Digital Signature Licitness for Operational Budget in Mexico

How to eSign a document: digital signature licitness for Operational Budget in Mexico

thanks again to Martha Burke for That interview we got into a few more topics including some of those failed firearm bills you can watch that conversation on the New Mexico InFocus YouTube page now let's return one last time to our line opinion panel before this year's session began one thing caught the attention of lawmakers across New Mexico the state's record-setting surplus of 3.6 billion in quote new money now Flash Forward to march in their last week of the session and lawmakers passed a 9.57 billion dollar bill to the governor's office this record-setting spending Bill marked as marked a one billion dollar increase from the previous year's budget and increased recurring expenses about 30 percent on top of that a fact that Senator George Munoz has been quoted by the Santa Fe New Mexican as being quote an unsustainable number and Inez what happened in creating this year's budget is the senator on to something here that's a lot of money in one year a bill well he's onto something in the sense that if you keep increasing by 14 percent in a year 12 a year we're not going to have that much money because oil and gas eventually will run down what hopefully they did strategically enough was they dedicated money they the way they described it was it's now money for the future so there's a hundred million dollars that is going to start the enchantment Legacy fund which is going to do conservation projects that's not a recurring appropriation necessarily and they're trying to use this Surplus in strategic ways that will keep us going for the long run and especially important I think is is growing you know the film industry growing the medical industry you know the malpractice fix was in part to make sure doctor stayed in New Mexico which is a health care issue but it's also an economic issue so if you can keep all of our different Industries thriving our small businesses Etc then we're going to have tax revenue so when oil and gas goes away there won't be as much to replace it but there'll be a decent you know chunk of money sure absolutely Sean ing To Source New Mexico your publication the following received hundreds of millions more in funding compared to the last fiscal year Medicaid the state's natural resource agencies public education higher education Early Childhood Ed 4 million more has been set aside for tourism as well as nearly 2 million more in Economic Development it's easy to pull these things out individually and sort of criticize them but in the overall we've been calling for increases in all these places for years it's amazing what happens when you do meet that demand you're suddenly the bad guy but again it's a lot of money are we to be surprised there are conservatives out there who were very very worried that this is unsustainable for this kind of increase you know voters asked for this they wanted to spend money you know the messaging has been consistent even before the session that New Mexico has money and business is booming and so like let's spend that money across the board as you saw state agencies across the board saw an increase in in their budgets overall one thing that I'm very curious to consider as we as we look at this going forward I look at education and everything in education goes back to Yazzie Martinez in the education reform and we've seen over the past several years since that mandate happened in 2018 over a billion dollars of State investment into into public education even before Latin and there was more money that came through this year but there's always been a concern about is that money being spent appropriately there's actually school districts that are have unspent money even though they're getting more money because there's not quite the expertise in New Mexico to be able to spend it properly you don't have enough teachers to spend it on so when I look at it just like from that micro ISM of like how public education has been spending their increase in funding which is of course you know the majority of the budget Bill I'm curious to know our state agency is going to be able to keep up with all this new money interesting point there uh Dan after hours of debate on the budget uh at that you watch the Senate finance committee pulled the spending plan back to make amendments after already approving it and that caused about 48 Hours 36 hours of angst about process is there any follow-up to that a lot of folks were pretty embittered how that went down what do you think yeah um the sausage making can be kind of unpleasant to watch sometimes but in this case I think that um you know the the Senate finance committee was trying to come up with an agreement that would avoid a veto by the governor that would not prompt the house to reject the changes that the senate had made so there were all kinds of compromises that um that that look a little strange and that maybe didn't fit um you know what the Senate finance committee itself wanted to do um so yeah I think there is some some bad blood um on that front and there could be changes you know the the Senate has been trying to make the process a little more open on the house side we saw a leadership change with Nathan small who had public hearings accepted public testimony kind of trying to open up the budget process a little bit so some of those things may stick around but um but yeah there are a lot of compromises and trade-offs that get made and and not everyone's going to be happy about it who was it that uh mentioned out of frustration the next time