New Mexico’s Legislature has been in session for a month. The 30,000 residents of House District 6 still do not have a representative.
Few believed the wheels of government would grind this slowly, but corruption is like molasses in the fuel tank.
Several politicians are to blame for leaving residents in parts of Cibola and McKinley counties without representation. The breakdown began with the man who last held the seat, the late Rep. Eliseo Alcon. Ill with liver cancer, Alcon ran for reelection and won a ninth term.
He resigned from office Nov. 23, just three weeks after the election. Several people applied to fill the seat, including former state Sen. Clemente Sanchez, who’s now one of two finalists.
A day after Alcon resigned, Sanchez changed his voter registration record to claim he lives in District 6. Another politician who suddenly altered his voter registration record was Harry Garcia, then the lame-duck representative of House District 69.
Failing to do any basic checking, the commissioners of Cibola and McKinley counties nominated Garcia. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham disqualified him after agents from the Department of Justice exposed Garcia’s phony claim that he resided at a trailer park in District 6.
Cibola’s commissioners then nominated Sanchez, sparking another investigation.
Agents are to check Sanchez’s residency and changes he made to his voter registration record. Sanchez twice last year altered his address on the registration record to place himself in legislative districts where he could either run for an open seat or apply to fill a vacancy.
Lujan Grisham is waiting for findings of the latest investigation, an aide said Tuesday. The governor then would choose between Sanchez and the other finalist, Martha Garcia (no relation to Harry Garcia). She was nominated by McKinley County’s commissioners after Harry Garcia’s disqualification.
The delay in filling a legislative seat is just one failing in a sluggish session.
Lujan Grisham still has not announced any nominees for five openings on the board of regents of scandal-plagued Western New Mexico University.
Worse, the Senate Education Committee this week blocked the bill that could have halted irresponsible or corrupt spending by university regents. The measure, Senate Bill 266, would have established additional state oversight of university contracts.
Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, introduced the bill because Western’s regents in December contractually authorized a $1.9 million severance payment to the university’s then-president, Joseph Shepard. The regents and Shepard had been criticized by the state auditor for violating university policies in expenditures of more than $360,000 for travel and merchandise.
No panel at the Capitol is as tone-deaf as the Senate Education Committee, led by Chairperson Bill Soules, D-Las Cruces. Instead of being bothered by the abuses Western’s former regents inflicted on students and taxpayers, Soules claimed mere introduction of proposed reforms harmed state universities.
Soules might be the Senate’s staunchest defender of bad bureaucrats. He made sure the state paid some $60,000 in severance to an education policy director who was forced to resign in 2021 after she made racial slurs against Native Americans.
The defeat of a meaningful bill occurred as extravagant and unimportant measures await action.
Senate Bill 268 proposes to use taxpayers’ money to fund athletics at the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University. Each institution would receive $2.5 million a year from the state’s general fund.
Total annual appropriations of $5 million would be recurring expenses, and both universities could spend the money to pay varsity athletes. The bill even says the annual $2.5 million allocation to New Mexico State University is contingent on the institution having an athletic director experienced in compensating players for use of their names, images and likenesses.
In a state where good reading teachers should receive superstar salaries, funneling millions for dunkers and tailbacks ought to be a tough sell. The bill is sponsored by four senators: Republican Nicole Tobiassen and Democrats Muñoz, Benny Shendo and Moe Maestas. Who said bipartisanship is dead?
Not the three Republicans and two Democrats from Southern New Mexico who are sponsoring House Bill 172 to designate August as Red and Green Chile Month.
If ever a bill was written to waste time, this is the one. Forget about a month. Every day is chile day in sunny New Mexico. Everyone knows that.
Not to be outdone is the Legislature’s most experienced waster of time, Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas.
In one three-year stretch, he introduced bills to designate a “state chile song†and an “official state winter holiday song.†All of them failed. Campos, a senator since 1991, shows a veteran’s resolve.
He has recycled his bill to declare Gracias New Mexico as the official state winter holiday song. The proposal, Senate Bill 379, would have to clear two committees to reach the full Senate. After that it would have to gobble up time in more committee hearings to make it to the full House of Representatives.
An equally bad bill is the brainchild of freshman Sen. Jay Block, R-Rio Rancho. He proposes to create an 11th state holiday. The first Tuesday in November would be the holiday to vote.
There is not yet a financial analysis of Block’s proposal, Senate Bill 200. Any cost would be too much.
Block’s bill would have been more understandable in the decades before early voting. These days, any qualified voter has ample opportunities to cast a ballot.
Block knows a little about the highs and lows of electioneering. He ran for governor in 2022 when he was a Sandoval County commissioner. Block took top position on the Republican ballot based on support from party insiders at their convention.
But he finished fourth in the five-way Republican primary, even losing his own county. The senator needs to become better known if he is to try again for statewide office.
Pandering won’t take him where he wants to go. Block gets the scarlet letter “S†for showboating.
