New Mexico State Senator Dede Feldman's Blog

Lobbyists and their Employers Spent $488,296 to Entertain, Influence Legislators in 2013

Blogger's Note:  Here's some information I collected from the New Mexico Secretary of State's Office for NM Common Cause.  It's a small piece of the work I'm doing, along with interns Jarrett Hines-Kay and Jonas Armstrong, for a forthcoming Common Cause report on lobbyists.  

            New Mexico lobbyists and their employers spent $488,296.74 to influence, entertain and feed New Mexico legislators, according to reports filed since January with the Secretary of State’s Office.   The amount does not include campaign contributions, which are banned during the session.

 The largest spenders among the lobbyists were:

            •George Brooks, lobbyist for Ski New Mexico Inc, who gave out  $27,750 worth of ski passes to 111 legislators and other officials

            •Michael Bowen, lobbyist for the NM Mining Association, who hosted a $20,954.68 dinner for legislators at the Santa Fe Hilton on behalf of that group and spent $2,500 for the 100 Bill Party at the Santa Fe Convention Center

            •Steven Henke, lobbyist for the NM Oil and Gas Association, who hosted a $17,638 dinner for legislators at the Bull Ring

            •Scott Scanlan, lobbyist for 24 clients including Altria Tobacco, BHP Billiton Oil, Sunland Track and a number of cities, who spent $11,892.30 on meals, beverages at special events for legislators and their staffs at the Coyote Café, Restaurant Martin, Vanessie and the Bull Ring

            •Art Hull, lobbyist for 15 clients including PNM, Devon Energy, Glaxo Smith Kline pharmaceuticals and Fidelity Investments, who spent $10,502 for meals and other events at various locations “to inform and discuss concerns with elected officials.” (No specific legislators or clients were disclosed)

            •John Christopher, lobbyist for Comcast Cable Corporation, who spent $10,277 for a dinner “for all Senators and Representatives” at Restaurant Martin

 

 The largest spenders among lobbyists’ clients were:

    •The Center for Civic Policy, which spent $29,574 on mailers, phone banks and radio ads

    •The NM Golf Tourism Alliance, which spent $28,500 on golf passes for legislators

    •The University of NM, which spent $20,643 including $12,042 for a UNM Alumni Assoc. reception for legislators at La Fonda; $1470.17 for basketball jerseys for senators in the House Senate charity basketball game, and $4,311.39 for “education/advancement/goodwill/hospitality” to various legislators

    •Presbyterian Health Plan, which spent $11,137 on its annual appreciation dinner for legislators at La Posada

    •The Baptist Convention of NM, which spent $7,822-- $4422.04 on a prayer breakfast for legislators and $3,400 on gifts to New Mexico legislators (recipients and amounts unspecified) 

    •The Conservation Voters of New Mexico, which spent $4,710 on a legislative reception for all legislators at the Rio Chama 

 The New Mexico Gift Act, passed in 2007, bans lobbyist gifts of more than $250 to individual legislators and gifts of an aggregate value of $1,000 to any one legislator during any one calendar year.

 Data collection was difficult because lobbyists often report only aggregate expenditures and do not report on whose behalf the expenditures were made or the specific actions being lobbied.    

Health Care Reform: Once Again, The Media is Telling Us the Sky is Falling because of Obamacare… but don’t believe it.

 

Blogger's Note:  A shorter version of this article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal  Tuesday April 16

  Newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to our own Albuquerque Journal have been filled recently with reports of skyrocketing health insurance premiums once the Affordable Care act takes full effect in 2014, or even sooner when policies go up for sale on new insurance exchanges.  And you can be sure that if the rates do go up, your first bill from the insurance company will say… “We had to do it because of Obamacare.” But don’t believe everything you read, including what some are now calling “Rate Crock.” There are many safeguards in place to protect consumers and encourage companies to continue covering their employees.

            The basic pitch of the chicken littles is that new insurance reforms-- like preventing insurance companies from discriminating against those with pre existing conditions, requiring a decent benefit package, and limiting mark-ups on older consumers to three times (instead of five times) what they charge younger people—will cause them to raise premiums.

