House Speaker Up to His Old Tricks

Many New Mexico citizens have been waiting for months to see how the debate would shape up regarding ideas on how to re-work New Mexico’s budget. But when it was all said and done in Santa Fe today, the dictatorial tactics of the Speaker of the House prevailed. What should have been a lengthy debate with ample opportunities for new ideas rapidly descended into a disgusting time-wasting charade. And much like the introduction of the ill-fated House Bill 605 last week, once again a handful of House members brought disgrace on themselves.
At the heart of the ridiculous spectacle were stifling procedural tactics, all carefully choreographed  and executed with the approval of House Speaker Ben Lujan. Today Lujan carved yet another notch in his political gun when he killed any chance that other people with ideas worth consideration might be heard. Instead of all duly elected House members being allowed to consider various budgetary ideas, they were treated to a lamentable farce. Given the tough decisions facing New Mexico how and why could this happen?

First it quickly became clear to all members that House Republicans were ready to offer several amendments for a vote. These were ideas designed to improve the state's woefully inadequate budget process. And early on one amendment was actually was adopted by the chamber. However, almost as quickly, and seemingly right on cue, Ben Lujan's lieutenants decided to "run out the clock" rather than continuing to engage in deliberative debate and the thoughtful consideration of ideas. After the single GOP amendment was adopted, it seems that the Speaker had had enough of any thought process that might actually allow intelligent people, even those in his own party, to explore ideas that might lead to best practices. The amazingly arbitrary three-hour debate time limit that was established, after months of waiting, was allowed to be "run out." Allowing additional votes on additional amendments was not to be.

Tom Taylor

Today the state witnessed yet another of many sad chapters in New Mexico's recent political history. Once again a single "strong man" managed to impose his personal will on all of the people and all of their duly elected representatives. “The people of New Mexico would be disappointed in this behavior and so are we,” said House Minority Leader Tom Taylor of Farmington. “The fact a single member of the majority easily took up over an hour of time in debate is completely unfortunate.” Apparently not much has changed in Santa Fe. Clearly House Speaker Ben Lujan still feels he can run the House chamber like a Kangaroo Court. Only citizen activists and others searching for best practices will determine how many more times Lujan can continue to deny duly elected officials the chance to bring ideas to the table and others to consider them.

Could it be time to reform a system that allows bullying, intimidation, and the stifling of debate to be a winning political ploy? That time came and went. Everyone sees the huge budget deficit and the blatant conflicts of interest. Today in Santa Fe we saw the definition of insanity playing out. Where is the outrage?

House Speaker Up to His Old Tricks