With hours to go, the tribal education trust fund bill appears to have stalled on the Senate floor.

SANTA FE — New Mexico’s tribal education trust fund bill that would help bolster Native language programs and build tribal education capacity appears to be dead on the Senate floor, its second-to-last hurdle in the Roundhouse.

Wednesday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, announced House Bill 134 was being rolled until a later session at the request of its sponsors while they worked on “a couple things.”

When asked, he would not confirm to the Journal that sponsor Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, had asked him to pull the bill, saying his conversations with representatives are confidential.

Wirth only pointed to a New Mexico In Depth story reporting that Lente had “decided to pull House Bill 134 after learning a number of amendments were going to be introduced on the Senate floor.”

Lente could not immediately be reached for comment.

If Lente has indeed pulled back on the bill, it would mark the second year in a row he’s done so. Last session, he cited concerns that the $50 million lawmakers were considering for the trust fund was not enough.

This year’s iteration also would have only received a $50 million appropriation in the state budget bill, but Lente said last week he would work with it.

The bill faced some delays on the House side of the Roundhouse, particularly over concerns from the Navajo Nation that the task force that would be charged with determining how to distribute money from the fund did not equitably represent the Nation’s students.

But Lente said he sat down with Nation leaders to settle those concerns and introduced a floor amendment abolishing the task force. The Nation in turn threw its support behind the bill again.

Supporters of the bill have touted the trust fund as a way to allow tribal nations to make decisions for themselves in how to educate their students and support their educators.