The NM Political Report (https://nmpoliticalreport.com/tag/john-arthur-smith/page/2/)
On a frigid Tuesday morning, Mariah Peña drove from her home at San Ildefonso Pueblo to go grocery shopping in Santa Fe with her son and little sister. Inside the Market Street supermarket, 7-year-old Damian settled onto his back in Peña’s empty shopping cart, kicking his legs up in the air in front of a case of colorful donuts. “Why should food be taxed?” Peña said. “Just trying to make it as a single mom is hard enough.”
The state Senate narrowly approved a bill Thursday that would require just about anyone buying a firearm to undergo a background check. This legislation has been a priority for gun control advocates, but all 16 Republicans and four Democrats in the Senate said it would not prevent the sort of mass shootings that have spurred calls for such laws. Scheduled for the first anniversary of a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead, the Senate’s vote was the biggest test yet for gun control during this legislative session. Majority Democrats won the day on a 22-20 vote. Senate Bill 8 now heads to the state House of Representatives, which already has passed a law on background checks this year and might approve this measure.
An influential state senator on Monday railed against a law that changed the way New Mexico taxes residential properties, saying the 2001 measure was supposed to help low-income people but instead has hurt them while providing a windfall to wealthier homeowners. Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, in remarks on the Senate floor, also said the law has robbed counties of needed tax revenue. Smith, D-Deming, called the fallout from the law the “unintended consequences of the do-good of the Legislature.” The senator made the remarks in response to a story in Sunday’s New Mexican, which examined the law’s history and effects. It was designed to protect longtime homeowners in gentrified neighborhoods like Santa Fe’s east side from being taxed out of their residences due to rising property values.
For just a moment, it looked like Stan Rounds was the loneliest guy in the room. The executive director of the New Mexico Coalition of Educational Leaders stood up during a committee hearing to tell educators, lawmakers and early childhood education proponents that he is against a proposal to pull money from the state’s multibillion-dollar Land Grant Permanent Fund to expand prekindergarten initiatives. That’s because, he argued, that state trust land endowment is designed to support K-12 public education programs — and any other draw from the fund, now valued at about $17.5 billion, could hurt schools down the line. Rounds was one of only two people in that legislative hearing to voice opposition to House Joint Resolution 1. The other was a business representative from Albuquerque.
A proposed constitutional amendment to draw more money from the state Land Grant Permanent Fund to expand early childhood education jumped its first hurdle with ease Wednesday. The House Education Committee voted 10-4 on party lines for the measure. Democrats supported the measure, House Joint Resolution 1. It would take another 1 percent — at least $150 million a year — from the $17.5 billion state endowment. The bill’s proponents, including Rep. Javier Martinez, D-Albuquerque, say early childhood education can transform New Mexico, often regarded as one of the worst states in the nation for public education.
Democrats in the state House of Representatives say they hope to move quickly to approve a measure that would draw more money from the state Land Grant Permanent Fund for early childhood education, thereby pressuring powerful Sen. John Arthur Smith to give it a hearing. The proposed state constitutional amendment, House Joint Resolution 1, could get its first committee hearing within a week, far earlier than at any time in the eight years Democrats have pushed the measure. “I think it will be a priority,” said Rep. G. Andrés Romero, D-Albuquerque, who on Wednesday became chairman of the House Education Committee. He said that committee likely will hear new bills by Wednesday, though it’s unclear if the proposed constitutional amendment will land there first. The House on Wednesday assigned 155 bills for committee hearings.
It is the New Mexico Senate versus everybody. Yes, Democrats control every branch of New Mexico’s government again for the first time in nine years. But maybe the biggest question of the 60-day legislative session that begins at noon Tuesday is just how much that will matter when the state Senate takes up some of most contentious issues of the year, from marijuana to gun control and funding for education. There will be more than enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass some of the bills that liberals view as priorities and that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham campaigned for. But some of those same bills might lead to tight votes or no votes at all in the Senate, where moderates and conservatives still hold sway.
The Roundhouse, January 2011: Flanked by colorful bouquets, a pink and white corsage pinned to her dark blue suit, Gov. Susana Martinez invoked the blossoming of a new era for New Mexico in her first State of the State address. She was the nation’s first Latina governor, soon to be named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. She had a plan for New Mexico and intended to execute it with a prosecutor’s precision. Her message: New Mexico was in a state of financial crisis. “No more shell games,” she announced to applause.
TAOS — The interim Legislative Finance Committee heard the latest rosy budget projections, which show revenues from booming oil and gas activity leading to $1.17 billion in new money for the next fiscal year, bringing total revenue to $7.3 billion. But analysts cautioned the surplus is the result of increasing reliance on oil and gas revenues—which are notably volatile. Because of this, they recommended setting aside at least 20 percent of the revenue in reserves in case of another crash in the oil and gas market or a recession. Legislators will decide during next year’s legislative session what to do with the revenues. In the past, when oil and gas prices fell, previous reserves weren’t enough to make up for the losses and legislators had to cut the state budget.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision may open the door to the taxation of more internet sales in New Mexico. In a 5-4 decision Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court said states could tax sales on internet purchases from companies that do not have a physical presence in a state. The decision overturned a 1992 decision on catalogue-order companies that was later interpreted to include internet sales. The New Mexico Legislature passed a bill that would apply the state’s gross receipts tax to internet sales in 2017 as part of a suite of tax changes. That would bring in, by a conservative estimate, $20 million annually for the state.