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Saturday, October 31, 2009
Richardson Plays Dr. Doom
By Thomas J. Cole
Journal Staff Writer
Today is Halloween, but Gov. Bill Richardson has been running around as Dr. Doom all week.
Richardson is upset the Legislature approved a 7.6 percent cut in funding for most of his agencies as a means to help address a $650 million budget deficit.
Day after day this week, in a well-orchestrated public-relations campaign, Richardson and other administration officials warned of dire consequences should the governor sign the legislation.
Senior citizens will go hungry, poor children will go without medical care, state parks will be shut, two prisons will be closed and hundreds of criminals will be set loose to prey on you, the administration said.
Government cutbacks are going to be painful to some degree for New Mexicans, but there's good reason to be skeptical that they will be as dire as the administration warns.
Richardson wanted the Legislature to cut agency spending by 3.5 percent to help close the budget gap.
Under the governor's plan, I guess, we would have closed only one prison and not as many parks, fewer seniors would have lost nutrition assistance and not as many low-income children would have gone without medical care.
But Richardson had promised minimum cuts in government services and no layoffs or furloughs with a 3.5 percent cut.
So, if you're buying what the administration is selling, a 3.5 percent cut wouldn't have been that bad but 7.6 percent represents doomsday.
A 3.5 percent reduction would have resulted in $43.2 million in agency cuts; the 7.6 percent would mean $93.7 million in cuts, a difference of $50.5 million out of total agency spending of more than $1.2 billion. There also could be a loss of federal matching funds for some state programs.
Lawmakers gave Richardson flexibility in how to make the reductions. A particular agency can be cut by more or less than 7.6 percent, as long as the governor comes up with $93.7 million in savings across his agencies.
Richardson has until Nov. 12 to decide whether to go along with the 7.6 percent cut in agency funding and the other deficit-reduction steps approved by the Legislature in its recent special session.
"I have to have the responsibility of making sure we're doing the right thing," the governor said this week.
The goal of the governor's doom-and-gloom show may be to punish legislators, who refused to cancel $150 million in so-called pork projects and use the money to help close the budget gap. Lawmakers did agree to look at the project funding in January.
Richardson also might be looking to avoid any public heat once the budget cuts are implemented or be setting the stage to veto some of the bills approved by the Legislature.
Lawmakers have responded that they allocated federal stimulus money and other funds to offset a reduction in state money for Medicaid, the health care program for low-income people.
They also say they were forced to make a deeper cut in agency funding because Richardson insisted on a smaller reduction in money for public schools. Funding for schools accounts for about 43 percent of the $5.5 billion budget.
The governor "can whine, and he'll probably be one up on everybody" because he has such a large soapbox, says Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Arthur Smith, D-Deming.
But, Smith added, Richardson's big-spending days are clearly over. The state budget shot up more than 50 percent in the governor's first six years in office, from 2003 to 2008.
In just a year, it's out with the Santa Claus costume and in with Dr. Doom.
Richardson's public-relations campaign on the budget cuts this week was made possible in part by the small PR army he has fielded across government.
When Gov. Gary Johnson left office at the end of 2002, he had just three political appointees with press-related job titles, according to his salary plan for exempt employees.
As of Sept. 25, there were 25 slots under Richardson for political appointees with titles like press aide, public information officer and communications director. The average annual salary: $72,336. Three of the slots were empty.
There are three other appointees in government whose titles don't reflect that a large part of their time is spent on press relations.
The Governor's Office has five press-related jobs, although two were vacant as of Sept. 25. Lt. Gov. Diane Denish has a media coordinator; the previous lieutenant governor didn't have such a position.
As part of its budget-reduction package, the Legislature mandated that Richardson eliminate the jobs of 102 political appointees.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. Thom Cole can be reached in Santa Fe at 505-992-6280 or at tcole@abqjournal.com.
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