Heath Haussamen
Rep. Jack Chatfield stood before his colleagues in the N.M. House of Representatives on Monday and did something remarkable.
Chatfield, the top Republican on the House Appropriations and Finance Committee, announced his support for the committee’s $10.8 billion budget proposal. He did so even though the committee is dominated by Democrats, and knowing that other members of his party were about to propose an alternative budget.
Chatfield wanted the public to know he supported the bipartisan budget, not the GOP offering.
“We’ve been a year putting this together and I think it’s been a good effort,” Chatfield, a rancher from rural Mosquero, told his colleagues.
He listed funding for roads, schools, continuing education programs, higher education, services for seniors, local food production, medical care, law enforcement and “the various needs of our small, rural and remote communities” as reasons to support the budget that members of the committee voted last week to send to the full House for consideration.
On the House floor, Chatfield said the budget “contains funding for the needs of this state” while holding the increase in spending to six percent and keeping reserve funds at about 30 percent.
“I think that’s a good offering,” Chatfield said Monday. “We worked hard. We went line by line down through the budget and I think all of us got some things that we liked; all of us got some things we might not have been that excited about.”
“I’m going to vote for this budget, and I appreciate being able to have input into it,” Chatfield said.
That stood in stark contrast to what happened moments later when Rep. Cathrynn Brown of Carlsbad, another Republican who serves on the Appropriations Committee, introduced an alternative budget, with less than three hours before a final House vote, that the public and her Democratic colleagues hadn’t had a chance to read.
‘Budgets are moral documents’
Monday’s budget debate on the House floor was a contrast in priorities, to be sure. That’s what most media coverage will center on: government spending versus giving money to citizens.
But it was also a contrast in process. Democrats and a few Republicans demonstrated that they value a collaborative, transparent, evidence-based and thoughtful approach to governing. Unfortunately, too many state House Republicans mimicked their federal counterparts and pulled a last-minute political stunt.
I believe it backfired on them. In their efforts to take a chainsaw to government spending, the alternative Republican budget proposed cutting public safety infrastructure even though public safety is allegedly their top priority this session. It also cut homeless programs that aim to reduce crime by getting people off the streets.
Rep. Sarah Silva, a Democrat from Las Cruces (and my spouse), framed the contrast well when she spoke during debate. “As a faith-based community organizer,” she said, “…I was taught early on that budgets are moral documents, and that those are the documents that help drive our values into action.”
A freshman who served on the budget committee in her rookie year, she listed the values she saw in the committee’s work as members crafted the budget over the past several weeks. She described a rigorous process that was driven by data and analysis, public input, and a chance to hear from and question every state agency, commission and board.
Silva also mentioned a commitment to “being really targeted in our focus with specific dollars that helped specific issues and specific communities while also still being universal in benefit.”
Bipartisan work
During Monday’s debate, Silva set up Rep. Nathan Small, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, to list the values reflected in the budget the committee created. Among Small’s favorites, he said, were programs to help with the state’s housing crisis — both in urban areas where “folks are unhoused on the streets,” and in rural areas where multiple generations of families crowd into homes that aren’t big enough.
He mentioned health-care affordability and access, investments in local agriculture and getting food assistance to the people who need it most, a bipartisan $20 million forestry initiative and $200 million for water projects.
Small, a Las Cruces Democrat, spoke about public safety initiatives including raises for state police officers and the lowest-paid court staffers and more money for prosecutors. He also mentioned funding that would “help communities build much needed public safety infrastructure.”
I want to come back to that point on infrastructure in a moment, so don’t forget it.
These targeted projects were driven by the Appropriations Committee, Small said, and he referenced Silva’s comments about public involvement. “We’re looking at the whole state while keeping… an open ear, an open mind, and a focus on how we can help communities all across the state solve a need that they may have,” he said.
I learned a lot from watching the budget committee the last few weeks. I was encouraged to see Republicans, including Brown, and Democrats working diligently and collaboratively. The committee approved its budget Friday on a vote of 16-1.
