*PLEASE READ TO BOTTOM TO MAKE CALLS/EMAILS ON CHILD CARE ORGANIZING AND ARBITRATION IN ADDITION TO BUDGET ISSUES* Thanks!
Budget/furloughs/layoffs
The state got another round of bad revenue news earlier today, with another hit of over $30 million to the general fund from underperforming investments.
The Senate continues to weigh the House budget, which includes a 1.5% paycut by transferring 1.5% of PERA and ERA payments from the state to the employee. We continue to fight for revenue enhancements, particularly those that would collect our fair share from out-of-state companies who use accounting tricks to hide their New Mexico profits.
The will almost certainly be a special session, most likely in April, to further consider the budget, and our activism on enhanced revenues may pay dividends then even if it's not moving quickly now. As a backup plan to avert the 1.5% PERA/ERA switch, our Council has indicated that furloughs are preferable to tampering with the retirement funds for several reasons.
However, over the last few days, there has been significant resistance to the furlough idea, largely because of the impact on education, public safety, health services, and income support work (which is through the roof right now). Essentially NM legislative staff and legislators are looking at the California model, where education, public safety, health services, and income support were exempted from the furloughs, resulting in almost double the amount of reduction in pay for everyone else.
We are continuing to get excellent suggestions from our membership in the event that the legislature insists on some kind of give back, including the idea that even unpaid holidays in the amount of 1.5% would be preferable to the 1.5% PERA/ERA switch.
Keep the calls coming to Senate Finance asking them to find more revenue by supporting "combined reporting" or at least not support the 1.5% PERA/ERA switch in House Bill 854. Here are their numbers and emails again:
Senate Finance Democrats
Nancy Rodriguez (D-Santa Fe) 986-4264 [no email]
Senate Finance Republicans
Child care organizing
Our Senate version, SB 402 (Cisneros) should be heard in Senate Judiciary on Wednesday afternoon, March 4. If all of the Democrats are in the room, we should be fine, but as an insurance plan, we'd love to get the support of two moderate Republicans, Sander Rue and Clinton Harden. Here is their contact information--call them on Wednesday morning and afternoon asking their support for SB 402:
Arbitration
House Bill 15 (Speaker Lujan) sailed through Senate Public Affairs on the consent agenda earlier this evening, because they'd already approved an identical Senate Bill (SB 164, Eric Griego).
Unfortunately, there may be another move to put HB 15 into Senate Finance, the committee which is likely to spell death for any bill other than bills that hand over taxpayer dollars to big out-of-state developers.
We haven't had any success with the committee chair John Arthur Smith in moving the Senate version of the arbitration bill that he dragged into his committee, so we need hundreds of calls and emails in the next day or two into Majority Leader Michael Sanchez:
Other bills
We played a leading role along with the Municipal League in crafting a bill that significantly limits return to work, or double dipping. The bill adds major protections to the PERA fund and also helps all PERA employer general fund revenue by making double dippers pay their share of PERA even when they return. The bill is HB 616 (Varela), and just passed House Appropriations unanimously. It is very likely to pass the House floor with little or no opposition.
We are fighting off bills to make PERA a 30 year retirement plan for new employees, including HB 573 (Heaton) and HB 798 (Berry). We are hopeful that these bills will not move too far, and that if they do, there will be major opposition from the Governor (in other words, a veto).
There may be some movement on the PERA contribution limit bill (SB 451, Ingle), but only if it is amended so that AFSCME can continue to have a major voice in these races.
AFSCME played a leading role in the temporary table of a bill (HB 808, Bandy) that would require all unions and all non-profits to disclose membership lists if we participated in politics, and would limit our ability to send out mail like what you're receiving right now. The bill does not require similar disclosure from corporations, which spend about 20 times what unions do on politics. We will continue to oppose bills that unfairly target unions to keep us on the sidelines in political and legislative work.
Unfortunately, some Democrats are supporting similar bills out of anger at other non-profits' educational programs, and this may become a top-tier fight for us in the last 17 days.
While we are not opposing taxpayer subsidies of developers, we are asking the legislature to make sure that the subsidies are based on new business they bring to the state, not "cannibalization", or "raiding", of existing tax bases. If the TIDDs don't have such protection, the state, city, and county general funds will be in even worse shape than they already are, leading to additional pay cuts, furloughs, and even layoffs.
There are dozens of other bills we're following, supporting some and opposing others. If you hear of any bills that might be good or bad for our membership, please let us know (you can't always tell about a bill from the title, and there are over 1,500 bills in this session, many of which are 50+ pages long).
Carter Bundy
Political Action Representative
AFSCME International
1202 Pennsylvania St. NE
Albuquerque, NM 87110
(505) 266-2177 ext. 13 (work)
(505) 266-3155 (fax)
