Governor vetoes a bill that would have benefited food bank

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s only veto related to capital outlay in Curry or Roosevelt counties was to cancel reauthorization of funding for a project whose funds were already spent, leaving none to reauthorize.

In a letter signed Thursday, Lujan Grisham wrote she had vetoed nine lines of the Senate’s capital outlay reauthorization bill that would have authorized funding for improvements at the Eastern New Mexico Food Bank. The letter indicated the governor vetoed those lines because there were no unspent funds remaining from what was authorized in previous years.

Dianna Sprague, executive director of the food bank, on Tuesday said of the veto, “We’re still trying to figure this out. I don’t have a comment right now.”

In all, the governor applied her veto pen to only $260,000 out of more than $2 billion in capital outlay projects approved by the legislature.