Monday’s floor vote to approve the budget and send it to the Senate for consideration was also bipartisan at 50-18. Seven other Republicans joined Chatfield in voting to approve the budget.
Partisan work
That stood in stark contrast to what’s happening in our nation’s capital. Elon Musk is slashing indiscriminately and without transparency or congressional approval. Without any effort to work with Democrats, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson rammed through a vote in the direction of dramatic cuts to assistance programs this week that some members of his own caucus don’t support.
The substitute budget a group of state House Republicans proposed Monday aligned with what I see happening in Washington D.C., not what I witnessed as I watched the Appropriations Committee do its work at the Roundhouse.
Brown, who missed the Appropriations Committee vote on the state budget last week, voted against the budget on Monday. She argued for a substitute that slashed many programs that were funded through the public, deliberative process. She instead proposed giving a one-time dividend payment to each New Mexican of $600. For a family of four that would be $2,400.
Brown suggested that money was the GOP plan to combat homelessness. Small correctly pointed out it would only cover 1-2 months of rent.
In addition to the one-time payments, Brown’s budget included $1 million to create “a working group” that would “assess and recommend how to eliminate, where found, waste, fraud and abuse in all entities receiving state funds.”
Call it what it is: New Mexico’s version of Musk’s DOGE.
We already have such a “working group.” It’s called the N.M. Office of the State Auditor. It’s an independent agency that, unlike DOGE, is staffed by professionals who are trained to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
The office assures state and local government agencies complete annual audits. It also steps in, armed with subpoena power, to conduct special audits when it learns of especially egregious problems.
The “working group” proposal was nothing but a shameless political stunt.
So much for public safety
During her closing argument, Brown said the GOP budget “eliminates more than $1.5 billion in low-priority spending and reduces the size and breadth of state government.”
Now I want to revisit Small’s comment about new funding for public safety infrastructure in targeted communities. I happen to know about this because my spouse is seeking $5 million this session for a project driven by Otero County’s Republican sheriff, David Black, to build a desperately needed public safety facility in Chaparral.
It’s a project Black has been seeking traction on for some time. He didn’t get anywhere with lawmakers until Silva was elected. She and Black are championing this project together.
Folks in this underserved border community need this facility as soon as possible.
As Silva wrote a few weeks ago in a column published around the state, Chaparral — a rapidly growing, unincorporated community of about 25,000 people — needs more local law enforcement, so Black wants to build a sheriff’s substation there. The half of the community that’s in Otero County needs a professional fire department. There’s no ambulance anywhere near Chaparral, so it needs EMS facilities including an ambulance bay. And a community whose stray dog problem is a real safety threat needs animal control.
The proposed public safety facility would house all of these services.
Otero County commissioners — again, Republicans — have made this a top priority in the current session. Building this facility will do more to keep the residents of Chaparral safe than any law that Republicans or Democrats are proposing this session.
The Appropriations Committee’s budget includes $1 million for Chaparral’s public safety facility. Rep. Andrea Romero, a Santa Fe Democrat, asked Brown why that money for Chaparral and $1.6 million for other public safety projects was left out of the GOP budget proposal.
Brown basically said Chaparral would have to wait.
“What we’ve essentially done is saying, let’s pause right now, take care of the needs of every New Mexican, and some of this, you know, will probably be visited again next time we meet, but we think this is really, truly adequate funding,” Brown said.
Indeed.
Thanks, Rep. Chatfield
But this isn’t a column about Brown. It’s about Chatfield, who I want to thank for doing the right thing.
Chatfield’s commitment to working with the majority party, and influencing policy and funding where he can in accordance with his values, is what we need from our minority party. That approach brings effective diversity of thinking to the Roundhouse and makes New Mexico better.
Political stunts, on the other hand, do not strengthen the GOP or the state.
Disclosure: In case you didn’t catch it earlier, Rep. Silva is my spouse. I should probably also mention that Rep. Small performed our wedding.