Every officer, board, body or agency or any member thereof, empowered to expend any public money or to direct the expenditure thereof, or to contract indebtedness against or in view of specific appropriations, is hereby prohibted [prohibited] from making any contract, incurring any expense, or contracting any liability against this state, or any public fund thereof, which shall make, tend to make or contemplate any excess of expenditure beyond the terms of the laws authorizing expenditures by them, or either of them, or under their direction; and it shall be unlawful for any trustee, superintendent, warden or other officer of any of the educational, penal, charitable or other institutions of this state, who, under the laws, has authority or may be vested with authority to purchase supplies, employ servants or assistants, contract indebtedness, or to do any act contemplating the expenditure of public moneys, to contract any indebtedness in behalf of such institutions or ostensibly against the state on account of such institutions in excess of the appropriations made for the maintenance and support thereof; but in respect to the penitentiary, the asylum for the insane, the reform school, the institute for the blind, the miners' hospital and the deaf and dumb asylum, if the specific appropriations therefor shall have become exhausted, food and clothing for the inmates thereof may be purchased on the credit of the state.

History: Laws 1912, ch. 69, § 1; Code 1915, § 5158; C.S. 1929, § 130-1308; 1941 Comp., § 5-109; 1953 Comp., § 13-3-9.

Bracketed material. — The bracketed material was inserted by the compiler and is not part of the law.

Generally. — Officers of educational institutions may incur indebtedness if not in excess of the appropriations made. 1915 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 15-1441.

State school may borrow money so long as it keeps its indebtedness within the appropriations. 1916 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 16-1811.

Borrowing money to provide student quarters. — Regents of university of New Mexico may borrow money, within the limits of the appropriation, to provide quarters for additional students. 1913 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 13-1101.

Reform school is not authorized to borrow money. 1913 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 13-974.

Authority to lease and purchase property. — The board of regents of the normal university (New Mexico highlands university) has authority to lease and purchase property for school purposes, if kept within the appropriation provided by the legislature. 1919 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 19-2213.

Authority choose personnel for more than year. — Board of regents of the school of mines may elect or appoint a president and instructors for longer terms than one year. 1916 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 16-1761.

Miners' hospital trustees have no authority to spend in excess what appropriated. — Except to the extent indicated in this section, the miners' hospital board of trustees has no authority to spend amounts in excess of what is properly appropriated for the miners' hospital. Nothing in the statute, however, prevents the board from seeking deficit supplement legislation to cover shortfalls, nor is the board denied the recourse of resorting to private, nonstate funds. 1989 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 89-30.