Governor's agenda ambitious

Sometimes politicians govern. Sometimes they campaign. Most of the time, it’s hard to tell the difference.

Take, for example, Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s legislative agenda for this year’s 30-day session. It’s ambitious and aggressive, and just in time for her re-election bid.

In her first three years in office, Lujan Grisham has accomplished a lot, thanks to her party’s domination of both legislative chambers and a growing surplus in state revenues. This combination of power and money gives her the ability to push a big agenda in this last regular legislative session of her first term in office.

So far, Lujan Grisham has accomplished a lot as governor. She and Democratic Party lawmakers raised the state’s minimum wage from $7.50 per hour to $11.50 this new year, enroute to $12 next year.

And they’ve legalized recreational cannabis, making this the year in which a burgeoning above-ground industry will take off in New Mexico.

Lujan Grisham has also given new emphasis to early childhood development. Now the state has a whole new agency, the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, with which to tackle the issues of childhood poverty and those being left behind.

Plus, she got the Energy Transition Act passed into law. It’s a bold new policy shift to renewables that’s helping to build an energy infrastructure for the future. She’s also building a “bridge” from dirty to clean fuel consumption via natural gas and hydrogen production to support battery-powered transportation.

Of course, Lujan Grisham’s first term in office has been saddled with a years-long pandemic, and the governor hasn’t been shy about imposing mask mandates and vaccination requirements where she can — actions that irritate her usual detractors while pleasing her liberal base. We’ll see in the election next fall what the net political effect of her leadership through COVID-19 will be.

For now, however, her focus is on her last regular legislative session before that election — and she’s serving up a full plate in her “call” to lawmakers.

Here’s a partial list of her agenda:

• A 7% increase for public school employees, including minimum teacher salary levels of $50,000, $60,000 and $70,000 for the state’s three-tier licensure system.

• Free college for more students, through an $85.5 million increase in the Opportunity Scholarship program created by lawmakers and signed by the governor in 2020.

• A new $100 million recruitment fund to hire and train more public safety officers, in an attempt to offset the decline in people choosing law enforcement as a profession these days. The goal is to hire 1,000 new officers statewide, the governor’s office says.

• New laws intended to keep violent offenders off the streets and increase penalties for violent offenses.

• A cut in the state’s gross receipts tax by a quarter of a percent, from 5.125% to 4.875% — the first such decrease in the GRT in 40 years, according to the governor’s office.

• Support rural and smaller community hospitals by creating a Rural Hospital Services Fund to help with matching money to offset operating losses in underserved areas.

How much of the governor’s agenda will pass has yet to be seen — her party’s lawmakers may be loyalists, but they still have minds of their own — but whatever does pass will be added to her list of accomplishments. It’ll make running against her an uphill battle, but that’s not stopping more than a half-dozen Republicans who have announced their candidacies.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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