NM Legislators Held Hostage By Oilmen?

By Corey Pein

While the press corps, including

this paper

, has been digging into pay-to-play in

state contracting

, a new report by

Common Cause New Mexico

illustrates a more insidious—but just as important—effect of money in politics. The report, "Connecting the Dots: The Oil and Gas Industry's Influence on New Mexico Politics," is available

here

, in PDF form. From the summary:

The Common Cause report includes several specific examples where lawmakers seemed to be influenced by industry donations, including a 2005 bill that "would have saved environmentally intensive industries such as O&G money by reducing their liability for environmental damage resulting from their operations."

What's the take-away here? As Common Cause puts it, the oil and gas industry's contributions may be "influencing state policy-making processes in a manner that, while beneficial to the industry,

might not be in the best interests of the state as a whole

."

Santa Fe Reporter

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