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Just one week to go in the 2024 legislative session. Here's what to watch.
Assistant Sergeant-at-Arms Lenny Roybal sings a song for people in the mailroom at the state Capitol on Wednesday. Roybal, who is also retired from a career as a basketball coach in northern New Mexico, was wandering around the Roundhouse singing to people as the Legislature enters its last week.
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SANTA FE — With only a week left in the 2024 Legislature, the clock is ticking. Legislators have passed two bills of 658 introduced.
The budget — one of the big priorities during this session — has only passed the House. It needs to clear the Senate Finance Committee and the full floor, and go back to the House again if senators try to change anything in it.
And there’s another 70 memorials and 35 resolutions also hoping to get through the Roundhouse.
The session ends at noon Feb. 15.
The budget
One bill — the budget — looms larger than the others.
The House passed its $10.18 billion budget last week, hoping to get it back from the Senate with any changes by the 21st day of the session.
That didn’t happen.
The bill needs to pass through the Senate Finance Committee still, and chair Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, hadn’t yet scheduled it as of Wednesday evening. He said on the floor Wednesday the budget is pretty well wrapped up, however.
After the budget gets through Senate Finance, it heads to the full Senate for another vote. If passed with any changes from Senate Finance or the floor, it needs to go back to the House again for concurrence on the amendments.
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If it doesn’t pass the full Roundhouse by the end of the session, the lawmakers would need to reconvene in a special session.
That’s an unlikely scenario.
The House also passed an omnibus tax package with bipartisan support Wednesday afternoon.
The bills
The large number of bills introduced this session could be tied to all the legislators in the Roundhouse being up for election in November.
The last time all the seats in the Senate and House were up for election in 2020, lawmakers introduced 727 bills. They put forth a couple hundred bills fewer than that in 2022, the most recent 30-day session.
Of the 658 introduced bills this year, not all of them have a chance to pass this legislative session. In a monthlong session like the current one, bills have to be germane — relating to the budget, approved for discussion by the governor or vetoed by the governor last year.
There are about 375 germane bills so far this session. A lot of the legislation still needs to make it through committees before getting to the chamber floors.
The second bill to get through the entire Roundhouse passed on Wednesday. House Bill 171, which adjusts school graduation requirements, cleared the Senate unanimously.
The first bill to pass both floors was the Feed Bill, an annual administrative effort to pay for legislative expenses, early in the session.
Separately, the House has passed 17 bills and the Senate has passed 20 bills, not including the Feed Bill on both sides, as of Wednesday evening.
Those bills are now making their way through committees, then floors on the other side of the Roundhouse. If any amendments are made, they have to go back to their original floor for approval.
Most other germane bills are still waiting in committee.
Typically, bills need to pass two committees on one side of the Roundhouse, then pass the full floor, and do the same on the other side of the Roundhouse.
The waiting legislation includes a slew of gun bills that are a significant point of contention. Just a few of those legislative efforts have passed floors or sit on the floors, including bills focused on firearm sales waiting periods and prohibiting guns at polling places.
The deadline to introduce bills was Jan. 31, but there are also dummy bills legislators can use as another way to get legislation through. There are 80 dummy bills this session.
One of the bills lawmakers could try to push through the Roundhouse via a dummy bill is the clean car income tax credit Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wants passed. There’s a proposed Senate Tax, Business and Transportation Committee substitute on Tuesday focused on the clean car credits.
Lawmakers passed the mirror House Bill 140 through its first committee on Jan. 24, and it hasn’t yet been scheduled for its second committee, House Taxation and Revenue. The dummy bill could be a way to accelerate the legislation through both sides of the Roundhouse simultaneously.
In addition to the two bills passed through the full Roundhouse, legislators have also passed over a dozen memorials, from Smokey Bear Day to Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Day.
