Advocates on Wednesday marked Disability Rights Awareness Day in the Roundhouse rotunda and championed House Bill 38, which they say would make New Mexico the first state in the nation to require insurers to pay for wheelchairs that can be used for recreation and exercise. The bill builds on landmark 2023 legislation that required health insurers in New Mexico to pay for exercise-related orthotics and prosthetics for people who are missing limbs.
Albuquerque resident Kyle Stepp, national representative for disability rights group So Every BODY Can Move, and a Team USA paratriathlete, said he was denied a prosthetic after a mountain bike accident led to a below-knee amputation. Without insurance, these expensive devices are often cost-prohibitive, he said.
“We should have access to the resources, the education, the health care to ensure we have equal opportunities,” Stepp said. “But the reality is, we still have a broken system that does not recognize the needs of people with disabilities.”
TIME magazine honors New Mexico governor
TIME magazine on Wednesday named Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham one of the year’s top 100 leaders in health for her work to build a universal child care system in New Mexico. The list honors leaders who “are advancing care, shaping policy, and driving innovations that transform lives.”
“Our state is the first to offer free, universal child care — strengthening families, improving child development and growing our workforce,” Lujan Grisham wrote on social media. “I’m confident universal child care is changing lives, and it will forever change our educational outcomes.”
Separate proposals from the House and the Senate have identified different funding sources for Lujan Grisham’s legislative priority. Members of the House have proposed child care co-pays for New Mexican families that make 400% of the federal poverty level. A Senate bill would take $1 billion from the roughly $11 billion early childhood trust fund to pay for the program over the next five years and would require co-pays only under certain economic declines.
Republicans walk out on election-related ‘dummy’ bill
Republican members of the Senate Rules Committee abruptly walked out of a committee meeting Wednesday morning in an apparent effort to deprive the legislative body of the minimum number of members it needed — known as a quorum — to vote on a controversial election bill.
Senate Bill 261 would amend legislation the Legislature passed after much debate two years ago that banned firearms at polling places.
The 2024 bill had an exception for law enforcement, which SB261, sponsored by Sen. Joe Cervantes (D-Las Cruces), would remove.
Cervantes said the exemption made sense in years past but now “we’re in a very different world, where law enforcement carrying firearms is a very different context and used for very different purposes.”
Three Republicans — Sens. Crystal Brantley of Elephant Butte, James Townsend of Artesia and Jay Block of Rio Rancho — sat through Cervantes’ introduction and public comment period on the bill, but then they walked out of the committee room without explanation.
Their departure left the committee with only five members — one less than the simple majority required for a quorum. The remaining Democrats waited for about 10 minutes until another Democratic committee member arrived and provided enough lawmakers.
The six Democrats then passed the bill unanimously.
The two bills in the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday — Senate Bills 261 and 264 — both relate to election security. Senate Bill 264 is a 17-page bill that contains multiple new sections to the state election code, including ones that aim to prevent federal interference in local elections.
Sen. Katy Duhigg (D-Albuquerque) said the measures are necessary due to the threat of President Donald Trump targeting New Mexico elections, which he recently falsely derided as “corrupt.”
They are also both being considered through a legislative process often referred to as “dummy” bills — legislation lawmakers introduce with boilerplate language before the required filing deadline and then substitute with new bill text as needed.
The late arrival of the bills, along with their subject matter, made some Republican critics on the committee accuse Democrats of rushing them through.
Both bills now head to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Cervantes chairs.
Proposed amendment to NM Civil Rights Act
The Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee was scheduled to discuss a bill Wednesday that would change claims under the fairly young New Mexico Civil Rights Act.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed the state Civil Rights Act into law in 2021, which made New Mexico one of the few states in the nation to effectively abolish qualified immunity in many cases.
Jacob Johns, a Hopi and Akimel O’odham man who was shot at a 2023 Española protest against the proposed installation of a Juan de Oñate statue, filed a high-profile lawsuit under the law last summer. In it, he accused local government officials of violating his civil rights by failing to prevent the shooting despite allegedly knowing there was a threat of violence that day.
Similarly, Alec Baldwin invoked the law in his lawsuit against the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office for its role in prosecuting the “Rust” case.
Senate Bill 146 would make an exception for the prohibition on government employees using qualified immunity as a defense. They cannot claim qualified immunity, the proposed bill says, “unless the public body had an objectively good faith belief that the conduct at issue did not violate the law.”
As of publication, the hearing had not yet started.
NM sees health care enrollment growth
Health care enrollment is growing in New Mexico, the state Health Care Authority announced Tuesday.
While nationwide health care enrollment has recently dropped, New Mexico leaders attribute the local increase to the state’s Health Care Affordability Fund, which helps to lower premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for people enrolled through New Mexico’s health care marketplace.
House Bill 4 is before the Legislature and would direct more money to the fund. Currently, the fund is made up of a combination of taxes on health care premiums and money from the state general fund. If passed, HB4 would eventually direct 100% of revenue from those health care premium taxes to the fund.
“This legislation ensures New Mexico families don’t lose health care coverage because of decisions made far outside our state,” House Majority Floor Leader Rep. Reena Szczepanski (D-Santa Fe) said in a statement.
Looking ahead
House and Senate committees plan to hear a number of bills Thursday as the final full week of the 30-day legislative session winds to a close.
The House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee is scheduled to discuss Senate Bill 38, which would keep in place a funding stream for affordable spay and neuter programs. The House Labor, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee will also hear House Bill 132, which would include post-traumatic stress disorder on a list of conditions that worker’s compensation will cover, under certain circumstances, for police officers.
And the Senate Conservation Committee is scheduled to discuss Senate Bill 310, which would direct $1.1 million from the state general fund to improving Mora County’s water system.
