Zombie Breaking Bad bill is onto the Senate (updated)

The Breaking Bad bill isn’t dead yet. Well, it was, but it came back.

The short version: A new version is out of the House and into the Senate process. Now the longer explanation:

Governor Susana Martinez vetoed the bill earlier Friday. This is because she had 72 hours from when it passed to decide and her time was running out.

Without an omnibus tax bill, including a lower tax corporate income tax, that she could agree with, she said she could not sign the bill to give larger incentives for TV shows and roll over up to $10 million in unused funds annually to the film tax credit.

“I cannot in good conscience further expand New Mexico’s film subsidy while leaving other sectors in our economy unassisted and genuine reform unattained,” Martinez said in her veto message.

In between the lines, Martinez alluded to her favored tax proposals.

While the House and Senate worked on tax proposals (the Senate version includes ending a hold harmless provision and could force local governments to reinstitute the food tax), Rep. Moe Maestas used a “dummy bill” to bring back the Breaking Bad bill.

The bill cleared the House Business and Industry Committee quickly. Then it passed the House on a 35-28 vote; it now moves to the Senate.

Since the bill

So the Breaking Bad bill is back in zombie form (crossing the metaphors with The Walking Dead) and still has an outside shot at becoming law.

Update:

“With the $50 million cap already in place and with the $10 million cap on the carry forward provision in the legislation, this bill should stand alone,” said House Majority Whip Moe Maestas in astatement following the vote. “The Governor, however, expressed frustration with not being able to review all the tax bills at the same time, so we will keep working until tomorrow at noon to send this legislation back to the Governor’s desk.”

Since the vote did not get two-thirds, the emergency clause is not included. The emergency clause means the bill becomes law upon being signed; otherwise it does not become law until July 1.