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© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  3/2/26

State’s legislative schedule and structure are locked in the past 

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     In my time covering the Legislature, I watched thoughtful deliberations for the first few weeks of a session. After that the pace picked up, the days grew longer, and hearings stretched into the wee hours and filled weekends. In the final week, hoarse, exhausted legislators were still trying to move legislation, but many a good bill – maybe one you cared about – died because the clock ran out.

     This is no way to run a railroad, I thought year after year.

     New Mexico’s Legislature is locked in an outdated schedule and structure. Sessions are 60 days in odd-numbered years and 30 days in even-numbered years. Short sessions are devoted to the budget and whatever governors choose to add. It takes reforms and solutions years to lumber through such a system. And our “citizen legislators” are unpaid except for a per diem of $202 a day.

     I believe it’s one reason New Mexico remains poor.

     It’s been this way since 1964, when the length was changed from 60 days every other year to the current system. Meanwhile, other states extended their sessions and paid their legislators. By 2023 New Mexico had the nation’s only unpaid legislature.

     In a stab at modernizing, lawmakers this year passed a bill to pay themselves, but they failed again to lengthen sessions. Both steps are necessary.

     House Joint Resolution (HJR) 5 allows voters to decide in November whether to approve a salary of $64,140 beginning in 2029. The amount is the median income in New Mexico in 2024. That’s not an average but a midpoint between lowest and highest. The cost would be about $7.6 million a year.

New Mexico’s payment would be on the high side. The average salary for state legislators in 2025 was $47,904 a year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

     Rep. Cristina Parajón, D-Albuquerque, and other young, female sponsors talked about how difficult it was to balance jobs, family, student loans and legislative duties. Republicans and a few Democrats opposed HJR 5 in both chambers. Some feared that candidates would run for the paycheck and not to serve the public, while others just didn’t think it was a good use of taxpayer dollars.

     HJR 5 is based on Alabama’s system. Nobody would say Alabama is governed by free-spending liberals, but that state pays its legislators $62,212 a year for a session that’s three and a half months long – more than twice the length of ours. Arizona sessions are six months, Colorado’s are four, and Texas meets four and a-half months, according to NCSL.

     While the salary would help out current legislators, the question we should be asking is: How do we get better decision making? The answer is more time to hear and study bills.

     But that half of the reform failed again. In HJR 6 Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo, made his fourth try to get yearly sessions of 45 days. (Attempts by others to get yearly 60-day sessions have also failed.) McQueen also wanted legislators to be able to introduce their bills without governors setting limits on short sessions. An analysis by New Mexico In Depth showed that nearly half of this year’s bills didn’t make the cut.

     “If I don’t get a bill passed in a 60-day session, I’m effectively done for two years, because I can’t automatically run it in a 30-day session unless I get permission from the governor,” McQueen told KUNM radio last year. “I’m in my 11th year in the Legislature. I’ve worked under two governors from different parties, and I’ve never received (permission) from a governor.”

     Forty-five days is still way too short, but even this small change met defeat. The bill sailed through the House and died in the Senate, which is exactly what happened to his measure last year. 

     Republicans understand that our short calendars are bad for them. In 2021 Rep. Rod Montoya, R-Farmington, carried a bill like HJR 6, and he was a co-sponsor this year with McQueen.

     What we’re talking about here is a more professional legislature that spends significantly more time in session. If our citizen legislators are honest, many would admit that they have merged the sessions with their personal and work lives and really don’t want to spend more time in Santa Fe on the people’s business.

     McQueen has said New Mexico isn’t doing as well as it should because issues facing the Legislature are really complicated, and “you’re not going to solve these complicated issues in 60 days.”

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  2/23/26

Medical malpractice bill exposed willful ignorance and conflicts of interest 

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     Sen. Joe Cervantes was litigating House Bill 99, the medical malpractice reform bill, on the Senate floor, and he had plenty to say.

     Two days earlier, Cervantes, a trial lawyer and Las Cruces Democrat, had defanged HB 99 with amendments in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs. Now, in a floor fight, he was grilling Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte, who was trying to strip the Cervantes amendments and restore HB 99 to its original language. Cervantes droned on about legal points in what Brantley, who is not a lawyer, characterized as “a back-and-forth, condescending debate.” 

     Cervantes said, “I don’t mean to embarrass you.” 

     Brantley responded: “You can’t embarrass me. I represent seven rural counties that don’t have good access to healthcare.”

     HB 99, by Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, attempts to right a wrong by reforming a medical malpractice law passed in 2021 that has spiked doctors’ insurance premiums, multiplied malpractice lawsuits, amped up awards and settlements, and driven doctors from the state. With no limit on punitive damages, New Mexico has enriched trial lawyers as it threatens doctors with financial ruin. 

     Brantley’s amendment prevailed 25 to 17 with all the Republicans and a handful of Democrats voting in favor. The bill itself passed 40 to 2, and the governor has promised to sign.

