The battle to close the tax loophole for out-of-state corporations has been raging for a long time. But in the 2012 legislative session, something quite extraordinary happened.

After all of the years of organizing at the grassroots — and obstruction and disappointment in the corridors and committee rooms of the Roundhouse — a scaled-down version of this overdue tax reform (technically called “combined reporting”) actually passed both houses of the legislature.

Sadly, the legislative victory of the “Corporate Fair Tax Act” (SB9) was short-lived for it subsequently fell victim to Governor Susana Martinez’s veto pen.

Thus, the battle is sure to be resumed at the next legislative session.

In anticipation of this upcoming next round, the Center for Civic Policy (CCP) and the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) collaborated in sending out post-session mailers designed to educate those members of the public who reside in legislative districts represented by lawmakers who had opposed SB9. The mailers were a follow-up to pre-session mailers addressing the same issue.

One of those legislators was Senator Phil Griego, a long-time opponent of combined reporting by out-of-state corporations — and Chairman of the critical Corporations and Transportation Committee.

Now, according to a recent story in the Albuquerque Journal, Senator Griego has reservations about this educational program.

But if civic engagement is anything, it is about dialogue. And that’s what Clearly New Mexico’s Sarah Kennedy set out to do in this video. She called Senator Griego. Here’s what happened:

Sarah will be keeping us posted as this dialogue develops.

A postscript to this story:

It bears repeating. An essential component of the missions of the two organizations, CCP and SWOP, has been to educate and engage the public — and still further, to encourage this informed citizenry to engage in an accountability dialogue with their elected officials on those issues that impact their communities.

To learn more about the civic engagement by nonprofit organizations, here’s a useful commentary on Haussamen’s blog that you’ll surely want to read.

Also we recommend this excellent NMTelegram.com post on the Governor’s veto and the reaction of New Mexico’s small business community to it.

And to revisit the ClearlyNewMexico.com’s reporting on the long, difficult journey of combined reporting and tax justice going back to 2011, here are some handy links: here here here an here.