News From The Capitol

Santa Fe-area members of the state House of Representatives have declining environmental voting records while local state senators are on the upswing, according to a state-based environmental group's "score card" released Tuesday.

The lowest-scoring Santa Fe legislator, Rep. Jim Trujillo, was unrepentant about his score of 44 percent — down from 82 percent in 2007. "Environmentalists in Santa Fe say they want clean air, but they're the ones who burn their fireplaces 24 hours a day," Trujillo said. "They're the ones who drive their (sport-utility vehicles) to protest emissions or oil drilling."

Trujillo said he believes his score suffered partly because of his enthusiastic support for nuclear energy and uranium mining.

Conservation Voters New Mexico's score card is supposed to be a tool to educate voters on their representatives' environmental records so they can reward or punish incumbents at the polls. However, that question is moot in Santa Fe because no legislator, all Democrats, has any primary or general election opponent.

This is the fourth year CVNM has published legislative score cards, said Sandy Buffet, the organization's executive director.

CVNM was one of two state environmental organizations to release scorecards Tuesday. The other was Environment New Mexico, an Albuquerque-based group that began as a part of New Mexico Public Interest Research Group, spokeswoman Lauren Ketcham said. ENM's scores of the individual legislators were similar to CVNM's. This is the first year the group published a score card.

Only one Santa Fe lawmaker got a perfect score. That's outgoing Sen. John Grubesic, whose 100 percent score is up from 85 percent last year. Grubesic also scored perfectly on the Environment New Mexico scorecard.

Sen. Nancy Rodriguez is the area's most improved legislator, according to CVNM. She received a score of 83 percent, up from 44 percent in 2007.

Sen. Phil Griego, D-San Jose, improved slightly on his environmental score. He got 63 percent in 2008, up from 58 percent last year.

But on the House side, everyone's score went down.

One reason House scores tended to fall, Buffett said, was because many representatives — including House Speaker Ben Luján, D-Nambé, Luciano "Lucky" Varela and Trujillo — voted in favor of House Bill 276, which would have authorized a $629 million bond issue to provide streets, sewers and utilities for a 55,000-acre development on Albuquerque's west side.

Buffett said environmentalists were joined by many fiscally conservative Republicans to oppose the bill, which died in the Senate.

Rep. Peter Wirth, who is running unopposed for Grubesic's Senate seat, went down slightly from 100 percent last year to 88 percent in 2008. Wirth's score suffered, Buffett said, because of his vote for House Joint Memorial 7, which called for a study on the coal surtax. Although the measure only called for a study, CVNM pointed out the memorial says the surtax is inequitable and flawed. The measure passed the House but died in the Senate.

"In fact, eliminating the surtax would constitute a de facto $6.9 million subsidy to a thriving resource extraction industry," the report said.

Luján scored 56 percent, down from 85 percent last year. However, CVNM's report honors Luján in a section called "Green Deeds" for sponsoring HB305. The bill, which Buffett called the most important piece of legislation to pass in 2008, establishes mandatory energy efficiency savings for utilities by 2020.

Varela's score went down from 92 percent last year to 75 percent in 2008.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.

The scores

Conservation Voters New Mexico, Environment New Mexico:

Sen. John Grubesic:100 percent, 100 percent

Rep. Peter Wirth: 88 percent, 86 percent

Sen. Nancy Rodriguez: 83 percent, 80 percent

Sen. Phil Griego: 63 percent, 71 percent

Rep. Luciano "Lucky" Varela: 75 percent, 71 percent

House Speaker Ben Luján: 56 percent, 38 percent

Rep. Jim Trujillo: 44 percent, 38 percent