Komadina: Special session 'foolhardy'

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“I’m actually seeing patients tomorrow,” Komadina said Thursday, only hours after the Legislature adjourned its 30 day session. “I’ve got to pay the rent.”

Komadina said he has “heard absolutely nothing about a special session. I think it would be foolhardy for there to be a special session. We basically did what we were supposed to do. We got a budget.

“Every bill had a fair chance of getting through. Some made it through, some didn’t. That’s the process.

“Every bill is of equal importance. Some of the governor’s bills were introduced awfully late in the session. It wouldn’t have been fair to put them in front of everything else when other people had other needs.

“Somehow we will get along without new laws for another year. And then we’ll do it again.”

Richardson said in a statement Thursday that he would call a special session to consider a mandatory health insurance plan that he wants.

But Komadina isn’t worried.

“He’s a bully. He tries to just intimidate people and bully people,” he said. “But it doesn’t work in the Senate.

“One of the big things that people need to realize is that the governor had a bill that a lot of people worked on. It was probably a pretty well thought-out bill that a lot of people didn’t like. So a new bill was crafted in the middle of the session without any data just to try to make people happy. That really had unintended consequences that we didn’t know about.

“Both the Democrats and the Republicans were unwilling just to pass something to set us on a path that would not get us to the destination we wanted. I think it was really, really responsible of the legislature to not pass something just to say they did something.

“There had been several groups that had been intimidated into supporting the governor’s bill that didn’t want to, like the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and Presbyterian Health Care. They were all so afraid of the Governor, that he might withhold their contracts for Medicaid. He was doing the same thing with them that he was trying to do with the legislature, and we’re just unwilling to do it.”

But the two-term Republican senator said Richardson can still be an influential player in New Mexico politics.

“I don’t think that the governor is a lame duck. I think he’s a man who is disappointed because of his presidential bid,” Komadina said. “He spent a year working very hard trying to obtain something that he didn’t obtain. Then he came back and didn’t really know what was going on and didn’t have his finger on the pulse of the people or the state or the issues.

“I think its fine that the governor wanted to run for president, but you can’t serve masters. He literally left the state without his leadership. To come back and say, ‘I’m going to step back into my role’ with just a week to go before the session started was pretty unrealistic.”

Komadina was critical of the way Richardson handled the final days of the session and in the way he treated Lt. Gov. Dianne Denish.

“She has been so faithful to him, even in turning down her salary that could have been increased when she was acting governor. She has been a good soldier,” he said. “Then to suddenly be blamed for things like accepting the bill last Saturday – he knew the bills were coming. He knew it was his constitutional responsibility to have someone there. He’s never there. We don’t hand them to him. A member of his staff takes them.

“To try to say that the Lt. Governor can’t act in his absence – it was so juvenile.”

Richardson has threatened to veto capital outlay expenditures for legislators who don’t support him, and in an election year for all 112 legislators are up for reelection that could have political consequences. But Komadina thinks such an action would backfire.

“I guess it depends on why a legislator is up there,” Komadina said. “If you think your job is to go to Santa Fe and try to bring home as much money as possible, that’s one approach to government. If you think your job is to go up to Santa Fe and try to make laws that will make New Mexico a better place to live, and in addition you try to spend the money the state has each year in a responsible way, that’s another approach.

“There were those lawmakers who were full of panic, that the thought that the money they had promised people at home was going to be vetoed would be a disaster. Personally, I think the people that I represent would not want me to making deals and agreeing to things I didn’t think were good for them in order to get some money.

I think every project we have is worth being funded, but in reality the majority of projects that we wanted to fund we didn’t have the money for. It’s part of he process. Somehow we’ll make it another year without a street being repaved or a sidewalk being redone or a museum exhibit being rebuilt.

“We’ll make it, just a like a family. A family doesn’t go out and spend money it doesn’t have. If something happens and they have expected money that doesn’t come in, they don’t move to Havana.

“It’s a perfect example of how he owns the House and doesn’t own the Senate,” Komadina said. “The way it was done he’s now going to get to basically veto all of the Senate’s capital outlay and give the House members that he likes their capital outlay. And then he’ll spend the rest of it for other pet projects

“That’s not right. But it’s not about what’s wrong and right with him. It’s about him.”

Despite the perception of trouble in the 30 days, “This was actually a pretty easy session. It was pretty tranquil. There weren’t the number of bills we sometimes have. We literally heard almost every bill that was on the floor of the Senate. We may have missed one.

“The last minute rush does happen, getting stuff to the floor that wasn’t on the floor. There’s always that attempt,” Komadina said. “At midnight Wednesday night Sen. Feldman tried to bring down a bill for one of her friends, but it made us adjourn basically when she did that. Otherwise we might have worked a little bit more.”
 
Seven pieces of legislation introduced by Komadina passed both houses, which “is probably more than maybe any other senator, or at least close.” One he was especially proud of is Senate Bill 6, which would make Sandoval only the second Class A county in the state.

“I don’t know whether the governor will sign it or not. It is a good bill that will change the ability of the county,” he said. “It will change its bond ratings. It will change it ability to invest differently that will be better for the county.

“A lot of county employees will be able to get paid more. There are a lot of good things about it.”

County attorney David Mathews said previously he has identified 138 changes that will have to be made in the county, everything from additional early polling places to different funding levels for DWI prevention programs. But Komadina isn’t worried about the potential costs.

“It was the county treasurer (Lorraine Dominguez) who was the main supporter,” he said.  “She seemed to feel like the money was there to do the things that needed to be done.”

A companion bill that allows Rio Rancho to have its election for a quarter-cent gross receipts tax despite the change in the potential change in the county’s status also passed.

Komadina also was pleased to see legislation approved in two areas of personal interest: the medical profession and protection of wild horses.

“We had some good bills for medicine. One will authorize the medical board, which would have sunsetted (expired) if it didn’t pass,” he said. “It will also help in the recruitment and retention of physicians in New Mexico by doing some early licensing of doctors while they are still in residence (training) free of charge for 200 doctors a year.
 
“We think it will help keep the doctors who train here at our medical school. We lose 80 percent of them. We’re hoping if they can go right out and practice from Day 1, and they’ve already been licensed for a couple of years, that will help keep them.”

Another Komadina bill establishes a license board for “a whole new branch of medicine called sleep medicine.”

The senator also hopes to turn the controversial “Wild Horses of Placitas” into a tourist attraction.

“It has been an ongoing issue with the people there: Were they wild or just somebody’s lost pets?” Komadina said. “I’ve been a real proponent of trying to save the wild horses in New Mexico, and for years have had a variety of legislation to try to find a place where they could be used as a tourist attraction and persevere what is becoming a vanishing part of America.

“Now we have the state parks department supporting the bill. We’re going to look at doing a land trade for some federal land next to Placitas that could be made into a wild horse state park. It’s conceivable there could be an area where there could be some camping, but there certainly would be some viewing areas and some picnic areas. We’re going to look at the feasibility of doing that.”

Komadina said there were 1.5 million wild horses in the West 20 years ago, but that number has dwindled to less than 20,000. More than half of that number is in New Mexico, he said.

The biggest accomplishment of the 2008 Legislature?

“We didn’t do any harm,” he said.