D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March
2009
Will 2009 finally be the year that New Mexico reins in its buccaneer political culture?
By David A. Fryxell
For a few minutes in January, state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones (R-Albuquerque) sneaked New Mexico state government into the 21st century. Against the rules, Arnold-Jones webcast the proceedings of the House Taxation and Revenue Committee, putting the dronings of a New Mexico legislative committee live on the Internet for the first time. Even after committee Chairman Edward C. Sandoval (D-Albuquerque) asked her to stop, Arnold-Jones continued her rogue webcast. House Speaker Ben Lujan (D-Santa Fe) later scolded her: "You have been here long enough to know that we have rules."
Indeed, the New Mexico legislature has a welter of rules, for itself and other branches of state government — many of them, like the rule against webcasting, designed to protect the sometimes-messy business of running the Land of Enchantment from the prying eyes of New Mexico's citizens. Once again, in the current legislative session that wraps up March 21, a handful of open-government advocates are pushing reform measures: opening up conference committee sessions, establishing a state ethics board, setting campaign-contribution limits. But, if history is any guide, most of those efforts will fail.
Consider that measures to open the closed-door conference committee meetings — where the legislative sausage really gets made, often at the last minute — have failed at least 13 times in recent sessions. And this session, the key bill to create an ethics commission got routed to three committees each in the House and Senate, rather than the normal two per chamber. That's half again as many chances to derail it.
Even when reform measures do pass, they seem to get defanged or their best intentions lost along the way. That ethics commission, as proposed by Attorney General Gary King, would lack independent subpoena authority; to subpoena anyone, it would have to get permission from the attorney general — potentially, the very official it's investigating.
Or consider Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones' rogue webcam. New Mexico is one of only three states that provides no live audio or video of its legislature — only one of many such dubious distinctions. But last year, the Senate actually voted, by a two-to-one margin, to begin live webcasting of Senate floor sessions, appropriating $30,000 to install cameras. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, however, the Senate recently decided to wait at least another year before going "live," blaming the economy. "It's difficult to start a new program during a budget crisis," Paula Tackett, director of the Legislative Council Service, told the paper. But Sen. Mark Boitano (R-Albuquerque) pointed out that because the session lasts only 60 days, webcasting wouldn't actually cost even the $30,000 previously approved — more like $10,000.
"The legislature should stand up and say that the people demand access," Arnold-Jones said. "My constituents are furious about it — they want to be able to watch so they know what is going on."
Putting aside the question of who might have so much time on his hands as to want to watch a legislative committee, the point is that an open state government is less likely to be a corrupt state government. "The legislature mandates transparency to everybody else in the state, but doesn't believe it applies to them," says Leonard DeLayo, executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. "Closed doors and behind-closed-doors deals lead to potential corruption, no doubt about it."
If ever there were a year to throw open the doors of state government and enact meaningful ethics reforms, advocates believe, 2009 is it. Ironically, their optimism springs in part from the nadir of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's political career: Instead of being en route to Washington, DC, to join the new Obama administration as Secretary of Commerce, Richardson finds himself still in Santa Fe, his nomination sidetracked by scandal. The governor withdrew his name after reports surfaced of a federal investigation into "pay-to-play" charges; a grand jury is looking into possible links between campaign contributions by the top executive of CDR Financial Products and more than $1.4 million in state contracts. That ethics earthquake was swiftly followed by revelations of a lawsuit filed in state court last summer by Frank Foy, the former chief investment officer of the state's Education Retirement Board. He alleges pressure by Richardson allies to invest $90 million with Vanderbilt Capital Advisors — a financial firm whose executives subsequently donated to the governor's campaign funds.
The governor has denied wrongdoing in both cases and says he "looks forward to signing those important reforms" before the legislature this session. He stated, "In my view, the state and its officials have done nothing wrong. They behaved with the best of intentions and the best conduct."
Nonetheless, Richardson's woes and his embarrassing retreat to the Roundhouse have put "New Mexico's Political Wild West" (as a recent Wall Street Journal headline characterized it) in the national spotlight. The Wall Street Journal described the Land of Enchantment as having an "unusual — and lightly regulated — political culture." The newspaper quoted Attorney General Gary King as recalling the testimony of a witness in the kickback probe that put two state treasurers in prison. When asked why he bribed the officials, the witness replied, "My understanding is, that's how business is done in New Mexico."
In a similar story, headlined, "Inquiry Highlights New Mexico's Few Ethics Laws," the New York Times quoted State Sen. Dede Feldman (D-Albuquerque), a frequent sponsor of reform measures: "This is the Wild West. There are few restrictions. There are no limits on campaign contributions."
Matt Brix, director of the Center for Civic Policy in Albuquerque, added, "We have a system that is wholly out of whack and out of sync with what other states have done and what the federal government has done to try to regulate money and politics. That invites all kinds of problematic situations."
By now, the litany of ways in which New Mexico lags behind the nation in good-government basics is familiar. And perhaps by the time you read this, legislation fixing many or all of these gaping holes in the state's political system will be on the way to the governor's desk. But it's not any one ethical loophole that makes New Mexico the political equivalent (to choose a fresher metaphor) of the freebooting Caribbean in which pirates of yore made such a haul. Rather, it's the constellation of so many temptations for politicians and government officials to turn public service into a grab for booty that would make Captain Jack Sparrow blush:
• An unpaid legislature — Start with the simple fact that New Mexico's legislators work for free. Although they receive a per diem for expenses during the session, New Mexico has the only state legislators in the nation who don't earn an actual salary. While this might at first blush make the Roundhouse sound like a haven of civic do-gooderism with no regard for personal gain, the practical effect is just the opposite. As Steven Robert Allen, executive director of Common Cause New Mexico, recently pointed out in the Alibi weekly, the lack of a paycheck makes it easy for legislators "to justify being wined and dined by lobbyists and various special interests." It also largely limits legislative service to the retired and/or wealthy who can afford to take off a couple of months every year. This small pool of potential candidates, once elected, tends to keep coming back to Santa Fe for decades, collecting political chits and resisting any change in what is — for them — a very comfortable system.