News from Santa Fe for Feb. 15

Sol­vency was again the focus in Sen­ate Edu­ca­tion today, this time the sol­vency of the lot­tery schol­ar­ship fund, which is a major con­cern of our stu­dents. Two bills were con­sid­ered that approach sol­vency from dif­fer­ent directions.

SB 451, spon­sored by Sen. Bill Payne (R-Albuquerque), fea­tures a num­ber of changes to lot­tery eli­gi­bil­ity, that include rais­ing high school GPA to 2.75, a min­i­mum 21 on the ACT or 1550 on the SAT, and pay­ing for eight semes­ters over 6 years. But if a stu­dent fails to grad­u­ate in six years, he or she would have to pay back the first two semes­ters of fund­ing. “We should be sub­si­diz­ing peo­ple to grad­u­ate, not sub­si­diz­ing them to take a shot at it,” Payne said.

Com­mit­tee mem­bers voiced a num­ber of con­cerns with the bill, say­ing it was a schol­ar­ship meant for access that would be put out of reach for those not test­ing well. They also saw no hard data to show the action would help solvency.

Sen. Payne said his main con­cern is sol­vency not pol­icy change so he wel­comes ideas to help achieve that. SEC will hold over this bill pend­ing those ideas com­ing to the fore from the HED or higher ed institutions.

Mean­while, a com­mit­tee sub for SB 392, spon­sored by Sen. Michael Sanchez (D-Belen), seeks to inject more money into the fund for the short term, giv­ing law­mak­ers and edu­ca­tors time to craft a fact-based solu­tion for lot­tery sol­vency. The stop-gap funds would come from tobacco set­tle­ment monies, from lot­tery with­hold­ing, and if needed, from gen­eral fund reserves.

The com­mit­tee sent this sub­sti­tute bill on to Sen­ate Finance with a do pass.

There are sev­eral other lot­tery bills in the hop­per, includ­ing HB 586 that was intro­duced yes­ter­day. UNM stu­dents devel­oped this bill, which fea­tures a needs-based tier fund­ing sys­tem and higher eli­gi­bil­ity thresholds.

Susan McK­in­sey, Office of Gov­ern­ment and Com­mu­nity Relations