The 60-day session ended March 21.

Rep. Rhonda King, D-Stanley, said she is satisfied with the outcome of the session as a whole.

Seven of her bills were passed and are expected to be signed by Gov. Bill Richardson. King said she has met with Richardson's staff and expects most of her bills to be enacted into law, including the House Judiciary Committee substitute for House Bill 485, which provides that a school district shall file a lien on every contractor-owned school bus under the contract on which the contractor owes money. King said this bill was important as it related directly to the Moriarty-Edgewood School District.

Another bill relating to education that was important to King was House Bill 691, which closes a loophole in state statute allowing school districts to reduce the number of days students are actually in the classroom, causing a disparity in how many full days students spend in class. A number of districts adjust the length of the instructional day by minutes in order to provide a number of other days in the school calendar for other activities or to make up missed days, King said.

"We want to get away from the loophole that allows schools to add minutes onto the school day," she said. "Adding a few minutes doesn't accomplish the same thing as being there for a full day."

Approximately 30 of the 67 districts on a five-day teaching schedule provide less than the 180 days currently.

Students will now receive a full instructional school year of a minimum of 180 or 151 days (depending on the school week) exclusive of release time for in-service training, weather-related closings, or other events that are not school-directed programs.

King said the bill was a combination of efforts from the governor, the Legislative Finance Committee, the Public Education Department and the Legislative Education Study Committee. King said a waiver of the provision could be given by the state Public Education Department in the event of a hardship on the school district.

Two others of King's bills were passed and are expected to be signed. House Bill 692 is a consumer protection bill brought to King by one of her constituents. She said the couple were making early payments on their mobile home loan, but their contract mandated they make payments on the fifth of the month. They received penalties for paying early.

"My bill eliminates a prepayment or pre-instillation payment penalty on a mobile home loan," she said.

Close but no cigar

Several of King's bills came close to passing but didn't quite make it through the Senate floor, including HB 433, Sex Offender Electronic Name Registration, and HB 630, Substances as Drug Precursors.

Some good bills just run out of time, she said.

"It's the nature of the process. One of the issues at the end of the session is more bills are passed through committees but end up becoming controversial and get a lot of debate. We're up against the clock, and some bills just don't make it."

House Bill 433 would have required sex offenders to register any electronic identities and HB 630 would have closed an appeals court loophole that would have made it illegal to purchase over-the-counter cold medications with the intent to manufacture methamphetamines.

That doesn't mean it's the end, she said. She hopes to get the two bills on the governor's call list and passed next session.

"They are very important issues that need to be addressed," she said.

Transparency in government

As for the session as a whole, King said the Legislature made strides toward more transparency in government, as well as accountability. Bills passed included opening legislative committee meetings to the public, allowing Web casting of Senate and House floor sessions, putting a cap on campaign contributions, and changing eligibility and salary limits for public employees who have retired and then return to work.

King is also satisfied with the proposed budget. Revenues were projected to be 10 percent below the current fiscal year's budget. After receiving funds from the federal stimulus package, King said major cuts weren't administered to education or health care.

"Perhaps most important is that we created the best possible scenario without raising our taxes — either on individuals or on small businesses which will be a key to our economic recovery," she wrote in a recent news release.

It was a challenge, she said, because the state still had to make $200 million worth of cuts in the budget. She said cuts were made across the board.

"At the end of the day, it was the best case scenario given circumstances, and we didn't have to increase taxes," she said.

Working the budget

For her part, Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Sandia Park, is proud of the work that was done this legislative session, she said.

A ranking member of the minority party on the Senate Finance Committee, Beffort helped craft the solvency package.

"I'm very proud that we didn't have massive layoffs — massive cuts that could have hurt like other states have had — and we made some good decisions," she said. "I think that the people of New Mexico should appreciate the approach that the Legislature took."

As an example of the seriousness of the budget shortfall the Legislature was dealing with, she said last year the state's land grant and severance tax permanent funds were $17 billion combined. Those funds went down $5 billion this year, she said.

The interest from those funds helps pay for education, but the state hasn't felt the effect of the decrease yet because the state takes funding based on a rolling average from the past five years, Beffort said.

"The last four years were very good," she said. "I just hope that the economy and the stock market will pick back up."

She added that the Senate was conservative in the cuts it made. She also voted to extend unemployment benefits and raise the amount of those benefits, something she has historically voted against.

She pointed out that there were 4,900 people laid off in New Mexico during the past year. Her philosophy was to keep the funding for the unemployed for a rainy day, and the time has come to use it, she said.

"Things are serious. They're very serious," she said.

Beffort also hoped to shrink the size of government, she said. In the process, the Senate also allowed agencies more flexibility as to how they moved their money and effectively gave government entities the ability to chose where the cuts were administered.

"We didn't shrink the size of government, but made decisions as to where we could cut," she said. "We told them (the agencies) to come to the table and we're all in this together … it doesn't have to be in personnel or in program delivery or in not ordering computers."

Special session?

Although reductions were made, there will probably have to be another session to deal with the budget again, according to Rep. Kathy McCoy, R-Sandia Knolls.

"The numbers we based the (2010) budget on are still pretty rosy numbers," she said. "The main priority this time was preserving jobs and doing as little as possible and waiting to see what the new numbers looked like."