            That might be the case, but in New Mexico—help is at hand.  Estimates prepared by the Lewin Group for Families USA indicate that about 192,000 currently uninsured New Mexicans, most of the working and middle class, will get premium tax credits to help defray the cost of insurance purchased through the exchange.  The amount of the credit—which is really a subsidy—will depend upon their income.  The smaller the income, the more the credit.  The idea, which is embedded in the law, is that families should not be spending a huge percentage of their income on health insurance. (http://familiesusa.org/help-is-at-hand/new-mexico/)

            For information on how to calculate premiums and subsidies, the Kaiser Foundation has prepared a handy calculator for folks under 65 who will be obtaining their insurance through the new exchanges.    (http://healthreform.kff.org/subsidycalculator.aspx) I plugged a few numbers into the calculator for my 30-year old daughter and found her costs would be much less than what she’s currently paying—contrary to popular warnings that the cost of insurance for young people, especially will skyrocket.  In addition, I read the fine print, which indicated that the Congressional Budget Office  (a non-partisan operation) projects that average premiums under reform for the same level of coverage for a given group of enrollees would be 7-10% lower than under the status quo. Hmm, quite a different story than we are hearing in the media.

            In New Mexico, there’s also the huge group of people (about 150,000) who will be covered by the expansion of Medicaid—where they will not be paying a premium at all.  How will that help keep the cost of premiums down? Reducing the number of uninsured reduces cost shifting—i.e. charging insured patients more to compensate for caring for the uninsured. In New Mexico, health policy experts estimate the current surcharge on individual policies for this is over $1,000 per year.

            For businesses, especially large businesses, the issues are more complex, and what we are hearing from former opponents of the bill is that companies will be dropping their employees from coverage— and sending them to the newly formed health exchanges.  This move would subvert the law’s intention to allow people who like their current coverage to keep it.   The rhetoric we are now hearing certainly would encourage employers to do this. But that would be an ideological—and not a rational act.  For all you policy wonks out there, a health economist at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma matter) explains why in “The ACA doesn’t squeeze employers.” http://ldi.upenn.edu/incidentaleconomist/2013/04/12/the-aca-doesn-t-squeeze-employers#disqus_comments

            There’s one other factor. New Mexico is last in the nation in the percentage of residents who get their health insurance through their employers, according to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Part of the reason is that NM is largely a small business state, where owners are hard pressed to afford to cover their workers.  We’ve tried for years at the state level to get them to do it—without success. Now Obamacare offers them several alternatives.  They can use the exchange to get coverage for their employees, probably at a lower rate since the larger number of employees in the exchange spreads risk for the insurance companies. Or, they can take advantage of a number of tax credits available for small companies.  The Small Business Minority has a nifty calculator, which can be used to figure out how much the credits will reduce the insurance bill.  www.smallbusinessmajority.org/tax-credit-calculator/index.php

         Yes, the new law is complicated—and it will be fine tuned as time goes on. There will be adjustments needed. Risk pools will change. But there are safe guards, and anyway, I wonder where all these dire prognosticators were for the past decade when premiums were skyrocketing with no control, threatening to eat up as much as 25% of family income by 2025.  

Women Running for Office: How Far We Have Come; Where Do We Go from Here

Blogger's Note: Here are the remarks I made at the Aug. 13 ready to Run Conference, sponsored by UNM's Southwest Hispanic Research Institute.  It was a campaign training session for both Democratic and Republican women who want to run for office. My job was to provide a little context. 

     Thank you Christine Sierra and the Southwest Center for Hispanic Research for asking me to give a little context to your day here and share some of my own experience.   I was very fortunate to be a NM State Senator for 16 years but before that I had been working hard here in New Mexico to elect women to office.  I think I’ve gone to more training sessions like this—over the 30 years I’ve been involved, both as a candidate and as a campaign worker, than I care to recount.  But times have definitely changed. In 1975 when I came to New Mexico there were only two women state senators and three representatives.  Women were simply not running for office.  They didn’t have the networks, the money or the confidence. There were only a few models and these were women who had become legislators by chance, when their husbands died. There was just no pipeline and no precedent.

