As her final regular legislative session officially concluded, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham gathered with Democratic House and Senate leaders Thursday afternoon for a news conference in which she praised leaders from both political parties for heeding her call of bipartisanship and passing high-priority legislation like medical malpractice reform and universal child care.
“We kid about how the last session for any governor, any body of legislators is zero fun,” Lujan Grisham said. “There is just a lot of tension, there’s no appetite for big, new initiatives. And this session was not like that at all, and it has nothing to do with me.”
On the opening day of the session in January, Lujan Grisham issued a sizable roster of legislative priorities, including measures focused on juvenile justice and public safety, health care and affordability, and universal child care. By the time both chambers of the Legislature adjourned Thursday at noon, a number did not survive, which she also acknowledged.
A bill that would regulate gun dealers and ban the sale of certain firearms stalled in its final committee. Another bill to address juvenile gun crime never made it to the floor of either chamber. Neither did several interstate compacts for licensed professionals.
Nonetheless, the governor said she does not believe the stalled measures should detract from the successes of placing caps on punitive damages in medical malpractice cases for the first time and of becoming the first state in the nation to give every family access to free child care.
“We’re going to keep working on all those issues,” she said, adding that she was proud of the work lawmakers did to get priorities like medical malpractice reform and child care to her desk while also balancing the state’s $11 billion budget. “I get to say I’m the first governor of the first state in the nation to truly deliver for children and families.”
That accomplishment didn’t happen in a vacuum, she said. She credited Lt. Gov. Howie Morales with calling for universal child care in 2018 when she was first elected governor. She credited extractive industries like oil and gas for providing the revenue needed to fund such programs. And she credited lawmakers for proposals to put that state revenue in trust funds, which have since grown to have billion-dollar balances, to make sure the programs are sustainable.
“This is not the state of generational poverty and risk,” Lujan Grisham said. “We have some things we still have to do. But this is, in fact, a place where the rest of the country sees opportunity and the only work we have yet to do, really, is to get New Mexicans to embrace that this is the place of opportunity.”
House Democrats said this session serves as living proof that they’ve embraced that notion during a news conference on the House floor following the session’s conclusion. Speaker Rep. Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) highlighted the signing of House Bill 9, which bans local governments from entering into immigration detention contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Senate Bill 40, which restricts local and state police from sharing automatic license plate readers data for immigration enforcement.
“Representation matters,” Martínez said. “When you start electing immigrants to these seats, things are going to get done.”
The Legislature also passed House Bill 124, establishing a division to address immigrant labor in the state’s workforce solutions department. Lawmakers allocated $3.25 million to provide economic support for immigrants and low-wage workers while in development programs.
“This victory belongs to immigrant workers across New Mexico who have organized for years to be seen not as temporary, but as part of this state’s future,” said Marcela Díaz, the executive director of Somos Acción, in a statement Thursday. “Combined with the Immigrant Safety Act, the Driver Privacy and Safety Act and expanded workforce funding, this session is proof that when our communities organize and stand side by side we can create a safer, more stable New Mexico for all of us.”
House lawmakers also celebrated the signing of two interstate health care compacts which lower roadblocks for out-of-state physicians and social workers who want to move to and practice in New Mexico. They acknowledged that eight other interstate compacts failed to clear the Senate.
“It’s disappointing that the remaining compacts did not make it through the Senate,” Majority Floor Leader Rep. Reena Szczepanski (D-Santa Fe) said. “We have them in a place where the concerns that legislators had raised were addressed, and the concerns of the national compact boards were addressed.”
Szczepanski said the House would pursue compacts again in the 2027 session.
For Republican lawmakers, on the other hand, failure to advance certain pieces of legislation proved cause for celebration.
At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Republicans hailed the legislative session as a success if only because two provisions they adamantly opposed — Senate Bill 17, the “Stop Illegal Gun Trade and Extremely Dangerous Weapons Act,” and Senate Bill 18, the “Clear Horizons Act” — did not pass.
“It was a great year,” said Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer (R-Farmington) at the beginning of the news conference.
Republicans from both chambers also took credit for majority Democrats’ focus on health care legislation this session, and noted they have advocated for reforms to the state’s medical malpractice law for years.
“Republicans have been touting for five years that the medical malpractice was broken,” said House Minority Leader Rep. Gail Armstrong (R-Magdalena). “And I want to make sure that everyone knows who broke it: The Democrats broke medical malpractice.”
Most Democrats this year voted in favor of House Bill 99 this session. The medical malpractice overhaul is designed to bring down provider premiums and attract more doctors to the state.
Minority party leaders continued to lament the potential ramifications of the Immigrant Safety Act, which prohibits public entities from contracting with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to detain immigrants at local jails. They said facilities will close and eliminate hundreds of jobs.
“That means economies are going to shrivel up and die,” said Rep. John Block (R-Alamogordo), whose district is near the Otero Processing Center in Chaparral.
However, both chambers of the Legislature approved a bipartisan proposal to funnel more than $11 million to counties that are impacted by the law.
Unlike the end of the 2025 session, Republicans said they are not urging Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to call a special session regarding what they said is unfinished business on criminal justice legislation and particularly juvenile crime.
“I’m not sure we have an appetite for another special session with the governor,” Sharer said. “But we would welcome it if there was really an effort to do real crime reform.”
Lujan Grisham has expressed frustration over the course of the session when public safety and crime bills stalled. As recently as Wednesday, she told Source NM that she doesn’t “believe in calling legislators together to disagree.” On Thursday, though, she said that “none of us know” what the future holds during her final 10 months in office.
“I don’t have to twist their arms, any of them, to do special sessions that protect and lift up New Mexico,” she said Thursday afternoon. “We’ll have to wait and see what the 10 months hold, but the work that we needed to get done, in large part, happened here.”
