Oh, dear.\u00a0 Sunset review is back again:\u00a0 another great idea that may not work so well in New Mexico.<\/p>\n
Sunset review is legislative code language for kicking the can down the road.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If it worked, we would not today have the proliferation of boards and commissions that some folks consider irrelevant and excessive.\u00a0\u00a0 They would have been sunsetted — that is, closed — in prior legislative sessions.<\/p>\n
In sunset review, a provision is inserted in a statute that says an agency or board is terminated effective on a certain date several years in advance.\u00a0 In effect, the legislature is forcing itself to review those entities before the termination date and decide whether they deserve to be reauthorized.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s like saying, \u201cWe don\u2019t have time this year, but we\u2019ll make time in that other future year.\u201d\u00a0 Right.\u00a0 Like they\u2019re going to have less work in 2017 than they have now.<\/p>\n
I was alerted to the proliferation of sunsets this year when I looked at House Bill 29, a product of the Restructuring Task Force, which proposes to consolidate several agencies into a new Department of Commerce.\u00a0 The bill terminates various agencies and commissions on various dates.\u00a0 (I have referred to this bill elsewhere in connection with the Small Business Regulatory Relief Act, which would terminate immediately).<\/p>\n
Section 85 of this bill proposes to terminate the Workers’ Compensation Administration in 2017.\u00a0 Just a second! The state constitution makes the WCA the exclusive court of jurisdiction for workers’ compensation disputes.\u00a0 If the agency closed, workers’ comp disputes would have nowhere to go.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard that\u2019s not the only constitutional problem with this bill.<\/p>\n
Some years ago, the Sunset Review Committee was an interim subcommittee of the Legislative Finance Committee.\u00a0 Routinely, a legislator friend told me, the committee chair was the only legislator who showed up to the hearings — and approved reauthorization of everything.\u00a0\u00a0 The LFC rubber-stamped the subcommittee approval and then the full legislature rubber-stamped again.\u00a0\u00a0 One notable exception in the early 1990s was a serious fight about the Construction Industries Division.<\/p>\n
The underlying problem is simply the legislative workload.\u00a0 With our volunteer legislature and a minimal year-round legislative staff, there is not enough time for the necessary reviewing.\u00a0 There is always greater pressure to direct legislators\u2019 attention to new problems, and there are always plenty of those.<\/p>\n
So legislators just have to kick the can.\u00a0 For example, House Bill 234, sponsored by Rep. Jeanette Wallace, proposes to extend the sunset date for the Animal Sheltering Board from this year to 2017.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what the Animal Sheltering Board does, but if it protects animals in shelters, I\u2019m for extending it.<\/p>\n
If we were to change the state constitution and lengthen the legislative sessions, or switch to a paid professional legislature, I believe we would not be better off.\u00a0 The legislative workload would expand to fill the new opportunity, and legislators would be just as overloaded as they are today.<\/p>\n
For comparison, look at the U. S. Congress.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t get around to passing a budget for the current year, and the federal government is operating on a \u201ccontinuing resolution,\u201dwhich means, just reauthorize whatever we said last year.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s an idea:\u00a0 maybe the state should create a sunset review commission, separate from the Legislature, to conduct the serious sunset reviews during the legislative interim and make recommendations to the Legislature on which agencies to keep and which to scrap.\u00a0 Oh, dear.\u00a0 Then we would just have one more commission, wouldn\u2019t we?<\/p>\n
EDITOR’S NOTE:\u00a0 Rep. Jeannette Wallace passed away a few months after this column was published.<\/p>\n
Triple Spaced Again, \u00a9 New Mexico News Services 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh, dear.\u00a0 Sunset review is back again:\u00a0 another great idea that may not work so well in New Mexico. Sunset review is legislative code language for kicking the can down the road.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If it worked, we would not today … Continue reading