As officials across New Mexico work to repair the state’s behavioral health infrastructure, some confusion and conflicts have emerged in the new regional structure.
In 2025, state lawmakers passed the Behavioral Health Reform and Investment Act and established 13 regions, which closely mirror the state’s 13 judicial districts, across New Mexico where leaders are crafting plans to rebuild behavioral healthcare in their communities. The legislation aimed at repairing the system after former Republican Gov. Susana Martinez accused several behavioral healthcare providers of fraud and froze their Medicaid payments, leading to an exodus of providers.
Many of those plans are expected to be filed with an executive committee — comprised of state Health Care Authority and Administrative Office of the Courts officials — at the end of the month, though at least three regions have requested deadline extensions, according to documents presented before the state Legislature’s interim committees this month.
Ross Coleman, Otero County’s director of strategic planning and resilience, is one of several leaders overseeing the plan for region 12, which includes Otero and Lincoln counties as well as the Mescalero Apache Tribe. The region recently received a 60-day deadline extension while Coleman works to get leaders in his region’s county and tribal governments to weigh in on and approve the regional plan.
Speaking before lawmakers on the interim Indian Affairs Committee in Mescalero on Wednesday, Coleman said that the plan, if approved, would deliver $6 million to build a new behavioral health facility in the area. He’s not sure, though, if that would fully cover the cost of construction.
At an interim Legislative Finance Committee hearing last week, officials noted that “varying politics at the local level” was becoming an issue as leaders in each of the state’s 13 regions worked to finalize their proposals. That was on full display at Wednesday’s Indian Affairs Committee hearing.
Lawmakers asked Coleman if his efforts to build a treatment facility were redundant with others in the area. They cited the Four Directions addiction recovery and treatment facility in Mescalero and asked why local officials wanted to build their own facility instead of bolstering that one.
“I applaud the Legislature for being willing to put some money in the game…but I still think it’s in the details that we really have to be careful,” Sen. Rex Wilson (R-Ancho) said during Wednesday’s hearing. “We’re not solving the problem — we’re trying to build a building and hope that that’s a solution.”
Coleman told lawmakers Wednesday that he has often received “nebulous” goals when putting the region’s plan together. He cited one Otero County commissioner who told him to pursue building a behavioral health facility with 50 beds, although Coleman said he thought 15 or 20 beds would be a more practical figure for the rural area.
Rep. Martin Zamora (R-Clovis) said he wished the Legislature would have been more intentional about funding the behavioral health system in years past.
A recent Legislative Finance Committee report found that New Mexicans still struggle to access behavioral healthcare, despite the state spending nearly $844 million on it in recent years.
“Why didn’t we support the existing infrastructure?” Zamora asked. “I just look at the whole system and I think, ‘What are we doing here?’”
While Republican lawmakers criticized Region 12’s proposal to build a new behavioral healthcare facility, one lawmaker stressed that nothing was set in stone and that the point of the 2025 legislation was to give local officials in each region autonomy rather than to be proscriptive.
“Right now, what is happening is the planning. There is no mandate for new buildings. There is no mandate for this or that,” Rep. Elizabeth “Liz” Thomson (D-Albuquerque) said. “What works for Albuquerque is not going to work in Alamogordo, per se.”
