As anyone who's been paying attention this Session has discovered, Democratic Sen. Michael Sanchez is getting a reputation for publicly bad mouthing ethics and campaign finance reform measures and their supporters on the Senate Floor and in some committee hearings. According to Sen. Sanchez's rants,...

This is a guest blog by Barbara Grothus, an artist and activist who lives in Albuquerque. As a worker in the private sector, I was rarely offered an opportunity to receive health insurance. I was young, I didn’t need it. I paid for my annual exams and was never sick. One year I witnessed the death...

“During these hard economic times New Mexico must be creative and proactive in order to bring economic growth to our state. The Research Applications Act will help attract investment to drive technological innovation and create high paying jobs,� said Sen. Stephen H. Fischmann (D, Dona Ana & Sie...

This is a guest blog by Greg Lennes of Las Cruces about SB 249, the SunCal TIDD sponsored by Sen. Linda Lopez, which passed the NM Senate last Thursday by a vote of 29-9. Greg also sent this message to all members of the New Mexico House. Our State Senate has failed New Mexicans. As Ben Franklin onc...

As Steven Robert Allen, Executive Director of Common Cause NM puts it: ... from our standpoint, watching “the action� in this committee [Senate Rules] has been roughly analogous to watching grass grow. (I can almost hear the crickets chirping!) No major ethics reform bill has yet made it out of ...

Update: HB 52 passed the NM House this afternoon by a vote of 40-27. It moves to the Senate next.********** Note: Contact your State Rep today on HB 52. The bill passed the House Voters and Election Committee yesterday on a 6-5 vote, and may be debated in the NM House as early as this afternoon. Ple...

The full New Mexico Senate vote on SB 12, the Domestic Partnership Rights and Responsibilities Act, may come as early as Monday. We need every single vote we can muster as the final tally is expected to be extremely close. Out of 42 State Senators, 27 are Dems and 15 are Repubs. If all the Senators ...

Update 2: See my later post on what supporters should do next and when the bill is expected to go before the full Senate.********** Update 1: In an ACLU New Mexico release on today's vote, Sen. Cisco McSorley expresses his feelings on the progress of the bill: "Less than two weeks ago this bill was ...

Note: See NMI reporter Gwyneth Doland's slideshow of the pro-domestic partnership rally outside the Roundhouse before the committee vote on the domestic partnership bill. The state-wide Coalition for Domestic Partnership released this statement: The Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act (...

Yesterday, Senator Michael S. Sanchez (D-Valencia-29) announced the members of the Senate Committees for the first session of the Forty-Ninth Legislature. I will have commentary on this soon, but I wanted to get the info up. The committee leaders, members and meeting times are as follows: The Commit...