OPINION: A pocketful of secrecy and hypocrisy

Feb. 13—All politicians share a patch of common ground. Everyone from rock-ribbed conservatives to unabashed liberals claims to stand for accountability, honesty and transparency.

Yet one of the better proposals to make government less secretive has been stranded on the floor of the New Mexico House of Representatives for the last nine days.

The measure, House Joint Resolution 2, would allow voters to decide if they want to abolish the governor's power of the pocket veto. That candy-coated term reminds me of the worst jargon of war — friendly fire.

Bullets that kill a buddy aren't friendly. Pocket vetoes that kill legislation allow governors to wield enormous power without having to explain their decisions. Governors take on the status of deities instead of public servants.

Under existing law, a governor has 20 days to sign or veto bills that were approved by legislators during the last three days of a session. Any bills the governor ignores are pocket vetoed.

The proposed constitutional amendment would strip the governor of this power. Bills the governor chose not to act on would become law.

Few pieces of legislation are as lean and bipartisan as the proposal to eliminate the pocket veto. It should have easily cleared the House and Senate by now.

Instead, the measure is a long shot to receive approval during the final 36 hours of the session.

Could it be that Democrats in charge of the House have slowed down the proposal to stay on the good side of Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham?

She wants to retain the pocket veto. Lujan Grisham used it to kill 21 bills last year without having to provide any explanation.

Republican Rep. Jason Harper of Rio Rancho, a sponsor of the proposal to outlaw pocket vetoes, suspects one of the Legislature's more powerful members is shackling the measure.

"If I'm just being honest, the speaker is holding it back to keep good relations with the governor," Harper said in an interview.

House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque, told me he doesn't operate that way.

"I don't stall. Just lots of other top priority bills on the [House] floor," Martínez wrote in a text message.

He said deciding which bills will receive a vote is a fluid process that touches on political considerations.

"It really depends on vote counts and other factors as to what bills I put on the list for a particular day," Martínez wrote.

Vote counts have boded well for the proposed constitutional amendment. It breezed through two House committees on votes of 6-0 and 7-0, respectively.

Rep. Matthew McQueen, primary sponsor of the proposal, said he continues working both the House and Senate to get the measure on the ballot.

McQueen, D-Galisteo, had no criticism of the speaker. "He's been moving all these financial bills, and it is a budget session," McQueen said.

But the proposed constitutional amendment probably wouldn't take up much time in a floor debate. A fast explanation of the bill by McQueen would be followed by a landslide vote to place the measure on the ballot.

In conversations with many lawmakers, all of them told me a governor's vetoes should always be explained. Only then can legislators try to correct what the executive found deficient in a bill.

McQueen, a soft-spoken, diligent lawmaker, doesn't try to spin stories. But he requested that I not write this column.

"I would ask that there not be a story tomorrow. Negative press would negatively impact my chances," he wrote in a text message.

That's a sad situation in a government where everyone says sunlight is always preferred to darkness. Well, almost everyone.

The legislative staff analysis of the proposal outlines objections from Lujan Grisham's office.

"If the bill was approved it would result in a 'consistent veto process for all bills regardless of when presented to the governor,' " it states.

Lujan Grisham's staff previously offered other objections to ending her authority to use pocket vetoes.

"The Office of the Governor also noted that the bill would impede on the governor's executive authority and could disrupt the balance of power enumerated in the New Mexico Constitution. The previous analysis also stated that the bill would create an unnecessary burden on the governor to have to explain each veto."

It's impossible to understand how explaining vetoes is burdensome. That should be a fundamental part of the job if good government matters at all.

Part-time legislators have far fewer resources than the full-time governor, who employs advisers and department heads. All of them should be capable of helping to review legislation.

Colorado functions just fine with the system McQueen and Harper are proposing. If the governor of Colorado declines to sign or veto a bill approved, it becomes law.

That would make sense for New Mexico, which once billed itself as the Sunshine State. Bills approved publicly by two houses of a legislature shouldn't die in darkness.

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