N.M. Finance Authority Redo Vetoed

Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed a bill to restructure the board overseeing New Mexico Finance Authority last week because she said it did not go far enough in reforming the agency.

Senate Bill 12 would have removed three Cabinet secretaries from the 11-member group and replaced them with four members appointed by the Legislature.

Martinez had asked lawmakers to put NMFA under state budget control and make it subject to state requirements for awarding contracts.

"I was extremely disappointed that those recommendations were not considered or reflected in the final version of the bill," Martinez said.

It is "not only necessary, it is vital" to have cabinet secretaries appointed by the governor on the finance panel, she said.

"During the last nine months, my appointees to NMFA have engineered a dramatic turnaround so that NMFA's line of credit has been restored and will be able to issue bonds again this spring," she said.

Sen. Tim Keller, D-Albuquerque, sponsor of the vetoed bill, said the finance panel members should have a background in public finance or banking. Experienced members might have avoided problems resulting from a forged audit of the agency in 2011, he said.

"It's not difficult to see why the NMFA board could miss a faulty audit," Keller said. "The current governance structure does not follow basic best practices. It suffers from a lack of expertise, high turnover, and a glaring lack of diversity of interests."

Martinez signed a bill allocating $218.1 million of energy severance tax bonds for capital outlay projects after striking $4.4 million of projects from the list proposed by the Legislature.

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New Mexico
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