Enchantment State News

Despite the ongoing pandemic and bleak predictions in June, things are looking up for New Mexico's financial picture, the state's Department of Finance and Administration's acting secretary reportedly told lawmakers recently.

New Mexico's oil sector has recovered better than had been expected and state agencies are no longer being asked to come up with 5% general fund spending cuts, Department of Finance and Administration Acting Secretary Debbie Romero told Legislative Finance Committee during a virtual briefing Dec. 8, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

Romero also told lawmakers that projected revenue could reach almost $7.4 billion, significantly more than the $6.2 billion predicted in June.

"We are asking analysts to come in with flat budgets for agencies, and there may be a couple — maybe a handful of agencies — that may be just above that," Romero told committee members during the briefing, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

Romero, who has worked almost 40 years in government, most of it in the state's Finance and Administration Department, has been acting secretary since June when previous Cabinet Secretary Olivia Padilla-Jackson resigned.

Recovery of the oil and gas industry, an important source of revenue for the state that was hard hit when the pandemic began, is a major reason why the state is doing so much better than expected, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

The newspaper also quoted a spokeswoman in Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's office stating the governor's administration was "cautiously optimistic" about New Mexico's better-than-predicted forecast for this end of the fiscal year.

"Things can change, but we feel better about the outlook now than we did earlier this year," spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett said in an email, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. "We’re hopeful we can avoid the cuts we had worried might be necessary."