Lobby week and lobby day
Our lobby week and lobby day (Thursday, February 5) were tremendously successful! We had about 100 members and staff lobby for our jobs, retirement, arbitration bills, and child care organizing on Thursday afternoon, and then we had over 150 people attend our legislative reception.
As a bonus on lobby day, Representative Candy Spence Ezzell (R-Roswell) introduced the right-to-work-for-less bill, which went down in flames in the House Labor Committee on a party line vote (all Dems supporting us, both Republicans voting against unions).
20 Representatives, 3 Senators (they were still on the floor working on the FY '09 solvency bill), State Treasurer James Lewis, and the Lt. Governor all attended the reception.
Please thank your member lobby team for their excellent work. They talked to dozens of legislators and left messages for dozens more over the course of the week, and played a big role in getting legislators to understand and support our issues. The member lobby team was made up of Magil Duran, Paula Fisher, Zach Garcia, Mary Gustin, Donna Hill, Andrew Padilla, Kathy Ritz, and Joel Villarreal. Thanks sisters and brothers!
Budget/layoffs/furloughs
This past week the legislature finalized their plans to shore up the nearly $500 million deficit for Fiscal Year '09, and there are no layoffs or furloughs in the plan. The legislature and administration took unusual measures in cutting capital projects significantly and dipping into reserves to avoid any major service cuts.
As the projections for Fiscal Year '10 roll in over the next few weeks, we anticipate bad news on the revenue side. To that end, AFSCME is going on the offensive to protect our jobs and avoid furloughs by proposing revenue increases that are fair.
The prime example of a fair revenue fix is outlawing corporate accounting shell games that result in multi-national companies like Wal-Mart from hiding their New Mexico profits in Delaware holding/shell companies. I've written a column about this tax scam that will appear at
www.haussamen.blogspot.com on Monday morning.
Arbitration
Our House arbitration bill (HB 15, Speaker Lujan) is heading to the House floor for a vote sometime this coming week. It passed the House Judiciary Committee Friday afternoon, with two Republicans (Paul Bandy and Bill Rehm) joining all the Democrats in supporting it. We have successfully changed the Fiscal Impact Report, although we believe that the range of costs to the state is still overstated in the FIR.
The State Personnel Office continues to be supportive of the legislation, with Director Sandy Perez and Counsel Paul Ritzma both standing up in support of the legislation and Ritzma actively testifying about the bill.
Please call your state representative to ask him or her to support House Bill 15 when it comes to the floor. You can find your representative at
www.legis.state.nm.us
In addition, please call this decisive dozen of important representatives, whose votes we'll need when HB 15 comes up. All numbers are area code 505:
Ray Begaye (D-Shiprock) 986-4436
Jose Campos (D-Santa Rosa) 986-4341
Joe Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) 986-4249
Mary Helen Garcia (D-Las Cruces) 986-4435 Thomas Garcia (D-Ocate) 986-4242 Karen Giannini (D-Albuquerque NE Heights) 986-4234 John Heaton (D-Carlsbad) 986-4432 Sandra Jeff (D-Crownpoint) 986-4243 Patty Lundstrom (D-Gallup) 986-4435 Ben Rodefer (D-Corrales) 986-4211 Jack Thomas (D-Rio Rancho) 986-4255 Jeanette Wallace (R-Los Alamos) 986-4452
Meanwhile, the Senate arbitration bill (SB 164, Eric Griego) passed the Senate Public Affairs Committee (also on lobby day), with one Republican (Gay Kernan) joining all the Democrats in supporting us. It goes to Senate Judiciary, but won't be heard until the end of the week or early next week at the earliest.
Child care
HB 245 (Miguel Garcia) is awaiting a hearing in the House Government Affairs Committee. We need lots of calls and emails to the following two representatives:
John Heaton (D-Carlsbad) 986-4432
Jeanette Wallace (R-Los Alamos) 986-4452
Make sure that you're polite to the staff answering the phone, and if you know anyone in Carlsbad or Los Alamos, please ask them to call in support of HB 245.
On the Senate side, SB 402 (Cisneros) is in Senate Public Affairs, but the first day it is likely to be heard is on Friday afternoon. We'll forward you the key Senators to call as we get closer.
Other bills
We are also supporting bills this week that limit return to work for PERA employees (helping the PERA fund, the general fund, and improving employee morale), improve transparency in tax breaks, shore up the Retiree Health Care Authority fund, and prevent wage theft by employers.
We'll be opposing bills like the Senate Bill (SB 451) which targets AFSCME and tries to limit our ability to participate in PERA elections.
If you are receiving this email at a public employer email address, please respond to me with your name and a private email address (like yahoo, hotmail, aol, msn, comcast, etc.). If you need help setting up a private email address, please let me or Josh Anderson (
j_anderson123@hotmail.com) know and we'll do it for you. Thanks, and keep up the calls! --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)
