Walt Rubel Commentary: Sluggish Legislature no match for feds

As of Sunday, there had been 711 bills, memorials and resolutions introduced during the 60-day session of the New Mexico Legislature. State lawmakers will have until Feb. 20 to keep adding to that list. They will then have just 30 days to carefully consider, debate and amend those proposals.

None of the legislators will have the staff needed to even come close to accomplishing that task in a thorough and thoughtful manner. And so, that void will be filled by the hordes of well-paid lobbyists who descend on Santa Fe every January.

The Legislature has been fortunate to have several bright, innovative business leaders serve in the House and Senate. None of them would run their business the way we run our state. Except, of course, for the part about not paying the workers.

Our Legislature is the only one in the nation not to pay its lawmakers. I suppose some taxpayers think that’s a good deal. I have a tremendous amount of respect for unpaid volunteers who help fill in the cracks and perform essential services in our community. But they shouldn’t be writing our laws. And, they shouldn’t be responsible for a $33.1 billion state budget.

There is a smidgeon of progress. For the first time, every legislator will have one staff member this session to do something other than answer the phone and take messages.

Our Legislature operates under rules designed to accommodate the living conditions in 1912. There is still a rule requiring each piece of legislation to be read out loud, word for word, three times before a final vote can be taken. Instead of changing the rule, they ignore it.

Limiting the Legislature to 30-day sessions focused on the budget in even-numbered years and 60-day sessions in odd-numbered years may have been sufficient at a time when lawmakers left their farms and rode by horseback to Santa Fe each year to deal with a handful of issues. At a time when the federal government is moving at warp speed, it leaves the state pretty much defenseless to respond. 

When this session ends next month, there will be hundreds of bills that were introduced and then never got even one committee hearing. All of those decisions will have been made by a small group of leaders convening behind closed doors.

The mandate that each session ends at noon on the final day gives every member of the Legislature the opportunity to single-handedly gum up the works by extending the debate with a string of pointless questions on every bill. It’s a system that is designed to fail a lot more than it succeeds.

In theory, the lack of a strong Legislature would cede power to the governor. But, when Gov.Michelle Grisham attempted to address our growing crime problem through executive orders, she was shot down by the courts. And so, the problem keeps getting worse. We’ll see what, if anything, the governor and Legislature are able to agree to this year on the issue of public safety. But we already know it won’t be the result of a well-organized and coordinated effort.
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There are several pieces of legislation now under consideration to modernize and professionalize our Legislature. Our lawmakers need to work longer, harder and smarter. And, they need to be fairly compensated for it.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected]. 

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