     It’s a victory for doctors and patients, but it came perilously close to failing. Democrats who opposed the bill tried repeatedly to ambush it. The most strident were Cervantes and his fellow trial lawyers Sen. Katy Duhigg, D-Albuquerque, and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth of Santa Fe.

HB 99 not only exposed a lot of willful ignorance right up to the final vote, it spotlighted conflicts of interest. 

     Throughout the process, journalists have pointed out that Cervantes, Duhigg and Wirth make money suing doctors, but legislators were curiously silent on this conflict of interest. 

     Recently, Ed Williams of Searchlight New Mexico reported that Wirth had introduced House Bill 35 to fund an additional judge in the First Judicial District, where wrongful death and medical malpractice cases have proliferated in the last five years, according to a bill analysis. Many of the cases originate outside Santa Fe, but lawyers are venue shopping for a court more likely to award big judgements. Lawyers can receive up to 40% of a verdict or settlement.

     Wirth has been working with Cervantes to bring wrongful death cases in Santa Fe, Williams wrote. “In other words, the senator who introduced a measure to help clear more cases through the First Judicial District is himself contributing to the extra lawsuits making that bill necessary.”

     On the Senate floor, Wirth said it was “preposterous” that he could benefit from the bill. He represents estates and is paid hourly regardless of outcome – unless the malpractice bill discourages the number of cases. 

     After that story ran in The Santa Fe New Mexican, readers were outraged.

     Ouida MacGregor, a former Santa Fe city councilor, berated Wirth, Cervantes and Duhigg for mixing business and legislation and for killing malpractice reform last year. “In my opinion, Wirth and Cervantes have tarnished the legislative process, the legal profession and bamboozled the voters who believed they were honorable. Both men should resign.”

     Columnist Milan Simonich wrote: “Both senators should have excused themselves from every debate and all votes on a bill to cap punitive damages that juries can award in malpractice cases… Between the two of them, leadership was nowhere to be found.”

     He called for their resignations and said the Senate should choose new leaders.

     Wirth’s courthouse bill died, but the controversy prompted the New Mexico Ethics Commission to opine that there is no legal basis to keep attorneys from voting on bills that affect their law practice. It’s up to the Senate and House to come up with rules. 

     According to Senate rules, “The members shall not use their offices for private gain and shall at all times maintain the integrity and discharge ethically the high responsibilities of their legislative positions. Full disclosure of real or potential conflicts of interest shall be a guiding principle for determining appropriate conduct of the members.”

     In other words, senators decide for themselves if they have a conflict of interest. Do you trust these guardians of the chicken coop?  

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  2/16/26

One-sided Clear Horizons Act failed in Senate

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     The Clear Horizons Act was another of those bills we’ve seen so often in New Mexico that balances the environment against the economy. In a floor vote, the Senate chose the economy.

     Senate Bill 18 was a marquis bills that got a lot of attention before and during the session. Senate President Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, revamped the bill she carried last year. It would help reduce natural disasters driven by climate change if legislators could cement greenhouse gas reductions in state law, supporters believed. 

     I’m not a climate-change denier, but I do pay attention when chambers of commerce, agriculture, dairy, utilities, tribes, construction, restaurants, mining, and oil and gas line up shoulder to shoulder in staunch opposition.

     This year’s version would have made the governor’s 2019 executive order a law that mandated reducing greenhouse gas emissions 45% by 2030, 75% by 2040 and 100% by 2050. (The executive order remains in place, but when the governor’s term ends this year, a new governor could rescind the order.) And it would have set new methane emission limits for the oil and gas industry.      Stewart tried to sweeten the bill by targeting the largest emitters and by allowing carbon offset programs for smaller oil and gas companies or those operating on tribal lands. The business sector wasn’t mollified.

     Proponents and opponents spent heavily on advertising, not that you could learn much. Most of the ads predicted the sky would fall but didn’t explain what, exactly, the bill would do. After some searching I could see an outline of the arguments.

     It begins with very big numbers. Keep in mind that New Mexico ranks second in oil production, behind Texas, and that the oil and gas industry generates about 35% of the state’s general fund revenue. In broad brushstrokes, the governor, Stewart and environmentalists figured that costs of the Clear Horizon Act would peel off a fraction of revenues, like sipping from a firehose. Stewart argued that we don’t have to choose between economic development and clean air. Industry countered that even a small percentage would be a big dent.

     A similar law enacted in Colorado reduced production by 2%. That doesn’t sound like much, but in New Mexico a 2% reduction would diminish the state’s general fund by $53 million in 2030, according to calculations provided to the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association by the New Mexico Tax Research Institute. Also in 2030, it would ding the permanent fund by $183 million, and local governments would lose $48 million. The hits for 2050 are nearly $2 billion to the general fund, $1 billion to the permanent fund and $270 million for local governments.

     Such a law in California reduced production by 6%.

     That’s just the state revenue side. Representatives from agriculture, oil and gas, construction, rural electric utilities and conservation districts all testified that SB 18 would raise costs of energy, goods and services for consumers and lead to business failures .

