House Appropriations Committee to Review General Fund Estimates

The House and Sen­ate both go back into ses­sion at 10 a.m. on Thurs­day. Since today’s House floor ses­sion ran late, House Appro­pri­a­tions resched­uled its revenue/budget review until Thursday.

HOUSE APPROPRIATIONS AND FINANCE COMMITTEE
Room 307
Thurs­day, Jan. 17
1:30 p.m. — Full Com­mit­tee Hear­ing
Ori­en­ta­tion Ses­sion
Gen­eral Fund Esti­mates
Deme­sia Padilla, sec­re­tary, Tax­a­tion & Rev­enue Depart­ment
Tom Clif­ford, sec­re­tary, Depart­ment of Finance and Admin­is­tra­tion
David Abbey, direc­tor, Leg­isla­tive Finance Com­mit­tee
Pre­sen­ta­tion of FY14 LFC and Exec­u­tive Rec­om­men­da­tions
Tom Clif­ford, sec­re­tary, Depart­ment of Finance and Admin­is­tra­tion
David Abbey, direc­tor, Leg­isla­tive Finance Committee

No Sen­ate com­mit­tees have been sched­uled as of this hour.

House mem­bers spent much of their leg­isla­tive day intro­duc­ing bills and fig­ur­ing out com­mit­tee assign­ments. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est, since Rep. Rick Miera (D-Albuquerque) moved up to major­ity floor leader, his long­time House Edu­ca­tion chair­man­ship goes to Rep. Mimi Stew­art (D-Albuquerque). Rep. Gail Chasey (D-Albuquerque) will chair House Judi­ciary. Sev­eral chairs remain the same, includ­ing Rep. Kiki Saave­dra (D-Albuquerque) in House Appro­pri­a­tions and Finance, and Rep. Edward San­doval (D-Albuquerque) in Tax­a­tion and Rev­enue. The House also passed HB 1, the feed bill, which now goes to Sen­ate Finance.

Sen­a­tors also spent much of their day intro­duc­ing bills. The ses­sion is 30 hours old, and already we have 235 bills in the hop­per, not count­ing assorted memo­ri­als, res­o­lu­tions, etc. We saw a num­ber of retire­ment bills today (HB 64, HB 96, SB 86 and SB 115) as well as bills deal­ing with HSC pri­or­i­ties. Here are sev­eral of the new bills of interest:

HB 2 GENERAL APPROPRIATION ACT OF 2013 Spon­sor: Henry Kiki Saave­dra
MAKING GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS AND AUTHORIZING EXPENDITURES BY STATE AGENCIES REQUIRED BY LAW

HB 11 GENERAL APPROPRIATION ACT OF 2013 Spon­sor: Luciano “Lucky” Varela
MAKING GENERAL APPROPRIATIONS AND AUTHORIZING EXPENDITURES BY STATE AGENCIES REQUIRED BY LAW.

HB 64 EDUCATIONAL RETIREMENT CHANGES Spon­sor: Mimi Stew­art
RELATING TO PENSIONS; AMENDING THE EDUCATIONAL RETIREMENT ACT; INCREASING CERTAIN MEMBERS’ CONTRIBUTION RATES; CHANGING THE BENEFITS FOR NEW MEMBERS BY IMPOSING A MINIMUM RETIREMENT AGE, DELAYING THE COST-OF-LIVING ADJUSTMENT ELIGIBILITY AND INCREASING THE AGE AND SERVICE RETIREMENT REQUIREMENTS

HB 69 UNM HEALTH CENTER COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH Spon­sor: Mimi Stew­art
Two hun­dred fifty thou­sand dol­lars ($250,000) is appro­pri­ated from the gen­eral fund to the board of regents of the uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico for expen­di­ture in fis­cal year 2014 for the health sci­ences cen­ter to plan a col­lege of pub­lic health.

HB 70 NMFA PUBLIC PROJECT REVOLVING FUND PROJECTS Spon­sor: Patri­cia A. Lund­strom
AUTHORIZING THE NEW MEXICO FINANCE AUTHORITY TO MAKE LOANS FOR PUBLIC PROJECTS FROM THE PUBLIC PROJECT REVOLVING FUND;
11. The Board of Regents of the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico in Bernalillo County for build­ing, equip­ment, infra­struc­ture, debt refi­nance, road, land acqui­si­tion, water, waste­water, water rights and solid waste projects;

HB 69 UNM HEALTH CENTER COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH Mimi Stew­art
HEC/HAFC

HB 71 UNM-GALLUP AS COMMUNITY COLLEGE Spon­sor: Patri­cia A. Lund­strom
Autho­riz­ing the Gallup Branch of the Uni­ver­sity of new mex­ico to become an inde­pen­dent com­mu­nity col­lege; pro­vid­ing for a tran­si­tion period; requir­ing the higher edu­ca­tion depart­ment to assist in a fea­si­bil­ity study.

