La Plaza: Priorities. We Don't Haz 'Em.

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

When the lead news story in the state is the fact that NMSU has suspended an Aggie guard for his role in a postgame brawl, it's pretty obvious that the priorities of both the state's [alleged] policymakers and its punditocracy are sadly misplaced.

Or nonexistent, even.

The New Mexico Lege concluded its "short session" last week. Sessions alternate: A so-called "full session" occurs each odd-numbered year, which is to say, 60 whole whopping days out of 365. That's it. That's a full legislative session in New Mexico. Even-numbered years, like this year, are limited to 30-day sessions. Fewer days than in the entire month of January.

It's a disgrace.


Of course, it's also what you get when you, as a state, refuse to pay your legislators for doing their jobs. The only state in the entire nation still stupid enough to take this tack. The argument, of course, is that they're not supposed to be relying on  legislator's salary for their income; they're supposed to be engaging in public service. Yeah, and so it becomes a mad scramble to turn private ventures into something onto which they can slap the label "public service," however ill-fitting, and then profit from it.

Which is not to say, of course, that the legislators don't get compensated for the time they spend actually [allegedly] legislating; they receive per diem payments for the days they're in session. The lucky ones receive their per diem even for the days they're not legislating, not in Santa Fe, at the opposite end of the state from the Roundhouse — hell, you can miss the whole session and still get paid. At a rate of $159 a day for 30 days.

Gee, I wish someone would pay me $159 a day for doing nothing.  I'd even show up in Santa Fe occasionally.

One them is recovering from hip surgery; the other allegedly from a spider bite. Fair enough. But you know what? The fact that neither of them could (or would, as the case may be) get to Santa Fe for a single day in the session meant that the budget process ground to a halt. Two weeks of nothing — half the session. The budget bill didn't even pass on a compromise basis until the next-to-last day of the session. And of the bills the two sponsored only one even made it to a vote: a memorial measure honoring Hispanic farmers.

I'm all for honoring our state's diverse cultural heritage, but you want full per diem payment for not showing up while that's the one and only accomplishment you can claim for another year?  Spare me.

Meanwhile, infrastructure suffers. Thanks to the Lege's malignant ennui, its peculiarly toxic combination of laziness and obstructionism, we may lose Amtrak service to the state entirely. 

A legislative panel earlier this month agreed to commission a study on whether the state should pay. The study is scheduled to be completed by the time next year's legislative session begins. 

A cost-sharing arrangement would require each state [Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico] and two railroads to contribute $4 million a year for 10 years. If no deal is reached, Southwest Chief might eliminate stops in Lamy, Las Vegas and Raton as well as Lamar, La Junta and Trinidad, Colo., and several western Kansas towns, including Garden City.

So, they punt to next year, when it's a full legislative session, and the 60 days will already be taken up with obsessing over parochial memorial bills, finding ways to punish their opponents from the just-concluded election cycle, and searching out new and creative means of turning that 60-day session into personal profit. 

The inaction on the looming Amtrak problem is, of course, only one small item in a much longer laundry list of legislative malpractice. But its emblematic of this particular institution's persistent refusal to prioritize, to play well (or at all) with others, to do its job in even the most minimal fashion.

And until New Mexico voters come to grips with the fact that a "citizen legislature" neither serves citizens nor legislates, we're stuck with it.

Copyright Ajiaakwe, 2014; all rights reserved.