    That was when a small bi-partisan group of women called the NM Women’s Political Caucus decided that this had to change. The efforts of the group, led for a time by Republican Marjorie Bell Chambers of Los Alamos, first focused on passing the Equal Rights Amendment—and they succeeded.  The NM legislature was one of the first states to pass the amendment.  But other issues that hit women even more directly pay equity, child care, rape, domestic violence and reproductive freedom were all hanging out there. And we knew the answer was more women in elected office.

    During the 1980s, spurred by Geradine Ferraro-- the first woman to be on a presidential ticket, and Judy Pratt, a state representative, who was the first women to run for the US Senate in New Mexico, more women began to step up.  But usually—they lost.  In 1987 there were still only two women in the Senate and nine in the House.  Stung by defeats at a national level—anyone remember Anita Hill? Or how many women there were in the Reagan administration – many of us went back to the grassroots, to the school boards and ward meetings, to becoming appointed to boards and commissions where we got experience to run for the legislature, the city council, or the US Congress.  We didn’t mourn, we organized.  And along the way, we drew on some skills we’d had all along—resourcefulness, the ability to multitask, to communicate, to network and to build coalitions.

    During the next decade in the 1990s, women began to step forward, using some of their traditional skills and new ones, too. Important new ones like fundraising, targeting, and media relations.

    There were more mentors, and more models.  In the political world we had Cory Aquino, Golda Mier, Margaret Thatcher—all heads of state in troubled times.

      But it was still a tough sell to elect a woman, particularly in the mountain west, the home of a traditional male-oriented culture, where men who had already been in office had a tremendous credibility edge when it came to raising money and getting the media and the electorate to take them seriously.  But there were chinks in the armor.  Citizen legislatures where elected officials were not paid, drew fewer candidates. Term limits in many states helped women who until then always found themselves running against incumbents. In other states like Arizona and Maine, public financing programs allowed grassroots support to supplant fundraising prowess. And women did actually seem more honest and transparent, something the electorate and the media had begun to value.

            In 1995, I decided it was time that I give it the old college try myself.  I had worked on many campaigns, many of them for women candidates.    My pediatrician, Sue Brown, actually recruited me to be her campaign manager for School Board as I was giving birth.  Overcoming a fear of failure, sick of the sense of powerlessness, and armed with the belief that I could do it better—I stepped forward, as a candidate for the Albuquerque City Council.    Over a seven-month period, I went door to door—probably to about 3,000 homes—running against a popular three-term incumbent.    Remember-- women candidates, especially in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, have almost always been challengers, with trouble raising money and inspiring credibility.  I ran a good campaign.  I addressed issues of growth, crime and environmental protection.  I learned a lot about my neighborhood.

             I lost by nine votes.

             I thought that my political career was over—that I would go back to my role as citizen.  But, and, here’s the lesson--- even though I lost the battle, I won the war. People were impressed with my effort. Many though, gosh, if I had just gone out to vote, maybe she would have won.  Maybe every vote does count. Maybe next time, I’ll get involved.

            Well, miraculously, six months later, the twenty-year veteran senator from my district decided to retire, leaving an open seat in the North Valley of Albuquerque.  His senate district overlapped the City Council District that I had just gone door-to-door in. It was a golden opportunity for me.  I was dead tired, but I was also older and wiser… I had built even more support.   People took me seriously, volunteered and contributed, and I won.  Even though I had very stiff opposition in the Democratic primary, in a heavily Hispanic district that had never elected a woman for any position--especially someone who was an Anglo, a non-native who had lived there a mere 25 years-- I won.  And I won handily, out polling both of my primary opponents combined, and garnering almost 70% in the general election.  Women were my core of support—I could not have done it without them.  And I could not have won the second time without loosing the first.

             During my time in the Senate, I was lucky to serve with 11 other women, and about 20 others in the House.  Sometimes we constituted a critical mass—to change the atmosphere and get the majority of men to take our issues seriously.