HB 80 UNM DENTAL SCIENCE PROGRAM Spon­sor: Miguel P. Gar­cia
Four hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars ($400,000) is appr­popri­ated from the gen­eral fund to the board of regents of the uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico for expen­di­ture in fis­cal year 2014 to fund plan­ning for a bach­e­lor of arts and doc­tor of den­tal sci­ence pro­gram by the health sci­ences center.

HB 96 EDUCATIONAL RETIREMENT SICK LEAVE Spon­sor: Den­nis J. Roch
Relat­ing to edu­ca­tional retire­ment; per­mit­ting the con­ver­sion of unused sick leave to ser­vice credit for retire­ment purposes

HB 112 DATA IN SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY REPORTS Spon­sor: Jane E. Powdrell-Culbert
PROVIDING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOL AND PUBLIC POST-SECONDARY EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION ACCOUNTABILITY REPORTS TO INCLUDE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT DISAGGREGATED BY CERTAIN FACTORS.

SB 86 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE AVERAGE SALARY CALCULATIONS Spon­sor: Sue Wil­son Bef­fort
AMENDING THE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES RETIREMENT ACT TO PROVIDE A LIMIT IN THE CALCULATION OF THE FINAL AVERAGE SALARY OF NON-PUBLIC SAFETY MEMBERS; DEFINING “PUBLIC SAFETY MEMBER”; AMENDING THE EDUCATIONAL RETIREMENT ACT TO PROVIDE A LIMIT IN THE CALCULATION OF ANNUAL AVERAGE SALARY.

SB 87 UNM HEALTH WORKFORCE ANALYSIS Spon­sor: Jacob Can­de­laria
Two hun­dred sixty-five thou­sand dol­lars ($265,000) is appro­pri­ated from the gen­eral fund to the board of regents of the uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico for expen­di­ture in fis­cal year 2014 for the health sci­ences cen­ter to add staffing for the cen­ter for health work­force analysis

SB 89 PUBLIC PROPERTY NAMING PROCESS Spon­sor: Mark Moores
PROHIBITING PUBLIC PROPERTY OR PUBLICLY FUNDED PROGRAMS TO BE NAMED AFTER LIVING PERSONS OR PUBLIC OFFICIALS WHILE THEY ARE IN OFFICE; REQUIRING A PROCESS FOR NAMING PUBLIC PROPERTY.

SB 97 EXPAND HEALTH FOCUS CENTERS Spon­sor: Jacob Can­de­laria
Two mil­lion two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars ($2,200,000) is appro­pri­ated from the gen­eral fund to the board of regents of the uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico for expen­di­ture in fis­cal year 2014 for the health sci­ences cen­ter to expand exist­ing FOCUS (fam­ily options car­ing under­stand­ing solu­tions) and Mila­gro pro­grams and to fund per­son­nel and sup­port for, and eval­u­a­tion of, three FOCUS cen­ters of excellence.

SB 98 SUPPLEMENTAL SEVERANCE TAX BONDS Spon­sor: Car­los R. Cis­neros
Amend­ing the sev­er­ance tax bond­ing act to tem­porar­ily allow the state board of finance to issue sup­ple­men­tal road sev­er­ance tax bonds and sup­ple­men­tal higher edu­ca­tion sev­er­ance tax bonds

SB 115 EDUCATIONAL RETIREMENT CHANGES Spon­sor: Stu­art Ingle
Relat­ing to pen­sions; amend­ing the edu­ca­tional retire­ment act; increas­ing cert­ian mem­bers’ con­tri­bu­tion rates; chang­ing the ben­e­fits for new mem­bers by impos­ing a min­i­mum retire­ment age, delay­ing the cost of liv­ing eli­ibil­ity and increas­ing the age and ser­vice retire­ment requirements.

It is leg­isla­tive tra­di­tion for the spon­sor of the 100th bill intro­duced in both the House and the Sen­ate to throw a party for his or her col­leagues. For some inex­plic­a­ble rea­son, the Sen­ate passed right over SB 100 today. In the House, Rep. Don Tripp (R-Socorro) got the luck of the draw. His HB 100 pro­motes farm­ers’ markets.

Susan McK­in­sey, Office of Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­nity Relations