Reporter says legislative session was productive, cooperative

For the most part, Democrats and Republicans got along and had a productive 2021 legislative session, said long-time New Mexico reporter and editor Walt Rubel of Las Cruces.

Minority Republicans didn’t get steamrollered by majority Democrats in either the New Mexico Senate or House of Representatives, as some had expected, said Rubel, who covered the 2021 session for a media consortium that included the Las Cruces Bulletin. Rubel has covered about a dozen legislative sessions since 2004.

And, despite technical problems and pandemic-generated restrictions, he said, legislators were able to conduct committee and floor sessions virtually.

Collectively, nearly 200 bills, memorials and resolutions were passed during the session.

An all-virtual session “certainly isn’t conducive to free-flowing ideas,” Rubel said, remembering a House committee meeting where one member participated from in a McDonald’s parking lot, with his camera pointing at the dashboard of the vehicle he was sitting in.

But virtual sessions did allow state cabinet department secretaries and others to participate in more than one committee hearing at a time.

“In the old days, they put their tennis shoes on,” Rubel said.

And, while a virtual session let residents participate in committee hearings without having to travel to Santa Fe, the impact of their virtual comments “was not nearly as great as it was in a past committee room where people were reacting to what they say,” Rubel said.

A lot of the work legislators have conducted in the hallways or vacant rooms of the capitol in the past probably took place by phone this year, Rubel said, although some legislators were in the Roundhouse. In general, “it just seemed liked the interactions … the debates were a lot more difficult,” he said.

 That was especially true in the House, Rubel said, which placed restrictions on how many of its 70 members could be on the floor at any given same time. That meant some House members participated in the session entirely by Zoom. House members also were limited to introducing no more than five bills each.

The 42-member Senate didn’t have the same restrictions, Rubel said. It required members to wear facemasks and use plexiglass dividers, but it conducted regular floor sessions.

“Every committee did it differently. There just is no way to do it well,” Rubel said, adding that the differences between the two chambers were “magnified because of the pandemic.”

Rubel’s thoughts on issues that came before the 2021 legislature include the following:

• Budget: “The budget right now is in much better shape than they anticipated,” Rubel said. Legislators were “anticipating a huge hit to oil and gas revenue [but] “that didn’t really happen. Right now, production is pretty good, and prices are pretty good. Legislators are worried about the freeze on oil drilling on federal lands and have a lot of concern for the future.”

Rubel said gross-receipts taxes also came in stronger than expected, in part because of taxes imposed by the legislature on Internet sales. The state also was helped by the influx of federal money to offset losses due to the pandemic.

• Education: Perhaps the biggest change to come as a result of the 2021 session is the joint resolution passed by legislators that will, if approved by voters in the November 2022 election, increase the contribution to the state’s early childhood education trust fund from the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund by 1.25 percent, equal to about $211.5 million in FY23. The change also requires congressional approval.
• Liquor license reform: “This was a fascinating bill to watch,” Rubel said, as legislators dealt with the state’s “antiquated quota system” for liquor licenses. The bill allows communities to set up local-option districts to allow restaurants to sell beer, wine and mixed drinks. It bans the sale of mini-bottles of liquor, allows Sunday liquor sales and provides hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax credits for existing liquor-license holders. Those license holders told legislators the changes in state law will devalue their licenses, which many have used for collateral for business loans, Rubel said, and banks could call the loans.
• Most contentious: Rubel said a bill repealing an invalid law still on the books outlawing abortion and one mandating paid sick leave were probably the most contentious bills passed during the session, with both passing on party-line votes.

Republicans tried to get a bill passed to give the legislature a role in public health orders, but it wasn’t voted on by either chamber. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham “let it be known she would veto the bill,” Rubel said, and “Democrats respected that. The one bill where she really flexed her muscle, she got what she wanted.”

• Bipartisanship: During the session in general, Rubel said, “I did feel like Republicans were making meaningful contributions during the committee process and were being listened to. Their amendments were being seriously considered.”

One example, he said, was a bill passed late in the session to create a redistricting commission to come up with a plan to redraw congressional, legislative and state Public Education Commission district lines based on the 2020 Census.

Rubel said state Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Grant/Hidalgo/Sierra, played a major role in getting the bill passed.

Dow “was able to work out a compromise on that bill that just seemed to lift the tension and kind of paved the way for other things to get passed,” he said.

• Didn’t pass: The House passed a bill to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but it died on the Senate calendar. It was to be considered in a March 30 special session called by the governor. Also failing was a bill that would have set a new annual percentage rate for small loans. It passed both the House and Senate by significant margins but died in the final days of the session because of a lack of concurrence between the two chambers on a final version.