By John Horton, Director of Public Policy & Government Relations

As of today, Thursday February 11th, there are two bills which have passed both houses of the legislature: House Bill 1 which provides funding for the session and House Bill 64 which sets a new date in a school year for equalization of funding payments for school operations. In addition, one House Joint Memorial and two Senate Joint Memorials have passed.

Despite the general lack of production in terms of new and helpful legislation for New Mexicans, we are all working hard and long days. Like a construction project where chaos may appear to be the norm for a while, towards the end of the project clarity arrives. We are awaiting that arrival.

Last night in Senate Corporations Committee, the commercial construction industry unified to defeat two tax bills - Senate Bill 208 (Mary Jane Garcia) and Senate Bill 255 (Nava). These bills would have diverted oil and gas severance taxes away from the Severance Tax Permanent Fund into a public school fund earmarked for operations. The impact of these bills had they passed would have been to damage our state's bond rating, devalue existing bonds, and prevent the issuance of new Severance Tax Bonds in the future. Severance Tax Bonds are the means of funding construction projects included in capital outlay appropriations. Even though there is little hope of any capital outlay emerging from this year's session, we weren't about to allow the diversion of severance tax for other purposes.

We are following one energy-environmental-issue bill related to construction - SB 200 (Cisneros) deals with requiring changes in energy standards for publicly financed buildings. SB 200 is an attempt to move the construction of such buildings away from LEED standards to an "energy star rating." This bill should fail due to the sponsors' lack of specificity in setting an energy star standard. LEED appears to many legislators to have been too expensive and lacked sustainability itself as the environmental requirements of the process won't continue on future projects without the rigor required for the coveted certifications.

What might emerge from the session in terms of tax increases or government services changes are neither known or predictable at this time.

The legislature will adjourn at noon this Thursday, February 18th. Please join us at the Roundhouse Review Luncheon on February 24th[1] where I will provide a full report on the session.