The entire House Republican caucus and four Democrats have signed on to a new bill dropped late Thursday that would fund a widespread investigation of the state housing authority scandal by the Legislative Finance Committee and attorney general.
In addition, the lieutenant governor is working to push through other proposals to overhaul the state’s affordable housing system.
The new bill comes in response to recent moves most believe are attempts to kill other bills that would overhaul the affordable housing system. The Business and Industry Committee tabled House Bill 997, sponsored by Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, R-Albuquerque, on Sunday. Then on Monday, Speaker of the House Ben Lujan moved its mirror bill, Senate Bill 519, sponsored by Sen. Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, to the same committee, which has not scheduled a hearing on the bill.
Those bills would fund a probe by the LFC and replace the scandal-plagued regional housing authorities with a new system overseen by the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority. Many believe Lujan is trying to kill the bills, though he says that’s not the case.
“Those bills aren’t getting a lot of movement in the House,” Minority Whip Dan Foley, R-Roswell, said. “It’s hard to see what the speaker is doing. I know they’re not sailing through like other bills.”
The new bill, House Bill 1321, is sponsored by Foley. It would provide $200,000 to the LFC and $100,000 to the attorney general for a joint investigation into the widespread mismanagement found last year by the governor’s office and State Investment Council. Read the investment council report by clicking here.
The LFC would lead the investigation and would have to report to the Legislature and governor by Dec. 15.
The attorney general is already conducting its own investigation, but the new funding would be intended to fully audit all seven housing authority regions to determine how much money is missing and where it went.
Officials already know that the Region III authority, based in
Five of the seven authorities are at least a year behind on the completion of audits, and many fear the problems might go far beyond the bond money.
“I know people say that number has the potential to grow,” Lt. Gov. Diane Denish said of the $5 million in defaulted bond money.
“We believe there’s a lot of work that’s going to have to be done,” Foley said.
Cosigners on the new bill include every house Republican and Democrats Joseph Cervantes and Mary Helen Garcia of Las Cruces, Andy Nuñez of Hatch and Dona Irwin of Deming.
Though the deadline to introduce legislation passed last month, it’s common for the leadership of both parties to introduce one or two “dummy bills” – bills that contain no wording and can be later replaced with a substitute – just before the deadline. Replacing such a bill is what House Republicans did Thursday evening.
Lujan assigned the bill to the Business and Industry Committee, Foley said, in addition to the Judiciary and Appropriations and Finance committees.
Denish is ‘maneuvering and negotiating’
As the chair of the MFA board, Denish has been a champion of the proposal to remake the affordable housing system. In an interview, she said she is aware that opponents of the affordable housing overhaul proposal have been passing out previous audits of the housing authorities that don’t reveal problems in an attempt to lobby against the bills.
But those audits are almost all “outdated,” Denish said, noting that the investment council report is much more recent. She said the fact that most authorities haven’t completed current audits that are required by law is another sign of dysfunction.
With eight days left in the session, Business and Industry Committee Chair Debbie Rodella, D-Ohkay Owingeh, has not yet scheduled a hearing on Papen’s bill. She didn’t originally plan to have the committee meet this weekend, but pressure changed that.
Rep. Justine Fox-Young, R-Albuquerque and a member of the committee, said Rodella has said she plans to hear all remaining House bills when the committee meets Sunday, which should include Foley’s new bill.
The committee won’t get to Senate bills, including Papen’s, until next week.
Rodella has said, through a spokeswoman for House Democrats, that she’s too busy to talk about the housing authority bills.
Denish said she is hoping to convince one of the six Democrats who voted to table Arnold-Jones’ bill to reconsider. That could happen at any time the committee meets, so it isn’t dependent on Rodella.
“I don’t think they had all the information when they voted before,” she said, adding that she hopes “somebody has the guts” to bring the bill back.
Asked if she believes Lujan is trying to kill the bills, Denish had this to say:
“I believe there are things the speaker could do to prove that isn’t so. He could encourage his committee chair to hear the bill as soon as possible,” she said. “But I don’t have any reason to believe he doesn’t support the bill. He hasn’t told me that.”
Lujan has not returned a message I left Thursday but, in all fairness, some House committees met until almost midnight.
Noting that there have been a number of scandals that have recently rocked state government, Denish said the problems with the housing authorities are “just as bad as any other scandal,” and said the reform the bills would provide is necessary. She’s doing what she can to get one of them passed.
“From now on out, it’s going to be a maneuvering and negotiating process,” Denish said. “We need the speaker’s help, and there are people encouraging him to do that.”