Confirmations expensive, past their usefulness

Just in time for the holiday season, here’s the perfect example of government taking more than it gives:

• In March 2017, there were 53 appointees for various state boards and commissions waiting to be confirmed by the New Mexico Senate.

• In December 2017, there are 69.

Guess we don’t have to ask Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, what she didn’t get around to this year. But maybe in the spirit of the holidays we should consider the inability of Lopez and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, to fight government inertia a blessing.

A big, financial one.

Because when Lopez and her committee got off the dime and confirmed five nominees earlier this month, it cost you, the taxpayer, around $1,000 for each in committee member per-diem and mileage reimbursements. Multiple that by 69 and we’re talking a lot more than what most New Mexicans make in an entire year.

And it’s all to give a thumbs up or down on people who volunteer their time to serve groups like the state’s Human Rights Commission, the Commission for the Blind, the Labor and Industrial Commission, and the Commission for Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

The point is the majority of these 69 appointees don’t need Lopez & Co. to get their act together to serve; Hanna Skandera led the Public Education Department for four years before getting a confirmation hearing and Senate approval. And unless they are filling an open seat, those appointees who do need confirmation before taking office include individuals who have been waiting for months to be anointed university regents. In the interim, those university boards have had to rely on the largess of regents whose terms are up to make important decisions, including ones involving budgets and tuition and presidential searches.

New Mexico’s confirmation system follows the federal model and requires high-level officials be appointed by the governor, with the consent of the Senate. Under Lopez they have become the perfect marriage of inefficient government and partisan politics as she uses her chairmanship to curry favor with her party, advance her political career and carry out a vendetta against the woman who won the governorship she lost.

The fact these confirmations are simply not getting done, have become largely superfluous and are expensive to boot should have New Mexicans asking if the law that requires them should disappear as fast as wrapped presents on Christmas morning.

— Albuquerque Journal