Legislative Update
Santa Fe/ Lawmakers Ditch Governor's School Bills
By Dan Boyd and James Monteleone
ABQ Journal
February 17, 2012
Key education measures pushed by Gov. Susana Martinez were left to die in the final minutes of a 30-day legislative session as New Mexico lawmakers adjourned Thursday.
- House Democrats blocked a vote on a Senate-passed bill that would have required third-graders to be able to read before moving on to fourth grade.
- And the Senate did not pass a Martinez-backed bill on teacher evaluations.
However, the Republican governor described her second session as the state's chief executive as a largely successful one. She criticized Democratic leaders for siding with unions on some issues, but she applauded cooperation on a $5.6 billion state budget and approval of several tax breaks aimed at stimulating New Mexico's economy.
- "Santa Fe did not go on a spending spree, and that is something we can all appreciate," Martinez told reporters shortly after the Legislature adjourned at noon, as required by the state Constitution.
- "I'm thrilled at the bipartisan work that was done in each chamber to help New Mexico small businesses grow and better compete so that we can get New Mexicans back to work."
Before the session's end, the state's 112 lawmakers authorized nearly $280 million for statewide public works projects - including about $30 million for Albuquerque's Paseo del Norte/I-25 interchange - and approved a measure allowing elected officials convicted of corruption to face fines up to the value of their taxpayer-funded salary and state pension benefits.
In addition to the failed education measures to evaluate teachers and retain students who do not show reading proficiency, the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Martinez were unable to agree on whether to toughen or repeal the 2003 law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain New Mexico driver's licenses.
Martinez vowed to keep pushing on her rejected proposals.
Also left in the dustbin Thursday were bills to ease liability for spacecraft manufacturers, address solvency concerns with the state's public retirement system, improve government transparency and fix protections against sudden property tax surges known as tax lightning.
House Majority Leader Ken Martinez, D-Grants, said last-minute attempts to negotiate with the Martinez administration on the education measures were ultimately thwarted by the administration's unwillingness to compromise. But he said the work done could be a foundation for next year.
- "The silver lining is, you pick up where you left off," Martinez said.
In all, 77 bills were sent to Martinez's desk for final approval - 46 House bills and 31 Senate bills.
The session also marked the end of a political era as longtime House Speaker Ben Lujan bid an emotional farewell to the House of Representatives.
The Nambé Democrat, who has served in the Legislature since 1975 and as House speaker since 2001, announced at the beginning of the session that he has been battling advanced lung cancer and does not intend to seek re-election.
Education debate
Martinez pushed hard for education programs to establish teacher evaluation systems and allow students who can't adequately read by fourth grade to be held back. Both efforts received strong legislator support when first voted upon in the House.
But student retention hit a wall when a Senate-approved version of the effort, SB 96, got to the House floor on Thursday.
Republicans pushed to have the measure heard early in the shortened legislative day and sent to the governor for approval, but House Democrats said it would take a two-thirds majority vote to move the issue up on the agenda. Republicans couldn't muster the vote, and the matter was delayed until the final minutes of the session.
- "The fact of the matter is if it would have come to a vote, the education piece would have passed," said House GOP Leader Tom Taylor of Farmington. "It's of great concern to me that we're unable to get together and even try something that seems to make sense to people."
Critics of the student retention bill say holding students back a year causes more harm than good and leads to higher dropout rates. Instead of making the student retention mandatory, parents should have the option of seeking remediation, opponents have said.
A separate bill to require retention with remediation also failed.
- "I'm ashamed that we cannot compromise one small item so that we can move forward with prevention and intervention for our students," said Rep. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, as the legislative clock expired at noon Thursday.
Teacher evaluation programs passed the House but were never approved by the Senate.
Santa Fe/ Governor Loses Key Education Bill
By Milan Simonich, Texas-New Mexico Newspapers
Alamogordo Daily News
February 16, 2012
Education excerpt: New Mexico's 30-day legislative session ended Thursday with Gov. Susana Martinez losing a signature initiative, one to force retentions of children struggling to read.
The fight over how best to help kids succeed in school was the most vivid example of the gulf that separated Republican Martinez from a Legislature controlled by Democrats.
She said the Democrats' way of doing business had allowed chronic problems to worsen, such as children not reading proficiently.
But Democratic Rep. Mimi Stewart, a retired teacher from Albuquerque, said Martinez had embraced a failed retention program, then tried to sell it as a necessary reform.
A 50-year body of evidence shows that holding back children without involving parents in the decision does more harm than anything, Stewart said.
For her part, Martinez said she could not accept the Democrats' research that forced retentions lead to more dropouts.
"It is impossible that data is correct," Martinez said after the retention bill died on the floor of the House of Representatives, the clock running out before a vote.
Two other retention bills also failed to make it through the Legislature. Martinez said these defeats were losses for a state that usually is near the bottom in ratings on educational achievement.
Martinez said she would study the $5.6 billion budget legislators approved, but she expected to make certain line-item vetoes. She said she could not discuss the particulars because the budget had not been delivered yet.
But, she said, she already had committed to try again on her big initiatives, such as holding back subpar readers.
The retention bill for students in grades kindergarten through three was perhaps the governor's most frustrating defeat. She had enough votes to get one bill through both the Senate and the House of Representatives. But the measure did not make it to the floor of the House until the final hour of the session.
Democrats and a handful of Republicans blocked an attempt by Rep. Dennis Roch, R-Texico, to immediately hear the retention bill. Had the debate ensued, Democrats who disliked the bill would have been able to debate it for three hours, meaning no other last-day legislation would be heard.
Roch, stung by that defeat, then filibustered for one hour and 14 minutes. He finally relented so that a package of proposals to reform the scandal-ridden Public Regulation Commission could be heard and voted on. House members approved the PRC proposals for the November ballot.
After that, Roch finally got his chance to present the retention bill. But it was doomed.
Stewart, his fiercest opponent on the issue, fired question after question at Roch until the clock struck 12 and debate had to stop.
Bills to gauge the competency of teachers another of Martinez's education initiatives failed to clear the Legislature.
One proposal made it out of the House of Representatives, but even one of the sponsors, Rep. Rick Miera, said it was an inferior bill, put together in haste.
The good thing, said Miera, D-Albuquerque, was that Democrats and Republicans worked together on that bill. He said interim legislative committees would next try to make the bill better.
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