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

SPONSOR Lujan, B.

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

1/31/2007

2/06/07 HB 229

SHORT TITLE Northern NM State School Library

SB

ANALYST McOlash

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY07

FY08

$2,300.0 Non-Recurring

General Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

House Bill 229 appropriates $2.3 million from the General Fund to the Regents of Northern New

Mexico State School for expenditure in FY 2008 to increase its library acquisitions to comply

with accreditation standards of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Associa-

tion of colleges and schools to achieve parity with other higher education institutions in New

Mexico.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The appropriation of $2,300,000 contained in this bill is a non-recurring expense to the General

Fund. Any unexpended or unencumbered balance remaining at the end of FY 2008 shall revert to

the General Fund.

The HED mentions this is a one-time investment by the state. Future library acquisitions will be

part of the regular funding formula allocations.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

Northern New Mexico College (NNMC) was approved to become a four-year institution of

higher learning in FY05 and has received regional accreditation from the Higher Learning

House Bill 229 – Page

2

Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. NNMC requests funding

to increase its library acquisitions to be on parity with other regionally accredited institutions in

New Mexico, and to support the five new Baccalaureate programs which have received accredi-

tation: Biology, Business Administration, Environmental Science, Information Technology, and

Integrated Healing.

The College library strives to compare more favorably to its peer institutions for the proposed

Bachelor degree programs. Acquisition goals set by the Library Director are: to reach a mini-

mum number of 5,000 volumes in each category, which will automatically increase the number

of volumes per student; to acquire the necessary number of print subscriptions to reach a mini-

mum of 60 per year in each category; to subscribe to a minimum of two online full text databases

per year in each category; and to continue the current subscriptions to the online citation-based

databases in each category each year.

This request was submitted by Northern New Mexico College to the New Mexico Higher Educa-

tion Department for review; but is not included in the Department’s funding recommendation for

FY08.

TECHNICAL ISSUES

The Higher Education Department indicates NNMC will need additional space to house these

acquisitions. Expansion of the present space is a temporary solution but eventually the library

will need major expansion or perhaps a new building, depending on the length of time it takes to

meet the set goals and the growth of the proposed programs.

BM/nt