New Mexico Legal Aid facing budget cuts, layoffs

A nonprofit that provides free legal services for low-income New Mexicans plans to lay off about one-fifth of its workforce ahead of expected funding cuts in 2025, the firm’s top attorney said last week.

New Mexico Legal Aid expects within two months to cut 26 of its 120 staff members, including 13 of the firm’s 70 attorneys, Executive Director Sonya Bellafant said.

Attorney layoffs include five each in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and one each in Gallup, Las Cruces and Roswell, Bellafant wrote in a Dec. 20 letter to union officials alerting them to the layoffs.

Under Legal Aid’s collective bargaining agreement with the union, the nonprofit is required to provide 60 days’ notice of expected layoffs. The letter also warns that funding uncertainties in 2025 may require additional layoffs.

The staff cuts coincide with the end of COVID-19 pandemic emergency funding that led to an expansion in Legal Aid staff and services in recent years, Bellafant said Tuesday in a phone interview.

“What you’re seeing in that letter is a reflection of what happens when the pandemic ends and an increase in funding dries up,” Bellafant said.

Legal Aid received more than $1 million in 2024 from the American Rescue Plan Act, the COVID-19 stimulus package signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021. That funding ended in December.

As a result of that and other expected funding cuts, Legal Aid officials are bracing for a 17% budget cut next year, from about $15 million in 2024 to $12.5 million in 2025. About 80% of the budget pays for salaries.

“Really, what it boils down to is that in the absence of sustainable funding to fill those revenue shortfalls, New Mexico Legal Aid must contract,” she said.

Legal Aid provides free legal services to low-income New Mexicans in civil court disputes including housing, domestic violence, economic security and consumer law.

The nonprofit received 15,726 requests for legal assistance and opened 4,745 cases from Jan. 1 through Nov. 21, according to Legal Aid data.

Legal Aid represented more than 1,500 victims of domestic violence, about 2,200 disabled people and 803 seniors in that period.

At a time when New Mexico has an estimated shortage of 32,000 affordable housing units, Legal Aid handled more than 2,100 housing cases in 2024, often involving landlord-tenant disputes.

Bellafant said Legal Aid will attempt to limit the impact on clients, but the cuts inevitably will limit the nonprofit’s ability to provide services to vulnerable New Mexicans.

“It’s disheartening to me as a new resident in New Mexico that there is such a great amount of need, particularly given our low-income population,” said Bellafant, who took the helm of New Mexico Legal Aid in 2023.

“We are working hard to close outstanding cases as we go into the new year 2025, and that will give us some bit of reprieve as we look at case coverage” after the layoffs, she said.

Judicial leaders also plan to ask state lawmakers to bolster state funding for Legal Aid and other nonprofits that provide civil legal services for low-income New Mexicans.

State lawmakers this year will consider a budget increase for the state Civil Legal Services Commission, which provides funding for New Mexico Legal Aid, Pegasus Legal Services for Children, the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, and other groups.

The proposal would increase the commission’s budget to $8.1 million — an $860,000 increase over the current budget. State Supreme Court Justice C. Shannon Bacon and 2nd Judicial District Judge Erin O’Connell outline the proposal in an opinion piece published in the Sunday Journal.

The contraction follows a period of growth for New Mexico Legal Aid in both funding and staff. The nonprofit’s staff increased from 54 in 2019 to 120 in 2023, largely because of an increase in pandemic-relief funding.

The current funding crunch is a result of both the end of pandemic funding and political uncertainty in Washington, D.C.

In 2024, New Mexico Legal Aid received about $900,000 in federal funding under a continuing resolution that expired Dec. 20, the letter said.

Congress has since approved a continuing resolution that will continue funding through March, but uncertainty remains about whether the funding will continue under future budgets approved by a new Republican-controlled Congress.

Legal Aid also received about $5 million in grant funding in 2024 from the federally funded Legal Services Corporation, a nationwide nonprofit that supports civil legal services for the poor.

“Current indications reflect that (New Mexico Legal Aid) will have funds cut from Civil Legal Services funding” for the fiscal year that begins July 1,” Bellafant wrote in the letter to Siempre Unidos en Progresso, the bargaining unit that represents Legal Aid employees.

The letter also warns that future funding cuts by Congress may require additional layoffs.

“I certainly hope not,” Bellafant said Tuesday of future layoffs. “A lot will depend on the outcome of the continuing resolution and legal services funding post the March date.”