[Nmtriblibs] FW: [NMLA 2022 Legislative Bulletin # 22

[Moore, Patricia, DCA]

From: Joe Sabatini <jsabatini423 at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2022 12:12 AM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] NMLA 2022 Legislative Bulletin # 22

Legislative Bulletin # 22                                                                  December 21, 2022

Save the Date: 2023 Library Legislative Day will be on Friday, January 27th.

Rural Library Endowment Funding

With the extraordinary increase in state revenues, particularly from oil and gas revenues, library funding projects are likely to receive considerable support in the 2023 Session of the New Mexico Legislature. Projected recurring revenues for FY 24 are estimated at almost $12 billion. "New money" not committed to recurring appropriations are estimated at $3.6 billion for FY24. Legislators are likely to allocate much of the new money to non-recurring projects like highway construction, broadband expansion, etc. NMLA will be working for full funding for the Rural Library Endowment.

Shel Neymark has led the advocacy for the New Mexico Rural Library Initiative that was successful in getting the Endowment enacted.  In the Opinion Section of today's (December 20th) Albuquerque Journal,  he has a column summarizing the current status and future needs of rural libraries. He notes that there is presently $13 million in the Endowment. The Governor's budget requests an additional $15 million. The original goal was to get $50 million, and Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino is prepared to advocate for the additional $38 million to fully fund it.

Shel's column is at:
https://www.abqjournal.com/2558716/state-must-step-up-and-help-rural-libraries-2.html


The American Library Association asked us to share this message about federal library funding:

[cid:ii_lbx9xoos0]
The link contained in the blue boxes:
https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=18455


Joe Sabatini, Co-Chair
NMLA Legislation Committee


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.zianet.com/pipermail/nmtriblibs/attachments/20221221/1e12afd5/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 156716 bytes
Desc: image.png
URL: <http://lists.zianet.com/pipermail/nmtriblibs/attachments/20221221/1e12afd5/attachment-0001.png>