                But progress has been uneven.  The percentage of women in state legislatures throughout the nation declined slightly from 2010 to 2013, but it hovers around 24%.  There are now only six women in the NM Senate today, and were it not for a number of new women elected to the House in 2012 our percentage would have declined.  As it stands today—in 2013—we now have 25 women in the NM House and 6 women in the Senate for an overall percentage of about 28% (27.7%).

                That’s better than the nationwide average (24%) but it’s a lot less than Colorado’s, where 40% of legislators are women.

                Now, for women running for office today—there are some new rules and some new challenges.  The 2012 election in New Mexico saw more money spent than ever before—and in an entirely new way that involved SuperPacs fueled by out-of-state money, and a new campaign finance law that, for the first time, limited some contributions. The median cost of campaigns for legislative candidates was about $44,000 with winners actually spending $58,000 and losers spending $15,000—a $40,000 gap. And that was only the median.  Consider the outliers—Sen. Lisa Curtis, a Democratic incumbent from Albuquerque spent $276,000 on her race, mostly her own money-- and she lost.  Sen. Michael Sanchez, of Los Lunas, spent nearly as much-- $259,000 and won.  Sen. Tim Jennings, a Roswell Democrat, was targeted by Gov. Susana Martinez’s Superpac, Reform NM Now, which spent $2 million on New Mexico races.  In turn Jennings spent, $373,370—and lost.

 

                    I hope you will talk a bit today in your workshops about how SuperPacs, unleashed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, are now just as important as political parties and candidates own fundraising efforts.   In 2012 they spent almost $4 million independently of legislators’ campaigns.  And they are narrowing the issues to those intended to divide communities and increase partisanship, which makes it much more difficult for candidates who win and actually want to get something done.

 

                I’ll leave you to draw your own lessons about these trends and from my experience.  And to figure out how we put more and more women in elective office next year.

                But I think you already know the answer—it’s supporting women who are already there-- who are beginning to form a critical mass, who are already using their positions of power to recruit other women to run for office, to serve as faculty members, or fellow managers or as members of boards or commissions.  It is supporting them as they tackle problems like domestic violence and early childhood disease that men haven’t taken as seriously but which actually figure quite large as stumbling blocks to economic development and a healthy society here in New Mexico.

                And it is stepping forward yourselves, to serve as mentors, to run for office, to get involved with women’s political campaigns…to lobby the legislature, and to realize that nothing is free, you’ve got to work twice as hard—but it is possible.  I’ve got a sign near my desk that is a quote from the German writer Goethe.  And I look at it when I feel like I’m never going to make any progress with some of the big projects I’ve tackled—projects like campaign finance reform, taking on the pharmaceutical companies or the tobacco lobby.

                 I leave you with it today….   “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”

                    So, be bold, be brave, remember-- from my story--- that failure’s not all it’s cracked up to be, sometimes-- for women-- it’s a prerequisite for greater success.

                    Thank you again for inviting me, I hope you have a productive day. 

Surprise! It’s Deals, Close Calls on the Last Day of Legislative Session

A View from Just Outside the Roundhouse

March 17, 2013

 The last day of any legislative session is always frantic, filled with surprises—from filibusters to conference committee reports that neither chamber has a chance to examine adequately.  I always used to hang on to my desk for dear life afraid someone would come up with a measure that suddenly put a toxic waste dump in my district, or an amendment which undid every bill I ever passed.

But this year—whoa, baby, a tax package-- developed on the ides of March before Saturday’s adjournment by Sen. John Arthur Smith and the Senate Finance Committee.  It was jammed through at the last possible minute as an amendment to the “Breaking Bad” bill produced in the House in the aftermath of the Governor’s veto of it the day before.   For progressives, and others who had feared that Smith might give away the farm to the Governor, this was really “breaking bad.”

Sponsored by Rep. Moe Maestas, the original bill, named after the TV series Breaking Bad, provided tax credits to TV shows that film in New Mexico, bringing more spending and revenue to the state than films. The Governor vetoed Maestas’s bill, because her other tax cuts were not passed, and she loudly threatened to veto the whole budget as well—signaling that a Special Session was in the works.

