Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:16:24 -0800
Subject: 2009 State Legislative Update #2--Jan. 25

As we prepare for the second week of the session, we've made good progress on three of our major issues: protecting our pensions, teeing up our arbitration bill, and preparing our child care organizing bill. Yet serious challenge remain for all three, and it goes without saying that the budget has not gotten better.

First, the budget and raises: at the latest joint Senate Finance/House Appropriations meeting, Senators and Representatives in both parties and both houses started using the terms "layoffs" and "furloughs". Basically, if the FY '09 budget is not shored up in the next week, the State of New Mexico may have trouble paying some of its bills.

Further, testimony from both executive and legislative staff indicates that the January and February revenue numbers are going to be even worse than what was projected in November when both the executive and LFC budgets were finalized.

The good news for FY '09 is that there are savings to be had by dipping into our reserves, which have been floating in the 10-13% range the last few years. Both the executive and legislature are looking at going as low as 8% for the reserves. While this is still a safe level, it is a significant reduction.

Further, for FY '09, if legislators work together, there are capital outlay savings from previous years. We are lobbying for legislators to put as much of their unused capital outlay as possible back into the general fund.

The scarier years are FY '10 and FY '11, because it will be harder to slash capital outlay and cut deeper into reserves. As of right now, legislators in both houses are telling us not to expect any new funding while they try to avoid layoffs and furloughs.

The arbitration bill has been introduced in each house--in the House of Representatives, Speaker Lujan is carrying it as House Bill 15, while Eric Griego introduced it as Senate Bill 164. Our biggest battle for the bill is to ensure a no-cost Fiscal Impact Report (FIR), which we believe is accurate (there may even be savings to the state by going to arbitration).

Our child care organizing bill has been introduced in the House by Miguel Garcia as HB 245, and Carlos Cisneros is going to carry it in the Senate. AFT has a similar-sounding but very different bill, so we have to make sure we distinguish between the two, particularly since CYFD and Voices for Children are supportive of our bill, the child care center association is neutral, and it's not clear that any of those three are going to support AFT's bill.

On pensions, we have talked to many of the leaders in both houses and are making progress in getting the idea out there that there is no immediate crisis requiring dramatic alterations to the benefit side of PERA. ERA is more complicated, since the major ERA unions are taking a less dialogue-oriented approach and the ERA board itself is pushing to alter the benefits for new employees.

Other issues continue to move forward with our support, including a cigarette tax that will help shore up the general fund. Additionally, we are going to continue to monitor the Retiree Health Care Authority bills and other possible tax increases.

Later this week we will be asking you to make calls in support of some of our legislation as it comes up in committee, so keep checking your email. Thanks everyone! --Carter

Carter Bundy
Political Action Representative
AFSCME International
1202 Pennsylvania St. NE
 Albuquerque, NM 87110
 (505) 266-2177 ext. 13 (work)
 (505) 266-3155 (fax)