Last week, the legislature gave new life to the food tax in New Mexico.  Currently, there are only 2 states that tax food (Alabama and Mississippi).  What the legislature did was complicated, but in essence they voted to stop reimbursing cities, towns and municipalities for the revenue they lost when the legislature repealed the food tax back in 2005.  That means many of those municipalities will now have to reinstate a local food tax to make up the difference.  The move will put $68 million dollars back in the state coffers to help deal with the ongoing budget shortfall.  Governor Richardson says he “hates the food tax” and is weighing his options on whether or not to line item veto the measure.  We’ll delve into the food tax fight in depth on this week’s episode of NMiF, but we want to give you a taste of just how emotional of an issue this is.  During the segment, we asked Senator Eric Griego why he finally voted in favor of the measure after vocally opposing the food tax throughout the regular and special sessions.  His answer may surprise you.  In essence he says the Governor is partly to blame, despite his strong public words about the food tax.  Take a listen:

Griego bases his claim primarily on the proclamation the Governor issued before the start of the special session. You can read that proclamation here. Senator Griego seems to be implying that the Governor laid the groundwork for the return of the food tax by putting it on the agenda for the special session, while leaving many of the more progressive tax issues (like a personal income tax surcharge for higher income earning people) out of his proclamation. I guess we will all have a better idea on the Governor’s true motivation when we find out if he line item vetoes the food tax issue.  His deadline to sign the bill or line item veto it is March 25th.  Stay tuned!

And be sure to tune in Friday night at 7pm for the rest of our discussion on the food tax.  Our other guest are Fred Nathan of Think New Mexico, Allen Sanchez of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Rio Rancho mayor Tom Swisstack.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 6:26 pm and is filed under nmif. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.