At the Roundhouse: Rodeo de Santa Fe

The Legislature’s veteran staff — the wranglers, if you will — look like they know what they’re doing, although furrows in their brows this early in the session show they’re already worrying about what chuckhole the dudes will step into next. They know the wrecks are coming and just hope they can get their charges back on the trail.

Some of the new members look unfamiliar with the reins suddenly in their hands. How do you steer this thing, anyway?

And even some veteran lawmakers who have been elevated to new positions look uncertain of their seats in the saddle.

The problem is that the dust still hasn’t settled from the November shoot-out — er, election — and 33 of these folks just put on stiff, brand new jeans. Two more have moved from the House to the Senate, making the total new member count for the 2013 session of the New Mexico Legislature 35. And they’ve just helped elected new leaders in the House and Senate.

Well, bless ‘em, they’re now full-fledged, part-time New Mexico citizen lawmakers. Voters back home sent them to Santa Fe to take care of the public’s business at the Roundhouse.

Overall, there are 112 of them, and they’re faced in a 60-day session with building a nearly $6 billion budget, balancing it with tax revenues, shoring up the state’s two big public employee pension funds, trying to ensure that the state’s fancy new Spaceport actually gets used and trying to settle long-running feuds between Republican Gov. Susana Martinez and the Legislature’s leading Democrats. Among other things.

All along they will be weighing the fundamental differences of Martinez’s idea for stimulating the lagging New Mexico economy with tax cuts and other incentives for private business versus the Democratic preference for intervening with government-slash-public money.

It’s going to take a while for this bunch to get lined out. But when did a New Mexico legislative session ever get off to a fast start anyway?

Sixty days to learn the Legislature’s traditions and rules, to say nothing about finding your new office in a round building with four floors. Sixty days to learn about the budget, pension solvency, student reading problems, teacher evaluations, New Mexico taxes, manufacturer liability law and probably a thousand other issues, if past records of bill introductions are any measure.

Boy howdy. Here comes the rodeo.