Sisters and Brothers,
The special session has come to and end and I want to give all of you the rundown on what took place.
Our message was simple, to avoid layoffs and/or furloughs and the best way for this to happen was to fund new revenue steams to increase the reoccurring money coming into the state and that any cuts should be spread as even as possible so not one group or state agency would take the hit. Shared sacrifice.
House bill 17 sponsored by Rep. Lucky Varela originally called for a 4% cut to state agencies, a 4% cut to higher education and a 2.8% cut to K-12.
The version that was passed today brought the K-12 percentage down to 2% and increases the state agency percentage to 7.6%. Higher education stayed at 4%. The legislators give full control to the governor to find the 7.6%, which comes down to almost 100 million.
7.6% is a fairly large cut to state agencies and could lead us to furloughs and/or layoffs so we must all contact the governors’ office and ask him to veto the cut to state agencies. If he does veto the cut to state agencies and cuts need to me made to get us into January, it is my understanding he can still make cuts through and executive order which may be our best option at this point.
I think our message is simple. These cuts may led to layoffs and/or furloughs which will be bad for New Mexico families, bad to the economy, and will only put us deeper into the hole we are in.
We all understand that cuts need to be made, but for state agencies to take the biggest hit that is not acceptable. We all must share the sacrifice.
So please call the governor at (505) 476-2200 and ask him to veto the 7.6% cuts to state agencies.
As for higher education, everything I have been told and Carter and testify to this, a 4% cut should not be felt by our members. If anyone from NMSU or Western is hearing anything different please email or call me. Same goes for any state employees.
We will see what happens over the next few days, but please get those calls into the governor.
If you would like a copy of the bill you can visit www.legis.state.nm.us
Josh Anderson
AFSCME Council 18
505-266-2177 work
505-266-3155 fax
Please do not forward any political emails to or from public employer email addresses. If you are receiving this at a public employer email address, please sign up for gmail, hotmail, yahoo or another private service (gmail, hotmail and yahoo are completely free and are pretty easy to set up) and notify me of your new address. Thank you.
