States Rights New Mexico: Human Triumphs and Obstinate Disappointments

American voters have been getting powerful civics lessons lately in American political reality — many times about how local governments can pass laws that ruin lives and degrade environments. We see these tragedies in anti-abortion laws in Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri, and in anti-environment laws that routinely minimalize pollution prevention to attract new businesses in heavily polluted California, Texas and the least “green state” in the union, West Virginia.

But in New Mexico this year, the civics lesson has been far more positive than most of us expected. Our state legislature, which ended its 60-day session last week, has passed numerous enlightened and hopeful laws that place our state proudly high on the spectrum of human rights protections and environmental justice.

For instance, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law three weeks ago a bill preventing the storage of highly radioactive waste, generated by the nation’s 75 commercial nuclear power plants, without direct approval from state government first. As Hannah Grover reported in New Mexico Political Report, the bill’s passage “comes as a company, Holtec International, is seeking to build a temporary storage location for nuclear waste” near Carlsbad. The bill is a major victory for environmental self-determination and self-respect in New Mexico.

The governor also signed into law the bipartisan Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund, which Scott Wilber, the executive director of the New Mexico Land Conservancy, said earlier this month, “will facilitate greater public-private partnerships and put much-needed funds on the ground for conservation, restoration, natural and cultural resource management and outdoor recreation.”

Among human rights victories, the legislature passed a bill to protect the LGBTQ community from acts of discrimination in hiring and the provision of public services by institutions or religious entities that receive public money. In an act of admirable sensitivity and reality-awareness, the legislature also acknowledged the demeaning nature of the word “handicapped” to describe people with disabilities and removed the offensive language from the bill. The legislature passed another bill that prohibits New Mexico abortion and gender care providers from being victimized by local laws that make illegal or penalize their professional activities. The governor has already signed a bill that forbids other states from investigating gender care in New Mexico.

Though facing intense pressures from the gun lobby, the legislature made it a crime to insecurely or callously store firearms that might be used or accidentally discharged by family members. And, most dramatically, legislators voted to provide free meals for all the state’s school children.

In defense of individual self-determination, legislators voted unanimously to protect the Elizabeth Whitefield End-of-Life Options Act (EOLO) from a lawsuit brought by an association of Christian doctors and dentists by amending the act to honor the conscience of medical providers who are so opposed to the Act that they refuse to even mention it as an option for their terminally ill patients to consider. The amendment clarifies that providers “shall not be subject to criminal liability, licensing sanctions or other professional disciplinary action for refusing, for reasons of conscience, to participate in medical aid in dying, in any way….”

The session wasn’t all uplifting, of course. We also saw how obstinate blind spots and partisan intransigence can result in deepening disappointments that are fraught with future danger.

Legislators could not get together, for instance, on creating a professional legislature with pay for lawmakers, an expanded paid professional staff, and longer, more regular sessions. In fact, New Mexico remains the only state in the union that doesn’t pay its legislators a red cent, though it does provide a measly per diem. Most states pay lawmakers a yearly salary. Alabama pays as much as $49, 861, Colorado $40,207, Maryland $50,380, Texas $72,000 and even Idaho $18,405. Only people rich enough to sacrifice income as a gesture of public service can afford to run for office in an amateur legislature like New Mexico’s. That we’ve had so many honorable and able people serve in our legislature over the years is something of a miracle. But an entire socioeconomic stratum of our local culture — filled, I’m sure, with just as many able and honorable people — can’t afford to run for office at all. This government-hating miserliness is a stain on the egalitarian sentiments that most New Mexicans consider essential to their sense of social conscience and a shameful kowtowing to financial elitism.

The Legislature also failed this year — in the face of the United Nation’s increasingly dire warnings about the looming calamity of climate change — to establish statewide limits on greenhouse gas emissions. And partisan enmities even got in the way of crafting an environmental rights amendment to our otherwise progressive state constitution.

Worst of all, from my perspective, the legislature took no action of any kind to prod, once again, the state’s congressional delegation or the Air Force to speed up the remediation of the one of the greatest environmental disasters threatening our state — the mammoth Kirtland Air Force Base jet fuel spill, which puts Albuquerque’s groundwater supply in harm’s way. This is especially mystifying to me in light of a lawsuit brought by prominent legislators, The Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) and New Mexico Voices for Children in 2020 calling for a dramatic acceleration in the cleanup of the spill. The governor, herself, when she was a congresswoman in 2013, said cleaning up the Kirtland spill should be the New Mexico’s Congressional delegation’s “No.1 priority.” I was expecting to hear a roar of outrage from the legislature this year, particularly since a federal judge has dismissed the Voices for Children lawsuit. But for some reason, the Kirtland spill seems to have lost its No.1 priority status.

Voices for Children, SWOP and State Senators Mimi Stewart and Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, and State Representative G. Andres Romero, made a compelling case. The suit said that the jet fuel spill is an “imminent and substantial endangerment” to the health and environment of Albuquerque because it contains high levels of many kinds of carcinogens. Senator Stuart was quoted as saying, “The response to this spill has moved far too slowly for far too long.” And Kenneth J. Martinez, Chairman of the Board of New Mexico Voices for Children observed, “Children have been born, grown up, and become adults while the Air Force has been dragging its feet and interminably delaying cleanup. We owe it to the next generation of children to make sure the Air Force delays no longer.”

Let’s hope that new strategies for new lawsuits and refreshed political enthusiasm are gaining steam behind the scenes. The Kirtland jet fuel spill could well be the largest such pollution event at any military base in the country. And something needs to be done right now to make sure it doesn’t contaminate an even larger part of Albuquerque’s precious aquifer. At the very least, New Mexico could dust off a memorial offered to the Senate in 2014 by then State Sen. Cisco McSorley calling for the New Mexico Congressional Delegation “to fund and assemble an independent task force of experts to address” the spill cleanup and motivate renewed interest in speeding up its remediation.

Despite these disappointments, the 2023 legislative session gives us a sense of empowerment and hope by confirming that local politics is not always mired in crude partisan movidas and ideological quick sands but can also be an instrument of conscience, vision, compassion and local self-respect.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it

(Image of NM State Capitol seal by Scotwriter 21)