Legislators should bury trivia, reform regents

Dec. 26—Instead of blaming the governor and state legislators for fouling up after they finish a session of lawmaking, it might be productive to castigate them beforehand. Let’s give it a try.

The 112 lawmakers after New Year’s Day can start submitting bills for their 60-day session, which begins Jan. 21. If history repeats itself, many will squander time and money by prioritizing unimportant matters at the expense of substance.

A good start in avoiding this pitfall is to send all bills for specialty license plates to legislative committees that will bury them. That step would set the right tone.

Real work is waiting to be done. And tackling weighty issues requires commitment and intelligence.

The Legislature’s many backbenchers still want to pass something — anything at all — into law. They often concoct bills for more license plates in hopes of gaining favor with one group or another.

New Mexico already has more than 40 specialty license plates. They recognize everything from bass fishing to protecting pollinators to decommissioned Route 66. Get your kicks by sporting a license plate about the old highway.

The appetite for squandering resources to establish more license plates never ends.

With many significant policy measures awaiting hearings during the final 14 hours of the 2024 legislative session, the House of Representatives cast those bills aside. Instead it made time to approve a bill for license plates featuring Smokey Bear, the cub burned in 1950 in a New Mexico forest fire. The proposal squeaked through, 62-0, after debate that was mostly unintelligible.

Only a couple of hours remained in the session as senators mulled the bill for Smokey Bear’s license plate. With a heroic effort, the Senate beat the clock to nudge the bill through, 41-0.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, in 2023 had vetoed a bill for a Smokey Bear specialty plates. She reversed herself this year, signing the measure into law.

Smokey Bear’s bill blazed a trail at lightning speed. Sen. Jeff Steinborn’s proposed constitutional amendment to reform the malfunctioning system of selecting university regents died without receiving a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, crafted an important but bureaucratic proposal. Under existing law, the governor has sole authority to choose regents. The Senate can confirm or reject the nominees, though only one has been voted down in the last decade.

Steinborn wants to create nominating committees to screen applicants for regent seats. The governor would then choose from the list of names sent to her by the committees.

My preference is a constitutional amendment to elect regents, especially after scandals at New Mexico State University and Western New Mexico University. Boards of regents at both institutions deserve a grade of F.

NMSU’s regents slept as corruption overtook the men’s basketball program. Two players said they were sexually assaulted and hazed by teammates. Even so, the outgoing chancellor rewarded the director of athletics with a hefty raise and contract extension.

Regents of NMSU eventually agreed to $8 million in payments to settle lawsuits by the aggrieved players.

Western’s regents just agreed to pay university President Joseph Shepard seven figures to give up his office.

Shepard and the five regents came under fire from news organizations and the state auditor for misspending at least $360,000 on travel and other items. Shepard agreed to resign the presidency Jan. 15.

In exchange, Western’s regents approved a contract paying Shepard a lump sum of $1.909 million. The regents also guaranteed Shepard another $200,000 a year for five years as a professor in the business school.

People from across the state have called or written me to complain about what’s gone on at Western, a university of fewer than 3,600 students in Silver City.

“During my career, none of this malfeasance as demonstrated by the WNMU president would have been tolerated,” wrote Vicki Holmsten, who retired from the faculty of San Juan College in Farmington.

Frank Chambers of Santa Fe, who taught at Oklahoma State University, wrote: “That is outrageous and is enabled by regents who have been complicit in the improper spending.”

Mary Beckner, also of Santa Fe, called the regents unfit. “They need to be ousted,” she said.

To be gentle, Lujan Grisham chose poorly in selecting Western’s Board of Regents. But several readers have questioned whether my pitch to elect two super boards of regents, one for research universities and the other for regional institutions, would hurt education with politics.

Truth is, politics already pollutes the system. Donors and political supporters of a governor often are appointed as regents.

Mary Hotvedt, who heads Western’s Board of Regents, is a former chairperson of Grant County’s Democratic Party. She also was an unsuccessful candidate for the state House of Representatives. Running in a heavily Republican district, Hotvedt took a loss for her team. Appointment to Western’s Board of Regents was a consolation prize.

After Shepard’s buyout, those in need of consoling are students, faculty members and state taxpayers.

Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.

EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel