A last minute effort by Republicans and Senator Tim Jennings to get the House to adjourn without finishing its business marked the last day of the embattled special session on Friday -- but the House leadership prevailed. Net result of special session: two tempestuous sine die adjournments from the Senate, an all-nighter by the House, a modified
GRIP II bill, a bill that I carried on the Senate side to publicly finance statewide judicial elections poisoned by an amendment to do so by rolling back judicial reforms, a face-saving feed bill, and a boatload of bad publicity for the Senate and the Governor.
Left on the table were the Ethics Commission, Campaign Contribution limits, increased penalties for domestic violence, and a registry for meth-contaminated houses. The Gov. now says he will call a special session (later, much later, please) about ethics reform, which has now assumed more importance with the indictment of the former President Pro Tem of the Senate and other involved in the state-funded construction of the Metro Courthouse.
Stay tuned. I'm determined to continue this struggle, and I hope to continue on the Ethics Task Force, which the Governor says he will reconvene.
Increased Autism Funding a Victory in the Regular Session. There was a great column in the Albuquerque Journal March 28 by Jim Belshaw about the experience autism advocates had in the legislative session that I though you might like to see. Here it is with the permission of the Albuquerque Journal.
Getting Autism Back On Radar --- JIM BELSHAW Of the Journal
Gay Finlayson is talking about the Legislature and what the experience was like and at one point, in a kind of aside, she says, “I think that’s where that $1 million was that I couldn’t find.” I tell her this formulation suggests she is no longer a rookie, but in fact has become a “pro” because only a pro would say in passing, “I think that’s where that $1 million was that I couldn’t find.” She laughs, dismissing the notion that she’s gone pro. So I ask if she is a lobbyist. She prefers “advocate,” which is probably right because she never had the money it takes for a lobbyist to find love among the legislative ruins. I have written about Gay in the past. She is by training and life an expert in autism. She works as a health education consultant at the University of New Mexico Center for Development & Disability, and she is the mother of two autistic children.
In the legislative session just ended (unless you’re Bill Richardson, in which case it hasn’t ended and may never end), success found Gay Finlayson and those on whose behalf she advocated — New Mexico families “at the end of their ropes” and in need of help in caring for autistic children. More than $4 million went into the state budget to address these needs. When 2006 began, Gay said the forecast was grim. State officials told her autism wasn’t on the radar.
I got on the phone and called people and said, ‘Show up when (state officials) come to town,’ ’’ she said. “It is an issue. If we don’t get more public about it, it won’t ever be on the radar.” The governor was made aware, too.“He got phone calls, postcards and letters,” she said. “I know this because I was the one printing the postcards, collecting them and sending them on. I know he got more than 2,000 postcards.”
When the legislative session began, Sen. Dede Feldman, DAlbuquerque, carried the bill and became a mentor to Gay Finlayson. There was much to learn in the sausage factory, where conventional wisdom has it that you never want to be when laws are being made.“There’s something chaotic about it,” Gay said. “When we were doing it, I remember thinking: Why are we begging? Why are we listening to people who just want to hear themselves talk? Why is it taking so much effort to get people to do the right thing?” She learned what it was like, when told to be at a certain place at a certain time and upon getting there, hearing that no one had time to talk to her.
She learned that presence counted when someone would see her in the hall and pull her into a meeting.She learned what it was like to write four drafts of a bill and in the ensuing chaos see the first draft, incomplete and shaky, be the one introduced.
She found postcards worked in the Legislature, too, postcards with pictures of parents and children on them. She found out they had an effect, people were reading them. “It’s disillusioning sometimes,” she said. “I was angry a couple of times, too, but I’d make the rounds and I’d sign the little guest book at every legislator’s office saying I was here and wanted to talk about autism.” She was summoned to a powerful senator’s office one day. Get there right away! Don’t delay! It’s important! She waited for an hour and half to see him and found out only later that he was on the phone talking to legislators about her bill.
She began a year ago with predictions of zero and came away with more than $4 million, inadequate in the long run for autism services, but a lot better than zero. “I feel good about what we accomplished,” she said. “To be told flat out it wasn’t an issue a year ago and to have made it the issue we knew it was, and to actually have gotten some funding is unheard of in this state.”
Write to Jim Belshaw at The Albuquerque Journal, P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, NM 87103; telephone — 823-3930; e-mail —
[email protected].
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