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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR Garcia, MP

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

2/6/2006

HB 559

SHORT TITLE On-Line Access to Land Grant Legal Case Files

SB

ANALYST Earp

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY06

FY07

$19.0 Non-Recurring

General Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

Higher Education Department (HED)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

House Bill 559 appropriates $19,000 from the general fund to the Board of Regents of the Uni-

versity of New Mexico to provide digital and on-line access to twenty land claims legal case files

of lawyer Thomas B. Catron as part of the New Mexico statehood centennial.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The appropriation of $19,000 contained in this bill is a non-recurring expense to the general

fund. Any unexpended or unencumbered balance remaining at the end of fiscal year 2007 shall

revert to the general fund.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

This proposal was not included among the special program funding requests submitted by the

University of New Mexico to the Higher Education Department (HED) for review. Conse-

quently, this proposal has not been included in the HED fiscal year 2007 funding recommenda-

tions to the Legislature.

House Bill 559 – Page

2

ADMINISTRATIVE IMPLICATIONS

UNM would manage the proposed funding. No significant administrative impact is evident.

OTHER SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

HED provided information indicating that currently the documents for the Court of Private Land

Claims from legal case files for lawyer Thomas B. Catron are in paper format in the UNM Li-

brary. The paper records of twenty cases regarding community land grants will be digitized. The

project will focus on cases related to the town settlements of Albuquerque, Bernalillo, Santa Fe,

and Socorro and the communities of Atrisco, Cubero, Galisteo, Jacona, Manuelitas, Ojo Caliente,

and Quemado. The files to be digitized contain court documents, transcriptions and translations

of Spanish and Mexican land grant records, as well as Catron's personal notes. The documents

will be made accessible to the public via the university library’s web site. Other state historical

agencies and institutions will be encouraged to link to the site.

DKE/mt