Now, there’s nothing legislators hate more than a Special Session.  With that knowledge in his pocket--- Sen. Smith went to work Friday night putting together an amendment that gave the Governor the corporate tax cuts she wanted plus something he’d been talking about for years: a return to the state of revenue that had been lost because local governments had been “held harmless” when the gross receipts tax on food was removed back in 2004. (That meant that cities and counties didn’t have to absorb the loss of tax revenue because the state would reimburse them.)

Given the last minute nature of the Senate amendment, city and county lobbyists didn’t have time to respond to the move, which most likely will cause local gross receipts taxes to go up.  Allegedly, there was a provision in the amendment that prohibited the re-imposition of local taxes on food and medicine, but who knew, and anyway, in the eyes of the public, it wouldn’t be the legislature that imposed the taxes, right?  After Senators attached the amendment, and passed the fully loaded bill, it had to go back to the House-- with about 10 minutes to go.  House members hadn’t even read it. There was no fiscal impact report.  In a desperate move, the legislative staffer who drafted it was called in to explain the complex package.  But there was no time.  The question was called and House members voted on the bill without the information, even thought it was actually past noon, the time for adjournment. It passed. The “Hail Mary” pass was complete—and the Governor caught it in the end zone, declaring that there would be no special session after all.   

Back in the Senate, after the Breaking Bad bill went to the House, Majority Leader Michael Sanchez finally called up HB 77, Rep. Miguel Garcia’s bill to require background checks at gun shows-- with about 40 minutes to go.  The bill had attracted nationwide attention as a possible rebuke to the NRA, and garnered support from some House Republicans and the Governor.  But, predictably, it was immediately besieged by amendments from Democratic and Republican opponents alike—doomed because of its scheduling on the floor on the last day of the session, when delay and filibusters are most effective.  The Majority Leader gave the bill a last minute plug—but his words were not as loud as his deeds.  Had the bill be scheduled the day before, the outcome could have been different.

What to make of all this? From just Outside the Roundhouse, it looks bad, and I am most disappointed—once again--- at how the Senate is willing to take a bullet for the NRA, in the face of common sense measures and incredible tragedies.  And who knows whether the content of the tax package was a fair compromise that (as reported) filled some loopholes and instituted combined reporting for big box stores, as well as cutting corporate taxes?  That will take some analysis—analysis that the public and most legislators-- outside of a few insiders – were not permitted to do before they had to weigh in.  Do the means justify the end?  It’s an open question, but I’m sure Gov. Susana Martinez is counting her lucky stars that quarterback, Sen. John Arthur Smith, got to make his pass before the buzzer sounded.

 How Much Power Should One Senator Have?

Once again, a constitutional amendment to allow a vote on whether a small portion of the state’s permanent fund should be temporarily diverted to early childhood education was buried in the Senate Finance Committee.  Chairman John Arthur Smith simply refused to bring the bill up for a vote.  The measure has now passed the House twice, and most observers say it would pass the Senate should it hit the floor. It is, keep in mind, simply a measure to allow the public to weigh in on this important public issue.   Many experts say that the state’s unwillingness to fund early childhood programs in earnest is the key reason our K-12 education system is in trouble.  But no matter. This is the second time that Smith has deep sixed it. And the Senator regularly “pocket vetoes” many other measures—just ask any legislator who can’t get his or her bill through Senate Finance.

            Several years ago, Smith was nicknamed “Dr. No” for his staunch opposition to tax increases and his hostility toward spending by then-Gov. Bill Richardson.  With little countervailing power from other members of the Democratic leadership, Smith is now amassing power beyond the Finance Committee (see above), and the situation may soon resemble the 70s and 80s in the Senate when conservative Democratic senators Ike Smalley and Aubrey Dunn gave the rank and file little say in the budget. Here’s a little piece of history that new Senators might like to know.  Once upon a time another Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Aubrey Dunn, tightly controlled information not even sharing fiscal impact statements with members.  Bills were passed so fast that legislators did not have a chance to weigh in with debate on the floor.   Sen. Dunn once passed 21 bills on the floor of the Senate with a single motion, an action that was later ruled unconstitutional by the New Mexico Supreme Court.

