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

SPONSOR Nava

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

02/10/2007

HB

SHORT TITLE

Research & Engineering Resources Connection

SB 852

ANALYST Moser

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY07

FY08

$150.0

Non-Rec

General Fund

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

NM Department of Higher Education (HED)

Department of Public Education (PED)

Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

Senate Bill 852 appropriates $150,000 from the General Fund to the Board of Regents of the

University of New Mexico (UNM) to pay for a study of ways to connect research and

engineering resources.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The appropriation of $150,000 contained in this bill is a recurring expense to the General Fund.

Any unexpended or unencumbered balance remaining at the end of FY08 shall revert to the

General Fund.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

PED points out that research labs in New Mexico are developing sensors and sensor networks

that are vital to improvements in national security.

Senate Bill 852 – Page

2

At the current time there are apparently no procedures or sites for the initial real world field

testing of these sensors and sensor networks outside of the laboratories.

PED indicates that this appropriation would fund a feasibility study and initial piloting of field

testing sites and procedures for real world testing of sensors and sensor networks beyond the lab

environment. This should lead to successful solicitation of federal funding for expanding the

work and for New Mexico to become a leader in this vital area.

UNM seeks to develop a study that would investigate ways to connect research and engineering

resources and to create a distributed developmental test bed to connect state and federal

government, private research institutions and the states three research universities, two national

laboratories, and related technology business enterprises.

This request was not on the list of priority projects submitted by UNM to HED for review and

was not included in the Department’s funding recommendations for FY08.

GM/nt