Court: Partial veto unconstitutional - The Santa Fe New Mexican

The state Supreme Court has ruled that Gov. Susana Martinez's line-item veto of a bill with a $128 million business tax increase to shore up New Mexico's unemployment compensation fund was unconstitutional. 

The unanimous decision is the latest in a series of high court rulings against Martinez. 

After the regular legislative session early this year, Martinez vetoed a provision of an unemployment bill that would have increased what businesses pay into the unemployment fund. However, the governor let stand a part of the bill that cut nearly $80 million in unemployment benefits. 

Six Democratic legislators, including House Speaker Ben Luján and Rep. Mimi Stewart of Albuquerque, last May petitioned the high court, asking that the partial veto be declared unconstitutional. 

In July, the justices put off ruling on the issue, saying they wanted the governor and Legislature to try to resolve differences during the special session, which took place in September. However, no bill dealing with the unemployment fund was passed. 

In the 20-page decision, Justice Edward Chavez concluded that after the governor's veto, "what remained was an unworkable piece of legislation." According to the decision, Martinez's partial veto removed one of the factors needed to calculate employer contributions to the unemployment fund beginning in January. 

Martinez's spokesman, Scott Darnell, said, "Gov. Martinez used her line-item authority in the same way Gov. [Bill] Richardson did in 2010 and disagrees with the court's decision today. Unfortunately, Democrats will get their wish to raise taxes on small businesses to fund unemployment benefits, even though the unemployment rate in New Mexico has fallen from 8.7 percent in January to 6.6 percent today. 

"The governor remains committed to working across party lines to reform the unemployment insurance system in a way that puts more New Mexicans back to work and keeps unemployment rates fair and stable for New Mexico small businesses by removing politics and basing rates on sound actuarial data," Darnell said. 

During the special session, Martinez backed a bill that would have transferred money from the state's reserves to the unemployment fund. However, like almost all legislation not dealing with changing district boundaries for legislative seats, that bill went nowhere in the special session. 

This is the second time the Supreme Court has ruled against Martinez and reversed one of her partial vetoes. 

In June, the court struck down a line-item veto by the governor that would have reduced an appropriation for a housing program from $150,000 to $50,000. Martinez had done that by striking the "1" in $150,000. 

There were two previous instances in which the court ruled against the governor.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled that Martinez lacked authority to arbitrarily remove two members of the state Public Employee Labor Relations Board and ordered her to reinstate the two members. 

In January, the court unanimously decided that Martinez acted improperly when she requested the state's records administrator delay publishing greenhouse-gas emissions rules that the state Environmental Improvement Board approved shortly before she took office. 

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com.