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

SPONSOR Trujillo

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

1/24/08

HB 350

SHORT TITLE State Historian’s Legacy and Education Project

SB

ANALYST Ortiz

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY08

FY09

$500.0

Recurring

General Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

Relates to HB 14, HB 18, HB 57, HB 82, SB 172, and SB 216

Relates to Appropriation in the General Appropriation Act: $15.0 thousand is included in the

Commission of Public Records appropriation request for maintenance of the NM history website

in its current configuration.

ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL OPERATING BUDGET IMPACT (dollars in thousands)

FY08

FY09

FY10 3 Year

Total Cost

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

Total

$5.0*

$5.0*

$10.0

Non-

recurring General

Fund

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

* Costs to the agency to administer the contracts for this project average about $5.0 per year.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

Commission of Public Records (CPR)

Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA)

Public Education Department (PED)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

House Bill 350 appropriates $500 thousand from the GENERAL FUND to the Commission of

Public Records for the Office of the State Historian’s legacy and education project.

House Bill 350 – Page

2

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

The appropriation of $500 thousand contained in this bill is a RECURRING expense to the

GENERAL FUND. Any unexpended or unencumbered balance remaining at the end of FISCAL

YEAR 2010 shall revert to the GENERAL FUND.

The $5.0 per year figure provided in the Estimated Additional Operating Impact table, above, is

an estimate of the costs of those activities and includes the costs of resources required to manage

the operations of the program, select contractors; review contracts; review verify and certify

contract compliance; establish and process contracts, requisitions, purchase orders and vouchers

through the state SHARE system; prepare and monitor budgets; etc.

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

House Bill 350 would appropriate $500.0 to the Commission of Public Records for expenditure

in FY09 and FY10 for the Office of the State Historian’s Legacy and Education Project. The

appropriation would allow the Office of the State Historian, a division of the agency, to begin

implementing through contracts, a K-12 Educational Framework and Curriculum for the New

Mexico Digital History Project. The appropriation would in part serve to continue to build

content—historical essays, photographs, images of documents and oral histories, all directly

corresponding, however, to the New Mexico Department of Education Content Standards and

Benchmarks, K-12, for Social Studies, Humanities, and History. The appropriation would also

allow the agency to contract with an educational consultant in collaboration with the Public

Education Department (PED) to initiate statewide teacher training workshops for the project.

PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS

One important component of the mission of the Commission of Public Records is advocating an

appreciation and understanding of NM history and includes the following:

1.

Foster and facilitate an understanding and appreciation of New Mexico history and culture

through education, research, and community outreach. Specifically, working with

universities, K-12 schools, educators and students consistent to foster understanding and

appreciation for New Mexico history.

2.

Expand and enhance NM history website.

ADMINISTRATIVE IMPLICATIONS

The Commission of Public Records explains that the contract approach envisioned here provides

a means of realizing the missions of the agency and Office of the State Historian without adding

permanent staff, it does carry added administrative responsibilities. Contracts will have to be

developed, reviewed, finalized, entered into SHARE by the Administrative Services Division

(ASD), and monitored for compliance. As appropriate, requisition, purchase orders and

vouchers will have to be processed by the ASD. Budgets will have to be developed and

monitored. Since the ASD fiscal staff has only two employees, plus the deputy agency

head/ASD Director/CFO, and must support all agency activities, how these additional duties and

those entailed in other related bills will be managed will require careful planning.

House Bill 350 – Page

3

CONFLICT, DUPLICATION, COMPANIONSHIP, RELATIONSHIP

There are some 11 bills in at this time involving Office of the State Historian-related activities.

Nine of those are for money for the digital history project but for a land grant component (eight

for $25.0, one for $15.0), not for this particular project. House Bill 261 also contains a $500.0

appropriation but for regional historians.

OTHER SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

According to the Public Education Department, the Office of the State Historian has taken steps

to support K-12 education in New Mexico. Through these funds the Office of the State Historian

is committing to supporting teachers and classrooms in connecting the State Historian’s

digitalization work of primary source documents with the teaching about New Mexico

communities. Under this funding, staff will be hired to provide curricular connections and

models for teachers to access along with the professional development to ensure that teachers are

prepared to use these resources in meaningful ways. It is important for teachers to be able to

take New Mexico’s primary source documents, have or create authentic curriculum around their

use and translate into authentic learning lessons and units for students across the state. This will

add valuable new resources to the teaching of New Mexico history K-12 as well as provide

teachers with needed professional development.

It also adds that 2005 New Mexico History graduation requirement was put into place without

planning time or materials and the districts have been challenged by this so having these

resources come forward with the professional development would be a tremendous asset to our

teachers and schools in meeting this requirement.

EO/mt