SANTA FE - The New Mexico House shifted the dollars-and-cents debate to the Senate on Monday when it passed the final piece of legislation in a package of state budget-related bills.

By a vote of 42 to 28, the House passed HB 628, a revenue bill needed to help balance a proposed $5.4 billion state budget approved by the House last week.

The legislation would require state workers and public school teachers to contribute more into their retirement systems - 3.25 percent more, to be exact. The savings to the state, if the measure passes, is estimated at around $100 million for the year that starts July 1. The amount the state must pay into the retirement systems would decrease by the same amount produced by the increased employee contributions.

With that legislation out of the House, the battles over the state budget proposal that have bottled up the chamber for weeks will now swirl around the Senate - with 12 days remaining in this year's legislative session.

One of the biggest questions is whether the Senate will tinker with a $45 million limit the House adopted last week to cap how much New Mexico can pay out to qualifying TV and film productions in a single year.

Some senators already have said they'll try to raise the limit, possibly to $60 million.

Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, and the chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, said he's open to different scenarios.

"The sky is not the limit in the state of New Mexico, or can't be," Smith

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said. "Quite frankly I've asked for input from the film industry, certain members I think are highly credible, and I'm waiting back from them to see what they can live with and what we can sell."

But Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, seemed ready to keep the $45 million limit.

"If you don't cap that thing at $45 million, that means you have huge losses, which means you have to cut somewhere else," Jennings said. "We've cut most of the fat out, so everything now we're getting into is salaries."

The $5.4 billion proposal the House approved last week cuts about $155 million, or 2.8 percent, from this year's spending. But in the House, lawmakers and Gov. Susana Martinez seemed to get stuck on where to find that last $25 million savings, which centered the debate on the film industry.

It's unclear whether that same battle will materialize in the Senate.

Jennings, for one, seemed more worried Monday about recommended budget cuts that will trim child-care funding to parents who make too much to qualify for government aid but not enough to pay for those services themselves.

"What do we do with child care?'' Jennings said. Also, most lawmakers believe in early childhood education, but "you can't save everything'' from cuts, Jennings said.

Nearly half of the state's proposed spending for the year that starts July 1 will go toward for public school operations, the Public Education Department and other programs such as pre-kindergarten, a reduction of nearly 1.4 percent from this year's funding. Meanwhile, the budget proposal recommends nearly $1 billion for Medicaid, the government's health insurance program for the poor. Medicaid provides health care to more than 500,000 low-income New Mexicans and children without health insurance, including for the developmentally disabled.

"We have to figure out what do you shave here, what do you add here?" Jennings said. "And then we just have to weigh it and shave it, weigh it and shave it, and then make sure we have 22 votes to pass it."

It takes 22 of 42 lawmakers to pass legislation in the Senate, where Democrats have a 27 to 15 advantage over Republicans.

Contact Trip Jennings at 986-3050 or at tjennings@sfnewmexican.com