SANTA FE— During her inaugural State of the State speech at the Roundhouse, Gov. Susana Martinez laid out her plan for bold change.
She called for administrative cuts in education, pro-business legislation and to reinstate the death penalty.
“By working together, we will take our state in a new direction,” she said. “Embracing bold change over the status quo, choosing progress over complacency and putting aside partisan differences to achieve lasting results for New Mexico families.”
Martinez said public education will endure administrative cuts to offset a more-than-$400 million state deficit and ensure there are no classroom cuts.
“By making cuts elsewhere, my budget only requires the education bureaucracy to trim 1.5 percent from the administration,” she said.
Aside from administrative cuts, her education initiative, “Kids First, New Mexico Wins,” focuses on quickly identifying and helping the worst-performing public schools and students, ensuring students pass with sufficient skills and rewarding teachers who perform well.
The governor also presented ideas to promote public safety, including expanding DNA collection from some to all felony arrests, strengthening DWI penalties and imprisoning corrupt officials.
“Corruption is a crime, not an ethical dilemma,” she said. “When public officials are found guilty of corruption, they should be immediately removed from office, receive mandatory prison time and be forced to surrender their pension.”
She also asked lawmakers to create legislation that will reinstate the death penalty, require identification at the polls and reform immigration policies. Martinez also offered support for the Legislative Finance Committee’s budget proposal because it offered no tax increase. She promised to veto any tax increase proposal.
Solving the state’s nearly $400 million deficit was the running theme throughout her speech. She suggested possible solutions including reducing the state’s film subsidy from 25 to 15 percent, eliminating clear cap-and-trade regulations to promote energy exploration in the state and opening an Office of Business Advocacy to promote small businesses and sell the state’s private jet.
Her ideas to improve the economy included less government assistance and more free-market growth.
“We increase revenue by helping small businesses create jobs, not by government creating new jobs,” she said.
The Republican aisle in the standing-room-only House chambers cheered Martinez’s pro-business stance. Although Martinez called for partisanship in the beginning of her speech, the Legislature was clearly defined by its political parties, as Democrats sat on their hands through most of the speech, and Republicans clapped loudly for the new governor.
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Democrats still control the House and the Senate, and Martinez ended her speech with a call for cooperation.
“As I said during the campaign, it’s our state,” she said. “And, working together, we will take it back.”
