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News
Impeach George Bush and Dick
Cheney to prevent Wider War in the Middle East and Bring U.S. Forces
Home from Iraq with Professor Francis Boyle
a radio show transcript
Gary King: "We
Are All Constituents"
by Stephen Fox
The Hunting Fallacy
by Cyril Christo
Impeachment Limerick
Richard Arthure
What is a Culture of Peace?
by Louise Diamond
“Powerbrokers” (Legislative
Leadership and Lobbyists) in Control of Conference Committee
by Stephen Fox
NM Senate Joint Memorial
to Begin Process of Prohibiting Production of New Nuclear Weapons in
New Mexico
by Leland Lehrman
Newly Elected Las Cruces
Representative Jeff Steinborn Introduces Irrigation Fund Bill
by Stephen Fox
Native American Education
Act Vital to New Senator Lynda Lovejoy
by Stephen Fox
Legislature is a “Brain
Trust” to Accomplish All We Need in New Mexico
by Stephen Fox
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“Powerbrokers”
(Legislative Leadership and Lobbyists) in Control of Conference Committee
People and Rest of Legislators “Shut Out”
Albuquerque Republican Senator Joe Carraro’s Conference Committees
as Public Meetings (SB322) bill was first voted up 19-18 on Tuesday,
February 27, and then, within an hour, after the Senate Leadership asked
for Senators to be retrieved from all over the Capitol, and, according
to Carraro, apparently after Leadership put some pressure on one of
the swing-vote Senators, Mary Kay Papen, to change her vote. A reconsideration
vote was taken, and the bill failed by one vote 21-20.
“What happened to freedom of the press?” Carraro asked of
the Sun- News. “Those who voted against this bill believe that
the Press should not have access to the Conference Committees!”
(where differences between House and Senate versions of legislation
are ironed out in compromise bills). “The system is broken, and
this bill will would begin to fix it. Many coming into Conference Committees
have hidden agendas, and they want to continue to hide them. In these
committees, the people represented are the Power Brokers: the Leadership
in both Houses and the lobbyists. The rest of the legislators and the
people themselves are shut out.”
Carraro identified the key vote as that of Mary Kay Papen (Democrat-Las
Cruces). He said she had first agreed to vote for the bill if an amendment
were added that the public could observe, but not participate, to which
Carraro agreed. He maintains that she must have changed her vote and
asked for the vote to be reconsidered under pressure from Leadership,
unless she was confused twice, as she stated. “This searching for
negative votes in a so- called ‘reconsideration vote’ is legal,
but I question its Ethics. If Papen’s constituents knew about this,
they might have asked her to do it right this time.” He pointed
out that newly appointed Navajo Senator Lovejoy voted for his bill.
As to Richardson’s influence and possible help in getting the one
remaining House version passed, Carraro stated that “we haven’t
heard from the Governor on this bill, and there have been complaints
about the Governor’s staff showing up at Conference Committees
to say what he wants, but that his meetings are not at all open. The
Governor’s meetings should also be open meetings. The Senators
who voted against this bill end up cheating their constituents.”
“We have too much lobbyist influence in the Legislature, anyway.
Take for example, my tobacco bills: when they came to the Corporations
Committee, Chairman Shannon Robinson voted against them without the
tobacco lobbyists even speaking, as if they had already made their point
clear to him privately. They were clearly in control. We need someone
fair and objective with issues like that.”
“The biggest lobbyists are Big Business, particularly tobacco and
liquor, and Big Government. Sometimes, even the Republicans go against
my bills because of the influence of the Big Business lobbyists.”
Roswell Republican Senator Rod Adair stated, “There is no excuse
for not having open conference committee meetings; the opponents could
not give a single rational explanation for opposing them, and they were
invited to do so repeatedly.” He recalled that in the Senate Floor
debate that he had offered to yield the floor to anyone who could point
to any good policy that has ever come out of closed meetings, but that
the opponents blustered on and on about men and women in wars fighting
to preserve closed meetings in America.
Adair said, “There is no hope for this in this session,” even
with Senator Dede Feldman’s continued determined advocacy for open
Conference Committee meetings. “These swinging votes flipped around
like a Northern Pike.”
The Sun-News cordially invites any of the Senate or House opponents
of Open Conference Committee legislation and other Ethics reforms legislation
to use equal space in the next issue to make their case, in view of
House bill that still remains possible to pass.
- Staff Report by Stephen Fox - stephen@santafefineart.com - 983-2002
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