George Muñoz

A nonprofit research firm says New Mexico doesn’t have enough funding in place to properly maintain and improve the state’s transportation system. What’s more, declining and deficient infrastructure is costing New Mexicans billions of dollars.

In the last legislative session, no reforms were made to oil and gas regulations despite bills to impose fines for oil spills, limit fresh water use and create buffers around schools. Looking forward to next year's session, the Legislative Finance Committee met in oil-rich southeastern New Mexico Tuesday to discuss reintroducing one of those failed proposals — setbacks for wells.

While New Mexico state government continues to struggle to fill open positions, departments are asking lawmakers to fund new ones. Legislators on the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday spitballed potential solutions to the issue.

Environment Secretary James Kenney presented his agency’s budget request to a panel of lawmakers this week, which asks for an additional $9 million dollars. It would be the fifth straight budget increase for the agency. But members of the Legislative Finance Committee questioned whether the department should get more to work with when it didn’t spend down all of this year’s budget.

The Legislative Finance Committee held its first interim meeting this week and appointed Charles Sallee as interim director. The committee is extending its search for a permanent director.

The 2023 legislative session is in the rearview mirror, but soon interim committee hearings will start up around the state in preparation for the 2024 session which begins next January. In this week’s show, we will talk about transparency, including several bills aimed at increasing transparency in government that recently succeeded or failed. We will also talk about the budget process and how it works, and how transparent it is – or is not. As the state continues to see record revenues, knowing how our money is spent is everybody’s business.

As we near the end of the legislative session in Santa Fe, we’re also in the middle of Sunshine Week. That’s a national initiative by the News Leaders Association to educate the public about the importance of open government and the dangers of hidden agendas. A bill that passed Thursday is trying to do just that.

Jerry Redfern with Capital & Main has been following energy and environmental issues this session and wrote about the ongoing problem with transparency in the budget process. He talks with KUNM about a bill that failed early in the session at the request of the All Pueblo Council of Governors and the debate over its lingering appropriation.

Recently the Legislative Finance Committee met to review the progress of spending New Mexico’s share of federal pandemic aid. There are a lot of projects either on-going or in the planning stages and lawmakers want to make sure those projects get funded before access to those federal dollars expires.

The state's Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department, or EMNRD, met with lawmakers at the roundhouse Thursday to ask for a budget increase that…