Lawmakers race capital outlay packages through the Roundhouse

SANTA FE — Better late than never.

On the penultimate day of the session, lawmakers raced New Mexico’s capital outlay package through the Roundhouse, passing two bills on both the Senate and House floors on Wednesday morning and sending them to the governor’s desk.

Full versions of the bills, Senate Bills 275 and 246, weren’t brought up in committee until Tuesday.

Senate Bill 275, a measure to authorize more than 1,400 public works projects, according to the bill’s sponsor, passed the Senate and House unanimously. According to the Legislative Finance Committee, appropriations for those projects total about $1.4 billion.

In Bernalillo County, projects range in scope, from improvements to schools to acquiring and improving land for Balloon Fiesta Park. The latter would command roughly $16 million of the county’s total of more than $289.5 million in appropriations.

Also included in SB 275 is funding for an education initiative Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has pushed for months. The bill would set aside $30 million for a structured literacy institute that the governor has said in part would be a specialized place to teach reading to students.

That project was previously placed on hold while awaiting legislative funding approval.

SB 246, an annual bill to reauthorize a slew of over 250 projects, passed the Senate 31-6 and the House unanimously. Specifically, the measure extends the times, expands the purposes and makes other administrative changes to those projects to keep the funding appropriated for them in play.

Many of those projects have been delayed for a variety of reasons, including the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing construction costs. Some have been delayed for years.

And according to an LFC report, there were an estimated $4.7 billion in outstanding capital outlay dollars across roughly 5,000 projects as of the second quarter of the current fiscal year.

Lawmakers criticized the backlog of projects, with Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, arguing on the Senate floor it’s time for projects “to either get done or fail.”

Muñoz, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said he won’t entertain a reauthorization bill in his committee in the next year in hopes that New Mexico will focus instead on completing projects.

“It’s time for us to reform capital outlay,” he said. “We can’t look like we’re not getting anything accomplished in New Mexico, whether it’s a road, whether it’s redevelopment improvement areas, temporary youth housing — it has to get done.”

Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, pushed back, pointing out many reasons projects have been delayed, and urging Muñoz not to place a blanket full stop on project reauthorizations.

“I would hope that instead of a unilateral decision, that there’ll be no more reauthorizations. We’re going to put a stop to this terrible problem,” he said.