Title: Gubernatorial Institutional Authority and Conflict: Executive-Judicial Relations in the United States
Abstract: In 2011, Republican New Mexico governor Susana Martinez issued a partial veto reducing a legislative appropriation for the state's office of Department and Finance Administration. Using her partial veto power, Martinez reduced the $150,000 appropriation to $50,000 by striking the "1" from the amount.1 After the issuance of her veto, a group of Democratic legislators and state citizens sued the governor claiming her partial veto was unconstitutional. Although the New Mexico Supreme Court recognized that the veto power of the New Mexico governor is somewhat broad, particularly in comparison to the veto power in other states,2 the court ruled that by "scaling down" an appropriation, the New Mexico governor had violated the state's separation of powers clause. In a unanimous opinion, the court stated: By striking a single numerical digit, the Governor did not eliminate the whole of the item; she distorted the Legislature's intent to appropriate $150,000 to the Department of Finance and Administration for the mortgage finance authority. There is no authority to scale back: the Governor may strike the whole of the appropriation or leave it intact; she may not conceive her own appropriation.
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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