Adrian Hedden
El Rito Media

Crime and mental health took center stage as New Mexico lawmakers convened Jan. 21 in Santa Fe, with several bills already introduced in the opening days of the 60-day legislative session.

In the months leading up to the session, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham unveiled a series of policy priorities related to crime and public safety throughout the state. The topic was positioned to be Lujan Grisham’s signature issue during the last two years of her final term as governor.

To that end, the governor hosted town meetings in Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Espanola and Alamogordo, along with several listening sessions in rural areas such as Carlsbad, Farmington and Clovis.

During her Jan. 8 town hall meeting at the Tays Center in Alamogordo, Lujan Grisham said she was targeting stronger penalties for criminals possessing guns while committing crimes and also looking to strengthen the state’s ability to force defendants into treatment if they are deemed incompetent to stand trial.

So far, the push for public safety reform appears to be working with bills designed to tackle criminal penalties and behavioral health reforms emerging in both the House and Senate.

Here are some of the key public safety bills and initiatives to watch during this year’s legislative session.

Criminal competency

House Bill 4, sponsored by Rep. Christine Chandler (D-43) of Los Alamos, would require that a report from a psychiatric professional regarding a defendant’s mental competency to stand trial also include an opinion as to whether such a defendant qualifies for involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility.

The bill was referred to the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee for its first hearing.

Fentanyl exposure as child abuse

Sponsored by Rep. Andrea Reeb (R-64), House Bill 136 would allow defendants to be charged with child abuse if they were believed responsible for exposing children to fentanyl. State law already allows the charge to be assessed for exposing children to methamphetamine use.

Abuse of a child not resulting in death is considered a third-degree felony for the first offense and a second-degree felony for second and subsequent offenses. Abuse resulting in death is a first-degree felony.

HB 136 was yet to be assigned to a committee.

Behavioral health planning

Senate Bill 3 would require the Administrative Office of the Courts to divide the state into behavioral health regions, seek public input from those regions and develop regional plans to address behavioral health issues in each of them.

SB 3 was sponsored by Sens. Peter Wirth (D-25), Mimi Steward (D-17) and William Sharer (R-1), and assigned to the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee.

Regional plans will be made up of four phases with no more than five state-funded priorities per phase, identify local resources and include timelines to develop services and plans to obtain federal funding.

The bill also would require the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance to provide a set of standards for behavioral health services included in the regional plans, task the Legislative Finance Committee with evaluating costs, and specify that any funds appropriated under the bill must be guided by the regional plans.

Public safety and justice system funds

Senate Bill 2 was sponsored by a bipartisan group of senators: Benny Shendo (D-22), George Munoz (D-4) and David Gallegos (R-41). The bill proposed several appropriations based on the regional plans required by SB 3, totaling more than $100 million for multiple state agencies for public safety and health care initiatives.

SB 2 was referred to the Senate Health and Public Affairs Committee and is awaiting a hearing.

Here are the agencies that will be funded by SB 2.

Administrative Office of the Courts: $8.7 million for grants to local districts to help with court case management and to map out regional needs across the state.

Health Care Authority: $60.5 million to offer grants for local communities to fund regional treatment facilities, both inpatient and outpatient.

Corrections Department: $1.3 million for grants to support services for inmates discharged from the prison system.

Department of Public Safety: $5 million for local law enforcement grants to fund mobile crisis response, recovery and outreach equipment and vehicles. Another $11.5 million would be appropriated to Health Care Authority to staff vehicles and response teams.

University of New Mexico: $1 million for outreach to the homeless, including mobile health units, treatment and telemedicine. Another $1 million would go to the Department of Health to fund its outreach for the homeless.

Department of Finance and Administration: $48 million to create a program to expand housing service providers’ programs dealing with substance abuse, mental health treatment and transitional housing.

Adrian Hedden
Carlsbad Current-Argus
achedden@currentargus.com

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham described a state in need of reforms to address crime, homelessness and climate change during her annual State of the State speech Jan. 21 in Santa Fe.

Lujan Grisham delivered her remarks at the start of the 2025 Legislative Session, vowing to support a multitude of initiatives and calling for lawmakers to introduce and pass bills to advance the governor’s multiple agendas.

The session will run for 60 days, until March 22, with a Feb. 20 deadline for introducing legislation. The governor will have until April 11 to sign bills into law after they are passed by the House and Senate – or “pocket veto” them by taking no action.

During her speech, the second-term governor – who is ineligible to run for reelection in 2026 due to term limits – focused largely on public safety, including initiatives to respond to widespread crime, homelessness and poverty.

“That’s why I’m proposing new initiatives to tackle our crime problem, expand affordable housing, protect at-risk children, improve our health care system and more,” she said. “I look forward to working with lawmakers over the next 60 days to create an even better New Mexico.”

Criticism of the governor was swift following her speech with New Mexico Republican Party Chair Amy Barela questioning a pattern she described as the administration overspending on programs and public services that have so far failed to diminish a variety of problems facing the state.

“While we acknowledge the governor’s sentiment that New Mexicans deserve better, her same approach of throwing more money at the many issues in our state has not produced results,” Barela said in a statement following the speech.

“Over her 6-year tenure, the state budget has increased by approximately 73%, yet critical areas like education and child welfare remain last in the nation.”

Republican leaders in the Legislature were also critical of the governor’s policies, but said they were eager to begin tackling crime and a “revolving door” of criminals being arrested and released back into society to reoffend.

Rep. Alan Martinez (R-23), who serves as minority whip in the House, said Republicans believed the answer to repeat offenders was bringing back cash bail after the practice was ended in New Mexico by voters via a constitutional amendment in 2016.

Last year, the GOP also attempted to crack down on repeat offenders in Senate Bill 122, which would have prevented pretrial release for those charged with crimes deemed “serious violent offenses” or felonies when a firearm was used.

That bill died before receiving a committee vote.

“The Governor is right when she says removing repeat offenders from our streets is just common sense,” Martinez said. “House Republicans have a solution to reinstate cash bail to address this problem head-on. We are hopeful that this will open the door to conversations about real tough-on-crime bills with our Democrat colleagues in the House.”

Barela was also critical of the governor for what Republicans say is her lack of support for the oil and gas industry, which is largely centered in New Mexico’s southeast Permian Basin region and credited with supplying about $13 billion in state and local revenue in the last year.

Barela slammed the governor for policies the GOP chairwoman said would stymie the energy industry’s growth without making a measurable impact on pollution and climate change.

Lujan Grisham called for legislation during the ongoing session to reform the state’s Oil and Gas Act, a law that governs several facets of how the industry works. Democrats in recent sessions introduced legislation to add language that would impose a one-mile setback between oil and gas sites, homes, hospitals and other sensitive areas while also increasing fees paid to operate on state land.

Democrats have introduced bills in the early days of the session to prohibit certain natural gas emissions in areas identified for having “high ozone” or smog levels, such as the Permian Basin, and to establish “children’s health protection zones” where oil and gas development near schools would be banned.

A resolution introduced by Democrats would add “environmental rights” to the state’s constitution, a move critics worried could expose New Mexico to future lawsuits and block development projects in several sectors.

The governor had yet to publicly take a stance on those bills, but did support increased fees in the Oil and Gas Act and legislation to support the “Strategic Water Supply” – a past proposal by Lujan Grisham to allow the state to buy wastewater from the oil and gas industry for reuse in other sectors.

“While the governor briefly acknowledged the record oil and gas revenues, she once again failed to thank the oil and gas industry for contributing nearly half of our state’s budget while proposing legislation that threatens to eliminate this vital sector by 2050,” Barela said.