Legislative Action to Lasting Results

State Agency Press Release – From the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee Communications

Legislative sessions are a burst of activity as your representatives and senators scramble to enact meaningful change on a constrained timeline. But the end of the session doesn’t mean the work is done; it’s just the beginning.

Legislators during the 30-day session earlier this year appropriated more than $4 billion for community infrastructure and housing, including $1.5 billion for roads, $1.25 billion for hundreds of construction projects throughout the state, $546 million for a new University of New Mexico medical school, and $175 million for housing, including funding for zero-interest starter home loans.

Importantly, we passed capital outlay reform bills that will overhaul the way money is distributed to projects. This reform will help address the ongoing problems the state has with appropriating money to projects that make little progress. Currently, the state has $7 billion in funding authorized for projects that are mostly idle, sometimes because the amount was too little or the community didn’t ask for it or wasn’t ready to start.

In addition, we made childcare free for every New Mexico family and moved to help alleviate the healthcare provider shortage with interstate licensing compacts for doctors and social workers, tax credits for physicians, medical malpractice reform, loan repayment for medical school graduates, and expansion of the medical school.

New Mexico’s lawmakers are building resilience in our communities to better serve families across the state. New Mexico’s future depends on strengthening economic stability, modernizing infrastructure, and ensuring that every New Mexican—whether they live in the frontier community like Red River, a small town like Las Vegas, or a metropolis like Las Cruces and Albuquerque—has access to the resources they need to thrive in a world shaped by federal caprice, chaotic global forces, and other factors outside of our control.

We have made unprecedented investments, but now we must ensure those investments pay off. Funding new programs or new projects is just the first step. Successful implementation, based on thoughtful and strategic planning, is critical.

At every step, the long-term costs and benefits of state programs and community infrastructure must be analyzed carefully to ensure we are spending the taxpayers’ dollars efficiently and with impact. We owe this to families that struggle to provide the basics of healthcare, childcare, education, and food security, even with two incomes.

New Mexico is lucky in many ways. When a strong economy and robust oil and gas industry fueled historic increases in state revenue, the Legislature had the foresight to constrain the growth in ongoing spending, invest in roads and other durable improvements to infrastructure, and set much of that windfall aside in trust funds that are invested to create ongoing revenue streams for early childhood programs, healthcare, natural resources, and other programs.

The economy has slowed, the U.S. Congress has stripped funding from food and healthcare support for poorer families, and a war in the Middle East is driving up the price of fuel and everyday items, but the state is on firm ground, with the resources to withstand a downturn and continue to support the public services that help New Mexico families thrive.

The work of this past legislative session built significantly on our ongoing efforts to create the systems that will help New Mexico succeed, but the ultimate goal is to ensure those systems will effectively and efficiently provide New Mexicans with impactful services in the long tun—the trust funds that provide us with economic stability, the programs that help all New Mexican care for their loved ones, the infrastructure that improves the quality of life in our communities.