you're going to have to follow Bill and instead of looking for an amendment behind closed doors why don't we just doing that anyway I mean know why we're allowing amendments in the first place why can't we just have people file bills uh Inez interestingly the state's Omnibus tax bill went down to the wire again this session passing the House and Senate a little more than two hours remaining uh but the governor earlier in the week said the proposed tax package quote you saw this of course cuts too deep too quickly and asked for lawmakers to trim the bill uh it doesn't we don't usually hear the governor weigh in on things like this in process what did you make of that and was she effective yeah I think she was because they they went back and adjusted it and I think what she's saying is that you can't spend it all at once whether by giving rebates or sending the money out or by cutting what's coming in I mean part of the problem with the idea that they wanted to raise let's say the the tax brackets for higher wage earners and people were saying why are you raising taxes we have so much money what you're doing is setting up a structure so that when you don't have as much money you have adequate revenues coming in because the business of the state has to be done right whether oil and gas is booming whether it's not booming and what we don't want to happen is to have horrible Cuts Like We had to when Susanna Martinez was governor you know through no fault of her own because the the oil and gas crashed that's right so we're trying to set a sustainable economy for New Mexico right uh Sean I know the big one was the approved alcohol tax increase is a far cry from what was originally proposed interesting the lobby the alcohol laby they came out as you would expect them is what they do it's their you know their right to do it uh but who won here because as you know we have a major problem when it comes to alcohol here and its effects on all of us Statewide wow that's an interesting question as to who won with that I mean I guess it's going to be determinous to what we see you know this increase in alcohol tax I believe is a 50 50 Cent tax excuse me Dan I have to ask you but what was the actual pretty modest modest okay I don't remember the percentage Yeah the initial proposal was at 50 cents and that guy excuse me I apologize for yeah but no I think at this point we're going to see like that money is supposed to go towards substance abuse treatment programs and kind of you know harm prevention programs to support people who are dealing with substance use disorders and so you know you would assume that those individuals will benefit um but I'm really not quite sure where it's going to go from there because it seems like ultimately the consumer is going to have to pay more people might be drinking less but that's kind of going to be yet to yet to be seen one thing that I did notice out of that tax bill too is that you know within it that kind of got lost we spent so much time talking about alcohol but there's also a cigar tax that I saw that had an increase in there which means for a lot of our people who you know imbibing cannabis the price the Blunt's going to go up that's right good point there but there were some carve outs as well I think so I think the local beer people got a car about they're not going to be affected by this dude I have that right I know yeah I think that's right as well um you know the tax rebate Inez the 500 singles thousand for couples uh less than what the governor proposed I talked about this with Martha Burke during our my one-on-one earlier this week 500 that was still a lot of money in New Mexico should we feel good about that is that a victory for the governor I think it's a victory because she wanted to give some money back you know personally if you're worried about money for the future and you start keep giving it back will you have enough money when you need it I always worry about that but I know people are struggling and that's you know that's a couple of weeks of groceries at least it's a car payment it's your rent or half of your rent if you live in Santa Fe or third or your rent right so you know people need people need cash yeah Dan your sense of that one it was a debate but it didn't move that far it wasn't it's like like we're going from 3 500 down to 500 I mean 750 to 500 may seem like a little bit but 250 is a lot of money around here it's a lot of dough but we got we got something coming again victory for the governor she wanted this to happen last year as well I think so I mean um the initial house legislation I think had even smaller uh rebates so um so she did get them to move the number up a bit um so I think that's something that she's satisfied with um you know as I and as mentioned you know kind of the tension here is like how much money do you want to give people now versus making sort of recurring changes to the tax system um and uh you know it's it's safer in some ways to just give people a rebate check now but you know we don't know if that rebate check will be there in the future you know this may be the last time you get one it's hard to say that's an important point you know during the pandemic We There was an idea that maybe these things would just sort of keep rolling for a while but it had to end at some point thanks again to our line panel as always this week be sure to let us know what you think about any of the topics the line covered on our Facebook Twitter or Instagram pages and catch any episode you may have missed on the PBS app it's really cool or your Roku with Smart TV thanks again for joining us we'll see you next time