News

House committee rejects corporate tax cut delay

By |

A House committee voted Saturday night to reject a bill that would delay a corporate tax cut for two years. The corporate tax delay, which narrowly passed the Senate the night before as part of a wider budget package, would have saved nearly $13 million in the current fiscal year and more in the next fiscal year according to analysis by the Legislative Finance Committee. The Taxation and Revenue Department, part of Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration, estimated it would save much less, saying it would be $5 million in the current fiscal year and again less than the LFC predicted in the next. “We are not asking for a tax increase,” Rep. Bill McCamley, the Las Cruces Democrat who carried the bill on the House side, said. “We are merely asking that we delay this tax.

2016 special session
Andy Lyman

Committee passes bills to help bridge budget deficit

By |

The Senate Finance Committee went to work Friday to bridge the gap on the large budget deficits in both the current fiscal year and the recently completed fiscal year. The proposals to close the deficits came from expanding medical marijuana, taxing some internet sales and accelerating the phasing out of the hold-harmless provision for local governments. “If it looks like chaos, that’s what it is,” Senate Finance Committee chair John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, joked at the start of the productive meeting. Another meeting for the bills was scheduled for later Friday evening, with Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez saying the full Senate would hear the bills later that night. The committee passed seven bills in all, sending all seven to the Senate floor.

News

Legislators join battle over immigrant tax returns

By |

Legislators joined the dispute between an immigrant rights group and the state Taxation and Revenue Department. State Rep. Miguel Garcia and State Sens. Jerry Ortiz y Pino and Richard Martinez, all Democrats, sided with the immigrant rights group Somos un Pueblo Unido and MALDEF. The groups say that TRD is illegally withholding tax returns from immigrants who are in the country illegally. The TRD secretary says that the efforts are legal and necessary to root out fraud in tax returns.

Demesia Padilla

Guv signs driver’s license bill into law

By |

Gov. Susana Martinez signed the driver’s license bill into law Tuesday afternoon at a self-congratulatory press conference at the Albuquerque Sunport. The bill will bring the state into compliance with the federal Real ID Act. In brief remarks that lasted only a couple of minutes, Martinez said no less than three times that the law will end New Mexico’s practice of allowing driver’s licenses for those who are in the country illegally. At one point she outlined how that practice will actually change. “Under this bill no illegal immigrant can get a driver’s license,” Martinez said.

Andy Nunez

Session Recap: Driver’s license bill (finally) passes

By |

It took six legislative sessions, but the Legislature finally sent a bill to the governor related to driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. The compromise legislation ended up being closer to the version that passed the Senate late in the 2015 session than the versions that passed the House in the previous years. The bill allows those who are in the country illegally to get a driver’s authorization card, which would not be compliant with the federal REAL ID Act. Those who can prove they are in the country legally could choose to either have a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or the driver’s authorization card. This is the first in a series of stories looking back at the key things that passed or failed during the 2016 legislative session.

Featured

Finish line in sight: REAL ID compromise passes committee

By |

A long-running debate over a controversial issue looks like it is near an end. The Senate Finance Committee on Friday night unanimously passed legislation related to driver’s licenses for immigrants who are in the country illegally. The legislation would put New Mexico in line with the federal REAL ID Act while allowing those who are in the country illegally to continue to drive legally. Gov. Susana Martinez indicated that she would support the legislation, if it passes in the current form. Martinez’s office did not provide a statement to NM Political Report, as they did to other media outlets and later put on Twitter.

REAL ID

Driver’s license bill advances after emotional hearing

By |

Emotional testimony and talk about heated rhetoric preceded a unanimous vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee to pass a bill to put New Mexico in compliance with the federal REAL ID Act on. Lawmakers crowded the table where sponsors sit while presenting legislation, with Senate sponsors John Arthur Smith, D-Deming and Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, crowded next to House sponsors Andy Nuñez, R-Hatch and Paul Pacheco, R-Albuquerque. State Taxation and Revenue Department Secretary Demesia Padilla also sat at the table. The committee commended Smith and Ingle for working on a compromise bill separate from the House bill that cleared the Senate Public Affairs Committee after extensive changes. “The big, fundamental difference when you really get down to it [is] the ability to opt out of REAL ID,” Smith told NM Political Report after the hearing.

REAL ID

Driver’s license bill moves forward after large amendment

By |

After a marathon hearing, the Senate Public Affairs Committee advanced a driver’s license bill that supporters hope will finally end the problem the state has been facing for years. It didn’t come without controversy, in the form of an extensive amendment to the bill that passed the House, HB 99, to make it essentially a Senate bill, SB 256. It was not a committee substitute, which would require it to go back through committees in the House. But with an amendment, if it were to pass the Senate, then the House and Senate could have a conference committee to work out the differences between the two versions. The SPAC amendment passed on a party-line vote, with Democrats voting for it and Republicans against.

News

House driver’s license bill passes committee, headed to floor debate

By |

A House Republican driver’s license bill aimed at issuing driving privilege cards to immigrants without legal status passed along party lines in the House Judiciary Committee on Monday afternoon. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Paul Pacheco, R-Albuquerque, told the committee his legislation was an attempt to solve a long-time problem surrounded in debate in New Mexico. “We’ve been dealing and wrestling with this problem for as long as I’ve been in the House,” Pacheco said. On hand as an expert witness was Taxation and Revenue Secretary Demesia Padilla, who also said Pacheco’s bill would put to rest the debate on who gets driver’s licenses as well. “I believe the solution you have before you takes care of everyone’s needs,” Padilla told the panel.

2016 Legislative Session

Republican driver’s license bill through first committee hearing

By |

The House Regulatory and Public Affairs passed, along party lines, a Republican driver’s license bill Thursday evening. Sponsors of HB 99, Reps. Andy Nuñez, R-Hatch and Paul Pacheco, R-Albuquerque, presented the bill and told the panel that this was their attempt at compromising on the multiple-yearlong issue of whether or not to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. Nuñez said since 2010 he’s tried to repeal the state law that allows a person to get a driver’s license without legal documentation of citizenship. “Since then we made a lot of compromises,” Nuñez said.