            Sound a little like Saturday’s little amendment to the Breaking Bad bill?  Not quite, maybe, but the last minute move, the lack of information, pushes the envelope.  I wonder if anyone will push back?  Someone finally rebelled against Smalley.  His name was Manny Aragon.

Health Insurance Exchange Bill Passes

A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since the Governor vetoed the strong health care exchange bill I sponsored in 2011.  Obamacare has been held constitutional.  New Mexico has received over $140 million for clinics, training programs and other mechanisms to implement the new law in the past two years.  Gov. Martinez has decided that yes, math does trump ideology, and she will expand the Medicaid program.  The compromise health exchange that the legislature just passed ought to be viewed in this context. It’s not what I wanted but it is a better direction than the one the administration was headed in when it unilaterally decided that the Health Insurance Alliance, with its insurance company directors, would simply function as an exchange.  Both the Legislature and the Governor will appoint the board of this exchange, and it will not have a majority of insurance company directors. Federal law will direct much of its functions.  Finally, the exchange can now focus on its computer system, and prepare to offer policies by October.  More than the actual framework of the exchange itself, I’m concerned about outreach and public education for the 70,000-100,000 who could sign up (if they know how to) in the first year.  That means plenty of good “navigators” and a massive public awareness campaign. Stay tuned to see how that works out.   

 

 

Legislature Should Use Medicaid to Help Young Mothers be Better Parents

Blogger's Note: A version of this article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal Jan. 30, 2013 

 In the aftermath of Sunday’s front-page article in the Albuquerque Journal on how 70% of births in New Mexico are financed by Medicaid, we are beginning to hear the conservative refrain. The “takers” are at it again, they say. So many people on “welfare,” so many children hooked on government from birth.  Its like Captain Renault (Claude Reins) telling Humphrey Bogart in Casa Blanca, “Shocked, I’m shocked that gambling is going on in this establishment. “ Of course, as the Captain is speaking, he is   handed a note from a croupier that tallies his winnings.

In New Mexico the “winnings” are the payments for the births that go to the hospitals the delivery room nurses, the doctors, to small and large towns throughout the state who, would be struggling to collect from low-income parents, or paying for the deliveries themselves, were it not for the program.

The winnings are also in the health of New Mexico’s children, about 2/3 of whom are born into families who need a little help. For about two decades, the state has seen it as a good investment here in one of the poorest states of the country, especially when the federal government is paying the lion’s share. Even considering the cost of deliveries, the price tag for prenatal care, childbirth and health coverage for children is relatively modest, in comparison to other program expenses like nursing homes. Without this initial investment the costs to the state in premature births, poor outcomes, special education, even criminal justice, would be much more.  

This summer, the Legislative Interim Health and Human Services Committee heard about another program that, for young children, could increase the return on the investment even more. It’s called home visiting. It’s a voluntary program that is already yielding results for young families in Rio Arriba and Grant Counties as nurses and community health workers visit with first time mothers throughout their pregnancy and during those first crucial months after the birth of their babies.  The trained health care professionals teach parenting skills and assist mothers with routine care, making sure that the baby has all its shots, and that problems don’t turn into domestic crises.  But of the approximately 19,000 newborns on Medicaid each year only about 1100 get the service through a program in the Children Youth and Families Department, which for the most part is funded through private foundations.  At present, there is little state Medicaid funding—with its attendant federal match--and the state is missing a huge opportunity to get more women pre-natal care, increase the number of well child visits, and save money in the long run. 

  The staff of the Legislative Finance Committee estimates the return on investment for home visiting is five dollars for every one invested.  This year’s LFC budget recommends increasing Medicaid funding for home visiting so that 500 more families get this important service. Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino is carrying Senate Bill 68 to boost the CYFD programs.  These are modest proposals that deserve your support —particularly if you are shocked, shocked by the number of Medicaid births. This investment may bring them down in the long run, one family at a time, as new parents begin to understand the responsibility of parenthood, gain self-respect and think again about that second or third child. Combine that with a decent rate of economic growth and you’ve got a big payoff for New Mexico.