Governor, GOP lawmakers spar over special-session proposals

Republican lawmakers took aim Monday at Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s plan to use the special session to kick-start a court-supervised outpatient treatment program for people with severe mental illness.

The governor last week unveiled five public-safety measures she plans to propose in a July 18 special session.

One of those measures is intended to expand a 2016 law that allows district judges to order involuntary treatment for people with severe mental illness who are frequently jailed or hospitalized.

The governor also will ask lawmakers to make revisions to the complex system judges use to determine mental competency for people charged with criminal offenses.

Three Republican House leaders on Monday sent a letter to Lujan Grisham criticizing her decision to tackle complex behavioral health legislation in a special session.

“Making such major changes to these highly complex systems during a two- or three-day special session is simply not good public policy and will undoubtedly result in many unintended consequences due to the lack of needed consideration and debate,” the letter said.

The letter, signed by House Republican Leader Rod Montoya, House Republican Whip Alan Martinez and Caucus Chair Gail Armstrong, called the governor’s plan “undoable.”

The lawmakers also criticize what they describe as a lack of analysis of the cost of the proposals and “no apparent plan as to how many behavioral health service providers will be needed,” according to the letter. They also questioned the need to revise existing statutes.

Lujan Grisham fired back Monday that her legislation can be passed if lawmakers “roll up their sleeves and work with me to get it done.”

“Republicans contend that making New Mexico a safer place during the special session under my proposals is ‘undoable’ — an assertion I flatly reject,” the governor said in a written statement.

“State lawmakers of both parties must ask themselves if they are comfortable with more crime and more homelessness, because business owners and rank-and-file New Mexicans are fed up,” Lujan Grisham said.

She called on lawmakers to help pass her “common-sense public safety reform agenda” at the special session.

“We can make our state safer but it’s going to require some hard work, a can-do attitude, and a collaborative approach,” she said.

One of the governor’s proposals is intended to strengthen a 2016 law that allows district judges to order involuntary treatment for people with severe mental illness who have frequent brushes with law enforcement.

The program, called Assisted Outpatient Treatment, or AOT, was approved by lawmakers in 2016.

But in the eight years since the law was enacted, only Doña Ana County, in the state’s 3rd Judicial District, has implemented a functioning AOT program.

Holly Agajanian, chief general counsel for the Governor’s Office, told members of the House Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee last week that legislation is needed to expand the program statewide.

“Even though jurisdictions are already statutorily allowed to implement these programs, they aren’t doing it,” Agajanian told lawmakers Thursday.

In a written statement issued Monday, Martinez said the proposals would be better addressed in the 60-day regular session in 2025 after careful study this year.

“The result will be many unintended consequences that could make the behavioral health system even more inefficient and costly,” he said.

Former state Sen. Mary Kay Papen, who co-sponsored the 2016 AOT legislation, applauded Lujan Grisham’s effort to expand the program.

“I’m excited that the governor is going to be behind this,” Papen said Friday.

“If you get the right people enthusiastic about it and willing to work with it, and you get the right judge who will work with it, it will be successful wherever it goes into place.”

Papen said Doña Ana County had the necessary core of people enthusiastic about implementing an AOT program.

“I think we just embraced it,” she said. “We just have the right combination of people here who were interested in it. It’s not just the same old, same old.”

The court-supervised Assisted Outpatient Treatment program is intended for people who have a history of arrests and hospitalizations and are unlikely to voluntarily adhere to prescribed treatments.

The 2016 law allows state civil-court judges to order people into mandatory treatment programs, which could include medication, therapy or drug testing.

Jamie Michael, Doña Ana County’s director of Health and Human Services Department, told lawmakers last week that the county started its AOT program with support from a federal grant and ongoing funding from the county’s gross-receipts tax. She estimated that the program serves about 40 people a year at no cost to the individual.

Of central importance is identifying a district judge to champion the program.

“The judge is important, and they need to be well trained and really buy into to the program,” Michael told lawmakers on Thursday. “It’s important to find a judge who really wants to do this program and who has the ability to connect and communicate well, show empathy, show motivation.”

The judge has the authority to commit a person to mandatory outpatient treatment through a civil-court process.

“It is not voluntary,” she said. Participants can’t opt out of the program after a few weeks, she said. “It’s an involuntary court order that says ‘you will do what this treatment plan says.’”

But the involvement of a judge has a “black-robe effect” that tends to make people more likely to follow the program’s requirements, Michael said.

The program typically enrolls people when they are discharged from a hospital with a serious mental health diagnosis. The program also uses a peer-support staff to engage the person, she said.

“It really supports people who are already kind of engaged in that treatment program — that treatment system in their community — but don’t have that extra help to make it a habit and then extra support to help them engage better,” Michael said.