Susana wants to change law on governor’s travel — but why stop there?:
From Dan Boyd of the Albuquerque Journal:
Should New Mexico’s governor retain all the authority of the state’s chief executive when traveling outside our borders?
Gov. Susana Martinez says yes.
Martinez, who took office in January, is floating the idea of changing a long-standing provision in the state Constitution that calls on the lieutenant governor to serve as acting governor any time the governor leaves New Mexico.
“I just think it’s archaic,” Martinez told the Journal. “The president doesn’t stop being president when he goes to any other part of the world.”
Gov. Susana Martinez
In order to make a change here in New Mexico, a constitutional amendment would need to be passed by both chambers of the Roundhouse as well as be ratified by voters across the state.
The request from Gov. Martinez also brings up a larger question: Does the state even need a lieutenant governor?
Capitol Report New Mexico brought this up back in the summer of 2010, when this site pointed out the state could save nearly half a million dollars by eliminating the position.
As Prof. David Schultz of Hamline University in Minnesota — who has studied state legislatures across the country — points out, “For many states, there is no good reason to have the position, there’s no damage in losing it and there is plenty of money to be saved.”
Here in New Mexico, outside of presiding over the state Senate and casting a vote in that chamber only in the case of a tie, the lieutenant governor doesn’t do much.
In states such as Oregon, Wyoming and Arizona the secretary of state takes over should anything happen to incapacitate a sitting governor and in the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Tennesee and West Virginia the state senate majority leader is next in succession.
Click here to read more about eliminating the lieutenant governor’s office altogether.
To read this morning’s story in the Journal, click here. (Sorry, subscription required.)
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