ABQ Journal

As usual the pace in the final days will get frenetic but this legislative session will ultimately be recorded as largely uneventful with lawmakers avoiding any major flare-ups that could influence their chances at the polls in November when all 112 of them are up for election. 

The lack of drama is epitomized by the ink-stained wretches--apparently desperate for any kind of action--cranking out nearly 1,300 words on the annual House-Senate charity basketball game that the House won.

Meanwhile, small ball is the name of the game on the floors of the Senate and House--excepting that $10 billion plus budget that will soon be passed. 

A bill tweaking high school graduation requirements and signed by the Governor is splashed across the front pages and portrayed as a game-changer while the dreaded but visionary proposal to require at least a 180 day school year languishes. No-one wants to face angry parents in November--even if your last in the nation in public ed.  

The 21 gun salute that MLG offered in the name of gun control has mostly fizzled with the solons sparing her too much embarrassment by passing a bill banning guns at polling places and perhaps another requiring a seven day waiting period before taking possession of a newly purchased firearm.  

Approval of a tax bill in the House made for another splashy headline but it too was a tweak, making minor adjustments in tax rates that make them a bit more progressive but anything bolder was shunned. That includes an interesting gambit from the Republicans asking that the state income tax be lowered to a symbolic one percent. 

That doesn't make sense across the board but what about attacking poverty by making the one percent rate apply to those making less than $25,000 a year and living hand to mouth? There's an idea in there somewhere in this rare fiscal era.

The game will get bigger later this week with the expected approval of that General Fund budget. It seems like yesterday that it was $6 billion but that's what becoming the second largest oil producing state in the USA does for you. 

That budget is making lawmakers fat and happy. They will dine on pork this final week when they also approve hundreds of millions in oil boom capital outlay funds and proudly show off to the folks back home.  

For incumbent lawmakers relishing a quiet campaign, what's not to like? 

But it's a different story for a state that badly needs to begin feeling more discomfort and even embarrassment over its often overwhelming social ills during a time of unprecedented plenty. 

Meanwhile, one of the victorious members of that House basketball team opines of the team's success:

I really feel like this victory is one that we can continue throughout the years.

Someone may still come along and put some pins in the velvet cushions that protect those legislative posteriors, but until then betting that the same legislative game continues is the safe bet. 

BOOZE AND JUICE

Let's start with the booze first. This year's effort to raise the tax on alcohol in our state that has far more deaths caused by it than any other started with less momentum than last year and now has met its demise at the Roundhouse. Two different bills got the Dems fighting among themselves and the lobbyists moved in for the kill. 

Too bad, but at least we are spared hearing more whining from the state's local brewers and wineries  about why they should be held exempt from any tax increase even though their poison is the same as the other guys. Talk about crying in your beer. Now the juice. . . 

BRIAN'S JUICE JOINT

New Mexico Fresh Foods LLC collapsed amid the financial crunch of the COVID-19 pandemic. And a group of investors who say they unfairly lost nearly $4 million in the venture are crying foul, according to a state court lawsuit filed against former state legislator and lawyer Brian Egolf and his wife, Kelly Egolf, who headed the firm that had specialized in juice.