makes sense," adding that, "I think we need to be considerate of what is going on with the plight of our people in our state."
A session on health care also sounds fine, Jennings said, although he remained concerned about how to pay for increased coverage.
Richardson's office said the economic relief package would be wide-ranging. "Governor Richardson prefers a comprehensive approach to help working families, combined with increased access to quality health care, rather than a knee-jerk reaction to high gas prices," spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said in a statement.
Although Richardson's office hasn't said how it would pay for an economic relief plan, the state seems to have the money. Its revenue collections should be almost $400 million higher than expected in the current budget year, mostly because of increased income from taxes and royalties on the production of oil and natural gas, according to new projections.
Sen. John Arthur Smith, a Deming Democrat who is chairman of the Legislative Finance Committee, said this week that the state should use part of the money to provide a tax rebate to help residents deal with high prices at the gasoline pump. He said the rebate would be similar to one the state provided in 2005 because of rising energy prices.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog, Green Chile Chatter, at www.santafenewmexican.com.