     Mind you, opponents don’t oppose a transition to cleaner energy. “These investments are good and necessary, but the timeline and mandates in SB 18 are too aggressive for our customers,” said Matthew Stackpole, speaking for the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce. 

     Supporters of Project Jupiter, the data center going up in Santa Teresa, also complained about costs to consumers, along with the strong potential for litigation.

     Ultimately, Republicans and seven Democrats shot it down 23 to 19 on fears that it would strangle the state’s economy. Environmentalists are mad at the seven, but bills like these separate the moderates from the progressives.      It’s telling that one thumbs down came from Senate Finance Committee Chairman George Muñoz, of Gallup, a businessman who has a better understanding of the state’s revenues than most people in the Roundhouse. Others were: Bobby Gonzales of Taos; Shannon Pinto of Tohatchi, Benny Shendo of Jemez Pueblo, Joe Cervantes of Las Cruces, and Martin Hickey and Moe Maestas, both of Albuquerque.

     Republican Gabriel Ramos, of Silver City, said: “I do believe we do need clean air (and) we need clean water. I mean, it’s something that we all want, but I think we’re not at a point to be so drastic.” 

     Sponsors, no doubt, will be back with the bill next year, but between now and then they should have some serious conversations with business and industry. Clearly, that didn’t happen this year.   

© 2026 NEW MEXICO NEWS SERVICES  2/10/26

It’s been a long road to involuntary mental health treatment 

By Sherry Robinson

All She Wrote

     He was sprawled across the exit lane of a busy shopping center as I was trying to leave. I stopped my car and ran over to do something, but what? Two other good Samaritans joined me. We dragged him out of traffic and called 911. He told me he was having a seizure, but it seemed more likely that he was wasting away from years of substance abuse. The fire department arrived in minutes, and the senior officer greeted the man by name. 

     “We see this guy ALL the time,” the firefighter said.

     I knew the police have to contend repeatedly with the same folks and their mental demons and addictions, but until that moment I didn’t know fire departments were frustrated too. Which is why both testified in favor of a bill to expand involuntary mental health treatment.

     Senate Bill 3 changes two definitions used to decide if people can be ordered into mental health treatment against their will, a legal process called involuntary civil commitment. The goal is to treat and provide services to more people and clarify current laws, Sen. Moe Maestas, D-Albuquerque, explained on Feb. 4 to the House Judiciary Committee. “It’s a wonderful first step in assisting practitioners and courts in getting people treatment.”

     For years mentally ill people have been in and out of courts, jails and hospitals. Current law requires them to actively commit to getting well and getting sober, but they may be incapable of taking that step, so nothing happens and they continue downhill until they’re in imminent danger. SB 3 allows earlier intervention.

     SB 3 asks the court to look at behavior in the recent past. Does the person have the “decisional capacity” to care for themselves – to make decisions about food, medical treatment, shelter and safety? Has the person recently tried to hurt someone or themselves and are they likely to do it again? The bill would allow doctors, law enforcement and family members to petition the courts earlier for assisted outpatient treatment. It would not expand confinement or reduce due process.

     The governor has been trying to get a law like this on the books for a couple of years, and SB 3 is one her priority bills. 

     In her final State of the State speech in January, the governor said: “Earlier this year, my office got a letter from Elizabeth, whose 42-year-old son is struggling with addiction and mental illness. She worries every day that he could critically injure himself or someone else. He’s living on the streets, sometimes beaten and bruised, and in and out of jail. She fears any day could be his last. And just as heartbreaking he could hurt somebody else.”

     She said she’d heard such stories too often. “It’s the result of a system that confuses compassion with neglect. When someone is a danger to themselves or others because of mental illness, addiction — or far too often both — we need the legal tools to keep communities safe and get New Mexicans the help they need… We must take action, instead of just watching and waiting for tragedy to strike.”

     Last year Maestas carried a similar bill that passed the Senate but died in the House on objections from disability and civil rights advocates who see potential for abuse in involuntary treatment.

     To their credit, lawmakers in 2025 passed and the governor signed bipartisan bills to improve behavioral health services in the state and reform criminal competency laws. And they made serious investments in the behavioral healthcare system by creating a behavioral health trust fund to provide long-term financing.

     With those building blocks, the bipartisan SB 3 through the process, passing two committees unanimously, the Senate by 37 to 3 and the House by 58 to 10. It’s headed for the governor’s desk.

     Cops like the bill, saying it gives them better, clearer choices. One officer said he had arrested one woman more than 200 times, and all he could do was take her to jail. Another said it would “remove uncertainty for officers in the field.” 

     A firefighter testified, “Our only choice is to take them to the hospital, but that floods the healthcare system, and then they’re back on the street. This allows first responders to remain first responders.”

     Disability advocates and the ACLU still don’t like the idea of involuntary treatment. Given our recent abuses of guardianships, they’re not wrong. Maestas believes SB 3 has protections built in.

     The revamped bill still leaves out a man I’ve seen for months now at a nearby intersection. He paces in his stocking feet, talking to the voices in his head. He may not be dangerous, but I know how this ends. I would ask the advocates, is it his right to die on the street?