Walt Rubel: Paid lawmakers should be held to a higher standard

The battle earlier this year to successfully wrangle a bill capping awards on malpractice lawsuits through a Senate Judiciary Committee led by a malpractice attorney highlighted the state Legislature's many conflicts of interest.

An advisory opinion by the State Ethics Commission tells us there is nothing in the Government Conduct Act to prevent votes taken by legislators who clearly have a personal financial stake in the outcome. 

It’s just one of many ways in which our Legislature is objectively worse by design than those in other states. Our alternating 30-day and 60-day sessions don’t allow nearly enough time for thoughtful debate and deliberation. Our standards are lower, our expectations are less, and yet our needs are immense.

Voters have the opportunity this year to take a huge first step toward modernizing the legislative process by approving Constitutional Amendment 4, which will pay legislators a salary. We are the only state that doesn’t pay its lawmakers. That has led to a system where only the wealthy and well-connected can afford to run for office; and the same tired, old incumbents keep going back year after year.

Passage of Amendment 4 would make a big difference, but we shouldn’t stop there. The public policy group Think New Mexico has proposed a series of ethics reforms that would significantly improve our quality of government.

They include: a constitutional amendment that would let voters decide if legislators should be required to recuse themselves from voting on legislation where they have a clear financial conflict of interest; extending the waiting period for executive branch employees to become paid lobbyists; requiring lobbyists to disclose which lawmakers are benefitting from an expenditure, who is paying for it and which issues or bills are being lobbied for; and requiring the disclosure of the true sources of money spent on political ads, modeled on Arizona’s Voter’s Right to Know Act.

For those who haven't spent much time at the Legislature, it’s difficult to appreciate what an oversized role lobbyists play in New Mexico. It is impossible for even the most dedicated legislator to be knowledgeable about every piece of legislation they will be asked to vote on. Until last year, they didn’t even have a staffer to help. All of them rely on lobbyists to better understand the issues. 

And, just because the legislators aren’t being paid, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of folks making bank every time a new session is gaveled to order. You can tell by looking at the suits.

While I commend Think New Mexico and fully support its proposal, I should also note that nothing they are suggesting is new. The issue has never been identifying the problem; it's the fact that those in power benefit from the problem.

As an example, legislation that would have required lobbyists’ spending information to be included on the home page for every bill, making it much easier for residents to see who is lobbying for and against the bill and how much they are spending, was vetoed by Gov. Michellle Lujan Grisham.

That information is publicly available, but you have to go digging for it on the Secretary of State’s website. The governor has a personal interest in making the information more difficult to find.

The reforms proposed by Think New Mexico will be opposed by those in power who benefit from the status quo. As the malpractice reform bill demonstrated, voters do get the final word, but only if they demand it.


Walter Rubel can be reached at [email protected]

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