By Wheeler Cowperthwaite
Special to the SUN

Efforts to open a lowrider museum in Española faced a setback after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a line item veto on March 11, for $500,000 that was promised for efforts to get the museum created.

The $500,000 appropriation was for the second phase of a feasibility study for the proposed museum.

In an email, a Henry Valdez, a state spokesman wrote that the governor’s veto wasn’t over funding the feasibility study or the proposed museum but instead, because of the way the funding was being doled out.

The appropriation would have come from the Art in Public Places funds. Those funds “are legally restricted to specific capital construction projects and using them for HB 2 appropriations would conflict with the Art in Public Places Act (NMSA 1978, Section 13-4A-2).”

The spokesman wrote that $500,000 in state funding has already been committed through capital outlay.

“The Governor provided approximately $190,000 of that total toward the project,” he wrote.

The Art in Public Spaces fund requires that a portion of appropriations for capital expenditures be set aside for buying or commissioning works of art to be used in or around public buildings, either 1% or $200,000, whichever is less, and the money is held in a special Art in Public Places fund.

“The Governor vetoed other appropriations for the same reason,” the spokesman wrote.

Line item vetoes appear for three projects that proposed to use the Art in Public Places money.

While the governor vetoed money for the lowrider museum this year, last year she vetoed a bill to create a lowrider license plate.

District 41 Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Embudo, told a media outlet that the original appropriation didn’t make it into the version of the budget passed by the house Approbations and Finance Committee, which was when they decided to try tapping into the Art in Public Places money.

In multiple posts on Facebook, District 5 Sen. Leo Jaramillo, D-Rio Arriba, Los Alamos, Sandoval and Santa Fe, wrote that lowrider culture is part of who “we are in Española” and “I’ll keep fighting for the museum.”

“Lowrider culture is art, craftsmanship, family tradition, and community pride passed down for generations in the Española Valley,” he wrote.

In an editorial that appeared in an online publication in Los Alamos, Jaramillo wrote that the line-item veto especially stings after the governor vetoed the lowrider license plate last year

“That license plate bill received bipartisan support, and when I rose to defend it on the Senate floor, my colleagues responded with a standing ovation. Lawmakers from across New Mexico understood what lowrider culture represents,” he wrote.

He wrote that he will bring back the license plate bill and keep working to get more for a lowrider museum.

“Española didn’t just adopt lowrider culture, we helped create it!” he wrote.