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State Rep. Angelica Rubio, a Las Cruces Democrat, has made modernization of New Mexico’s unique part-time, unpaid legislature one of her priorities, advancing bills related to legislative salaries, length of sessions, staffing and other reforms each year since she took office in 2017.
She recently spoke with the Las Cruces Bulletin about that work and prospects for the 2025 session.
Q. Could you review the work you’ve done on this issue thus far? Is it primarily about paying lawmakers, or what else?
AR. I've been introducing versions of (legislative salaries) every year. The last three years, that’s been a more concrete piece we came up with as a cohort in the House, to create an independent commission to establish salaries for the first time.
With that came a conversation around whether or not we should change the length of the sessions, as well as staff. When we did a survey of legislators, salaries came in second and staffing came in first. For the first time, last year we were able to add a line item to the budget to include staffing for every legislator. I feel like it's going to be a game changer, at least for constituents.
The salary piece, we will introduce again as a constitutional amendment. It asks voters two things: Do you support repealing the language in the (New Mexico) Constitution that prohibits us from receiving a salary? And the second is creating an independent commission. Debates in the last few years have been about how much we're going to get paid and who's going to make up the commission. That is not part of this legislation; that will come back later when we do enabling legislation if the voters say, yes, we want this commission. It has to get through the Senate and the House, and then it'll go to voters.
Q. What are its prospects this year?
AR. We have had the biggest challenge getting it out of the Senate, that's where the biggest obstacles have been, and it's primarily two specific senators who chair committees that the legislation would have to go to.
We have the support of folks in the house, including Republicans. They may not vote for it publicly, but they know that having salaries for New Mexico legislators would be a game changer. This would open up so many more opportunities for just regular people to be able to step into becoming a legislator. This doesn't solve all of our problems, but it is at least a step closer to what modernizing our legislature looks like. I feel like we still operate in a 1912 sort of mindset; and we have to get to this 2025 level and actually do some more work.
Q. What are some objections you’ve heard?
AR. I hear from legislators, and this is valid, that they’re afraid that we won't have the kind of relationship with constituents that we have now. Constituents can come up to us now, in the grocery store, wherever, and we can have a conversation. The other thing is that legislators don't want to have to do more work. There are a lot of legislators who have just said to me straight up: I want to go to the legislature, pass a budget, which is what we're supposed to do under the Constitution, and go home; I don't want to have to deal with constituents and deal with any of that stuff.
The third thing, which I think is more problematic and what I think is keeping us from passing it, is there are legislators who don't want to serve with regular people. They see this legislature as an aristocratic type of thing, and so let's keep those people out, and elect more people of status because, for whatever reason, they think they're maybe smarter and understand policies better.
They already see how our legislature is changing: We are electing more women. We're electing more women of color. And for some, they don't want to see that. They like the status quo.
Q. What does your legislative staffer do?
AR. Mine is helping me to keep a schedule with stakeholders, things that I wasn't able to really keep on my own or it was getting overwhelming.Research, like helping me prepare for session. There are so many different gaps that I think exist within our legislative work that we don't always get to do because of time. Last week, I had to go to a conference for work and my legislative staffer was able to go to a Las Cruces Public Schools legislative update reception in my place. I see it like a chief of staff, somebody who's covering as much as they can for me.
Q. What proposals about the sessions might we see?
AR. What’s been surprising is how little support there is to change how often we meet. I've always imagined two 45-day sessions, like one in the spring and one in the fall, where we introduce all of our bills, come back home, pitch the bills and meet with constituents, and then finish the year passing bills. There's a lot of pushback in terms of how much people want to actually spend time up in Santa Fe. It's hard to leave home for two months at a time, and so I think that's one of those areas that people aren't rushing to get anything done. It's really the governor's power over 30-day sessions that people are really just done with it.
There will be mechanisms that will be used regardless of how long or short sessions are, to slow things down. I feel like the current debate that we have right now with session lengths, is that people just want to get out as quickly as possible and pass as much legislation as possible. We all agree we have way too much ceremonial stuff – let’s minimize that. I think there are things we can do by rule, rather than putting it into statute, changing some of the things that are already slowing the process down.
