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

SPONSOR Altamirano

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

1/22/2007

HB

SHORT TITLE WNMU MUSEUM

SB 98

ANALYST McOlash

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY07

FY08

$345.6

Recurring

General Fund

$131.0 Non-Recurring

General Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

New Mexico Department of Higher Education (HED)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

Senate Bill 98 appropriates $476,600 from the General Fund to the Board of Regents of Western

New Mexico University (WNMU) for staffing, equipment, and collection acquisitions of

prehistoric pottery for the WNMU museum.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The appropriation of $476,600 contained in this bill is a recurring expense to the General Fund.

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

General fund.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

Western New Mexico University Museum houses one of the largest permanent displays of

Mimbres pottery and culture in the world. The flagship collection is the Eisele Collection of

Prehistoric Southwest Pottery and Artifacts.

Senate Bill 98 – Page

2

WNMU submitted two separate Public Service funding requests for a combined total of

$476,600 as follows:

1) Proposal submitted to NMHED designated $345,600 for museum operations, including

salaries, and the preservation of collections. This amount appears to be recurring

funding.

2) Proposal submitted to NMHED designated $131,000 for museum collection

acquisition of the Wheaton-Smith Collection of Prehistoric Pottery, a 600-piece

collection of prehistoric pottery and traded pottery from Cases Grandes and Durango,

Mexico collected by Craig Wheaton-Smith in the 1950s This amount appears to be non-

recurring funding.

This proposal was submitted to the New Mexico Higher Education Department

(NMHED) by Western New Mexico University but was not included in the HED’s funding

recommendation for FY08.

OTHER SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

The HED mentions that higher education institutions receive indirect cost revenues from federal

contracts and grants. This money is unrestricted in the sense that the governing boards of the

institutions have the flexibility to choose which projects are supported with these funds. A great

deal of this money is used as seed money to develop new research and public services projects at

institutions. A portion of the indirect cost revenue, or earned overhead, is used to support items

such as the salaries of the accountants responsible for monitoring the contracts and grants, or for

paying utilities and other expenses required to maintain the space where the contract and grant

activities are housed.

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