Capitol Notebook: Supreme Court issues new order in New Mexico redistricting clash

SANTA FE — The judge handling a legal clash over allegations of illegal partisan gerrymandering will have a few extra days to decide the case.

The state Supreme Court on Friday issued an order directing District Judge Fred Van Soelen to resolve the litigation by Oct. 6, five days later than an a previous deadline.

The justices also made it clear the case will come back to them for a decision — rather than the Court of Appeals — if someone appeals Van Soelen’s ruling, as expected.

The case centers on a challenge to New Mexico’s new congressional map, drawn following the 2020 census.

The new map makes all three districts Democratic-leaning, and the lone Republican in the delegation, Yvette Herrell, subsequently lost her reelection bid.

The Republican Party of New Mexico and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit last year accusing Democratic lawmakers and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of illegal partisan gerrymandering.

Supporters of the map, in turn, contend the new districts are more competitive than before and give each district a mix of urban and rural constituents to represent.

A three-day trial before Van Soelen is set to begin Sept. 27 in Lovington.

Climbing construction costs

An explosion in the cost of construction may make it more difficult for New Mexico to carry out capital projects.

Funding requests submitted to a council that oversees school construction, for example, are coming in at double the cost estimates from a year ago, according to a new report by the Legislative Finance Committee.

The report suggests lawmakers in the next session limit appropriations for new projects that aren’t already well-planned or at an advanced stage of design. Instead, the Legislature might focus on existing projects that need extra money in order to start construction, the report said.

New Mexico’s capital outlay system is a perennial source of heartburn. Each lawmaker typically gets a certain amount of discretionary funds to allocate as they see fit, a system that makes it more difficult to coordinate on statewide and regional priorities.

In some cases, lawmakers appropriate funding for a project that isn’t enough to actually get it done. Consequently, the funding sits unused.

Indeed, about $5.2 billion in capital funds are still outstanding, according to the LFC report.

Fred Nathan, executive director of Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan think tank in Santa Fe, said the report underscores the need for reform.

“The staggering $5.2 billion sitting idle, while construction costs rise, makes it more urgent than ever to reform New Mexico’s broken capital outlay system so that the state prioritizes and fully funds critically needed infrastructure projects,” he said, “instead of piecemeal funding a grab bag of less urgent items.”