Roosevelt County Chamber’s
by Karl Terry
Jan. 26, 2021
State of the State comes late
Those of you who have been scratching your head over why Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham was delaying her State of the State address and doing it on a recorded video, we can now offer a few possible reasons:
1. She got behind on the housework at the Governor’s Mansion and didn’t have time to write the speech.
2. She was busy ‘rasslin’ the pandemic into submission in our state.
3. She wanted to make sure she could announce when schools would reopen in person.
4. She wanted to have legislators show their cards first before she played her first one.
Those last two reasons may be intertwined. It’s very interesting that soon after legislators filed a bill with bi-partisan support to reopen schools immediately, and the day that coverage hit the front page of the Albuquerque Journal she announced the opening that very afternoon. Take the win MLG, no one cares, we’re too ecstatic to get our students back in a classroom and learning.

Pandemic Aid proposed
The Governor also briefly outlined an aggressive proposal to put $475 million more toward pandemic aid to residents and to businesses. We’re glad to hear that part of that could come in tax relief for struggling businesses and families. We would urge that not be temporary but a long-term fix toward what ails our economy. The debate on relief is going to be heated and emotional but we’re hopeful in the end it will be at least partially bi-partisan. New Mexicans deserve that much from their legislators.

Another drag at recreational marijuana
In her speech the Governor the governor stood firmly behind legalizing recreational marijuana this year. “I have no interest in another year of thousands of New Mexicans eager to get to work and make their future in this industry being told “no,” just because that’s easier than doing the hard work to get to “yes.” When we emerge from this pandemic, we can have the same-old economy with the same-old boom-and-bust future, or we can roar back to life, breaking new ground and fearlessly investing in ourselves, in the limitless potential of New Mexicans.” Our Chamber board has urged a “do not pass” on this legislation until adequate workplace safeguards addressing testing and public safety are in place. We expect legalization bills to steam roll through the legislature, however. The good side is the Governor promises tens of thousands of jobs to be created.

More for Opportunity Scholarship
Last year a crippled down version of Lujan-Grisham’s Opportunity Scholarship passed but with little money and only went to two-year colleges. She’s back to the well despite our economic woes asking for $22 million for the scholarship in order to realize the dream of free higher education. Once the wants have been totaled up by legislators, she’ll probably be short of that goal again.

Permanent Fund raid breaks anew
The Governor also asked for an additional one percent tap of the state’s permanent fund to go toward early childhood programs. She and others are emboldened after a number of conservative Democrats were defeated this election cycle. Would our problems in education really all be over if we did this? Or would what little budget stability this state has soon fly out the window? Our Chamber is once again opposed to this recurrent ask by the certain liberal Democrats. According to money management experts we’re in the sweet spot with our current draw and more would put the long-term viability of the fund in danger.

Governor grabs for legislator’s capital outlay
I her address the Governor hit on the need to update broadband throughout the state after the pandemic laid bare the inadequacies in our system statewide. Her ask was that legislators all pledge half their capital outlay money toward projects to meet that goal. That might be a good idea for many, and we would ask why haven’t they done it sooner, our area, however is among the best in the state for broadband. Legislators everywhere will probably ignore this idea.

Committee meetings getting started
Online committee meetings have started and while the technology portion of the equation can’t be termed a train wreck as it was in the Special Sessions, it is far from smooth. Testimony in the ones we watched this week so far didn’t appear to be hampered or short-changed too greatly but then we really couldn’t see who was being left outside the cyber walls. Things were moving fast, not as fast as the rocket docket of last year. We hope committee chairs aren’t getting ready to light those rockets and leave fair debate on the launchpad.