House Budget Blueprint Unveiled

Posted by Jim Spence on Saturday, February 19, 2011
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Lucky Varela
SANTA FE, NM (KRQE) - The projected $5.4 billion budget, containing no new taxes and deep cuts to almost all programs and agencies, passed the House Appropriations and Finance Committee on Friday morning on a 10-7 vote along party lines. "We had limited resources," said Committee Deputy Chairman Luciano "Lucky" Varela, D-Santa Fe. Members tried to soften the blow to K-12 public education, Medicaid and the Children, Youth and Families Department, while maintaining the state's reserves at 5 percent. The state plans to replace the hundreds of millions of lost federal dollars for those programs. Read full story here: News New Mexico
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1 comments:

Paul said...

Remember all the screaming from the environmental lobby when Gov Martinez released her FY2012 budget proposal? Well, here's the comparison between her proposal and the HB2 numbers just passed out of committee. The percentage change is from the FY11 adjusted operating budget:

General Fund Total Funds
Prop HB2 Prop HB2
EMNRD:
Total budget - 6.0 - 8.6 -13.1 -14.2
Ren. Energy/Effic. 0.0 -17.6 -15.7 -28.0
Healthy Forests -12.4 -14.2 -43.1 -43.8
State Parks - 5.3 - 7.7 - 8.7 - 9.5
Mine Reclamation 0.0 - 1.9 13.5 11.8
O&G Conservation - 4.0 - 5.9 - 8.4 - 9.3
Prgm Ldrship/Support - 6.8 - 6.9 2.8 2.5

Dept of Environment:
Total budget -21.1 -19.3 - 3.3 - 3.1
Special Revenue 0.0 0.0 2.0 2.0
Program Support -19.1 -21.0 -12.0 -12.8
Water Quality -22.3 -22.3 - 2.8 - 2.8
Envir. Health -15.5 -10.2 - 7.2 - 4.2
Envir. Protection -22.7 -22.2 - 9.1 - 8.8
Water/Wastewater -100.0 -100.0 - 4.1 - 5.1

The major differences:
(1) HB2 cuts funding for renewal energy and energy efficiency by one-sixth, while the gov's proposal had no change.
(2) HB2 reduces the gov's proposed cuts to Environmental Health line item by one-third, but still cuts it by 10.2% (General Fund), and 14.3% as compared to the FY10 actual Gen'l fund budget.

February 19, 2011 at 1:32 PM

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