With a wide array of bills moving through the Legislature – from legalizing recreational marijuana to banning new fracking licenses – one thing is increasingly clear: When the gavel falls on this session of the 55th Legislature, even though working under COVID-19 restrictions, our citizen lawmakers’ actions will have long-term consequences.
The class of 2021 has already made history, sending a repeal of a statute criminalizing abortion to the governor (she signed it Friday); introducing a bill that would allow counties to secede; and proposing taxpayers alone kick in hundreds of millions of more dollars into struggling public pensions.
Also among the highlights:
• With a fragile economy emerging from a year-long pandemic, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is on point saying this isn’t the right time to impose new restrictions and burdens on business. Lawmakers are nonetheless moving ahead with mandatory paid leave legislation and minimum wage increases.
The pandemic laid bare the need for sick leave, but with state officials estimating New Mexico will not return to pre-pandemic employment levels until late 2023, it is important to include commonsense metrics including a phase-in period for businesses of various sizes to adjust, breaks for our smallest enterprises, recognition of more generous existing benefit programs, a statewide preemption to avoid a patchwork of differing local ordinances, and a fair system to iron out disputes rather than Draconian penalties that assume every company is in the wrong. As the governor signs relief measures for business, it is important lawmakers remember New Mexico needs jobs for people to return to. Likewise, the Senate’s recent passage of a bill scrapping a lower minimum wage for high school students would ensure fewer are hired. “Training wages” encourage employers to take a chance on and hire inexperienced youth. The governor, who signed a bill in 2019 that created the “training wage” of $8.50 an hour, should veto any bill that makes it harder for our young people to find an entry into the workforce.
• Despite her threat of a veto, the governor’s emergency powers must be reined in to allow more than one person to decide if and when schools, businesses and houses of worship remain closed due to a public health threat. Several state lawmakers concede the Legislature made a big mistake in the wake of 9/11 when it passed the Public Health Emergency Response Act in 2003. The law gives the governor’s administration unchecked powers to impose public health orders.
This is not a commentary on Lujan Grisham’s handling of the pandemic; any governor needs the authority to act quickly and decisively at the onset of a public health crisis, but that unilateral authority should not last indefinitely. At least two bills and a proposed constitutional amendment would give lawmakers some say in future decision-making. It’s imperative they regain some of the emergency powers so they can actually represent the concerns of their constituents during a public health crisis.
• Crime and justice are on many New Mexicans’ minds, and it is important not to allow the desire to “do something” to overtake due diligence. House Bill 4, the purported “Civil Rights Act” is little more than a move by the defense bar to create a cottage industry of suing government (which victims can already do), and House Bill 227 endangers the public by removing many less-than-lethal tools like K-9s and tear gas from law enforcement, leaving them with two options when faced with an assailant: run or shoot.
• Medical-aid-in-dying legislation could be the most heart-wrenching legislation before lawmakers this session. Living through the prolonged death of a loved one with a terminal illness is a tough topic to talk about, even years later.
House Bill 47 would allow terminally ill patients to seek a doctor’s help to end their life. It contains critical safeguards, such as requiring that patients have the mental capacity to make the decision and the ability to self-administer the lethal medicine. The bill is in the Senate after passing the House by a wide margin. It’s time for New Mexico to join the nine states that give terminally ill patients a humane, medically supervised option.
• Lawmakers considering a major overhaul of the state’s liquor laws are doing so in an attempt to help the hospitality industry. But they’ve got to be careful not to devalue existing liquor licenses in the process of adding liquor delivery.
House Bill 255 would allow restaurants and liquor stores to deliver alcoholic drinks. It would also create a new license allowing restaurants to expand from serving beer and wine to hard liquor. Liquor-license holders, some of whom have literally poured their life savings into obtaining a license, rightfully worry their investments will go down the drain. With so much on the line, a long-overdue overhaul of the Liquor Control Act needs to be debated in a truly full and open legislative session, not limited to the comments of a few people with a few minutes on a spotty Zoom call.
• Senate Bill 32 will hopefully mark the end of the brutal, indiscriminate use of traps on public lands, though trapping by members of Indigenous nations and of mice, rats, pack rats, gophers, prairie dogs, moles, voles, rock squirrels, birds or fish would be exempt.
We’ve banned cockfighting, coyote-killing contests, horse tripping and made dog fighting a fourth-degree felony. Yet, for just a $20 permit, trappers are allowed to trap, snare and poison an unlimited number of animals. Banning trapping on public lands would add to our list of successful animal and wildlife legislation and make our great outdoors that much greater.
In the coming days, lawmakers will take up these and many other issues important to New Mexicans – everything from a $2-a-pack tax hike on cigarettes to new high school graduation requirements. The stakes are very high. In this second half of the session, it’s time to get a second wind and decide what’s really worth fighting for. And legislators would be wise to observe the Hippocratic Oath and first do no harm.
This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
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February 28, 2021 at 02:46PM
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Editorial: Lawmakers’ plates are filled with weighty issues; it’s time to be sure they do no harm - Albuquerque Journal
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