Angelica Rubio

Affordability and housing: Housing, utilities, food and other necessities have become increasingly expensive for many New Mexicans. What specific actions should the Legislature take to reduce those costs, particularly the cost and availability of housing?

Since the start of the pandemic, the House of Representatives in the New Mexico State Legislature formed and have been working as a cohort of legislators to expand our efforts on housing specifically. I personally serve in this cohort and have been a part of prioritizing coordination with local officials in our respective communities to address solutions to the housing crisis. Through this process, we've been able to work to coordinate our resources, and fund statewide projects, in addition to housing projects throughout the city of Las Cruces, including affordable housing units, the expansion of the El Caldito Soup Kitchen and Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, and city-sanctioned projects like Amador Crossing.

In addition to that, I've worked on legislation to strengthen tenant rights, specifically on issues related to slowing down the rise of rents, through legislative statute (which has yet to pass) and working with partners on figuring out how to circumvent the issues we face on building new and necessary housing. That work will continue as we head into session, where I will work with colleagues on reviving some of these pieces of legislation and hoping under a new administration we have a greater chance of passage. I'm also working on legislation to support families with the rise of utilities through a tariff on bill legislation, which will enable families to make energy-efficiency and water-saving property upgrades with no upfront costs, paying them back through monthly utility bills. I will be able to share more in the next few weeks on this collaboration with the city of Las Cruces and a statewide coalition of organizations.

Crime and public safety: What changes should the Legislature make to address violent crime, drug-related crime and repeat offenders, and how should the state balance enforcement and incarceration with prevention, treatment and rehabilitation?

I am very concerned by the public safety issues that our communities have faced in the last few years and have worked to address them in ways that are not always popular. First and foremost, the state of New Mexico already has a number of laws on the books that address the issues of public safety and are already in statute. They just need to be enforced. Unfortunately, tragedies that we have experienced as a community have heightened fears from our friends and neighbors, especially in the realm of juvenile justice. I agree that this is indeed a crisis, however, we have seen time and time again that increasing penalties do not work.

We must enforce the laws that already exist and invest in long-lasting solutions. Especially for our young people, we need to start sooner, making investments in their quality of life, supporting parents–whether it's increasing wages so that they can afford to live and provide without having to work more than two to three jobs so they can spend more time with their children, improve after-school programming so that young people are active outside of just sports and athletics, making housing and food more affordable, access to affordable and adequate healthcare, and provide better mental health services and drug rehab.

This requires heavy investments in all facets of life from the time a child is born until an elder is laid to rest. While we haven’t perfected this, we have done a lot of work in the last ten years that I believe we can get there. But we must work towards the long run, and not just in short-sighted two-year election cycles. Budgets are a moral document, and that’s where we have the power to do some good. Saving our money for a rainy day, when our communities are drowning, is not good governance.

Water and economic development: Doña Ana County is seeking economic growth while facing long-term concerns about water availability and increasing demands from developments such as data centers. What limits or requirements should the state place on large developments to protect water supplies and ensure local residents receive sufficient economic benefit?

New Mexico does not have enough water. Period. Since I started serving in the legislature ten years ago, the legislature and the executive have danced around facing this reality. Leaders keep overpromising water to new industries while maintaining historical water allocations that are no longer sustainable in the 21st century. We cannot continue to ignore what is unrealistic for our future, and we must address how to manage a transition to lower water usage, regardless of how unpopular this debate may be.

This issue isn’t academic for me. It is very personal. I grew up in rural southeast New Mexico, and my dad was a farmer who got aged-out of his livelihood when his boss sold the water rights to an oil and gas company. I watched firsthand what happens when the water that sustains a local community gets pulled out of the ground and diverted to a high-volume, short-term industry. When a community loses its water, it loses its future, and we are allowing external, high-volume industries to buy up our state’s lifeblood, exhaust it, and then leave our local agricultural economies dried up in the process. My goal isn't to lock up our resources and instead protect them for New Mexicans and its future generations. 

While the rains might be coming down right now, the reliability of our natural cycles has become just as volatile as oil and gas revenues. After serving on the House Agriculture, Acequias & Water Resources Committee the last two years, I have seen the gap between our legal promises and our hydrological reality. This has propelled me to champion legislation that addresses this next generation of water consumption. That means being absolutely honest and courageous, and considering legislation that makes room for managed water depletions, dryland management, and equitable distribution. We must come to the determination that our current system of over-allocated water rights is unsustainable. I will introduce legislation to begin that debate, with the hope to secure a real future for the next generation of stewards of this land, and hope that our legislature and the new executive will commit to that too.

Legislative effectiveness: You have represented District 35 since 2017. What is one area where you believe the Legislature has failed to make sufficient progress, and what specifically would you do differently during the next two years?

For me, the legislature has failed in transitioning away from oil and gas and other extractive industries. What we have witnessed with the catastrophe that is Project Jupiter, is a lateral move from oil and gas, to an 'advanced' industry that is not sustainable and trades one massive ecological footprint for another when our water resources cannot bear the strain.

I have been introducing legislation and pushing for this transition for the ten years I've been serving, but it has been an uphill battle. Our long history and legacy on our dependence on oil and gas has crippled our ability to imagine another future that is more sustainable and looking inward to think through what's restorative. But the luxury of ignoring this reality has run out, and over the next two years, I am going to keep doing what I've been doing, and that is fighting to pivot state incentives away from resource-intensive megaprojects and forcing this body to look inward at a diversified economy that protects all New Mexican’s, air, land and water.

Angelica Rubio is running unopposed in New Mexico House District 35.