By Daniel J. Chacón, Santa Fe New Mexican |
February 17, 2021
At the start of their meeting last week, members of the New Mexico Public Employees Retirement Association Board of Trustees spent 12 minutes talking over one other and arguing about the agenda and parliamentary procedures.
“I really want to move forward,” an exasperated David J. Roybal said at one point of the bickering. “I feel that currently we spend a lot more time, as you can tell, on administrative oversight and Robert’s Rules of Order and personal attacks, when we need to get back to work being fiduciaries.”
The dissension and animosity have become commonplace for a board beset by infighting. In 2018, board members famously debated over snacks. The following year, a trustee stormed out of a meeting and accused other members of “abetting and aiding” an alleged assault on her.
For the first time in more than four decades, House Bill 55 is poised to make New Mexicoâs public infrastructure funding process transparent. House Bill 55 is a bipartisan bill sponsored by Reps. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo), Kelly Fajardo (R-Los Lunas) and Natalie Figueroa (D-Albuquerque), Sens. Bill Tallman (D-Albuquerque) and Steven Neville (R-Aztec).
Just about every year since 1977, New Mexico has divided up its available funds for infrastructure projects, commonly known as âcapital outlay,â among the governor and all 112 legislators. In 2019, each senator was allocated about $3.6 million and each representative received about $2.1 million.
Every legislator has complete discretion to spend his or her portion of that funding in any way they choose, subject to the veto of the governor â and those choices are made in secret. Once the legislators turn in their confidential lists of capital outlay appropriations, they are rolled into a single massive bill that d
Credit ThinkNewMexico.org
KSFR News Director Tom Trowbridge speaks with Fred Nathan Founder and Executive Director of statewide think-tank, Think New Mexico, about its latest report and legislative suggestions on predatory lending in our state.
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