Jesse Duebel, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, and Judy Calman, the director of policy for Audubon Southwest said they were disappointed with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s partial veto of a bill overhauling the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, when she signed the majority of the reforms into law on Thursday. (Danielle Prokop / Source NM)
A legislative proposal to reform how members of Game and Fish commission can be removed “unnecessarily complicates and lengthens the removal process,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wrote in a message to the State Senate Thursday explaining her partial veto of Senate Bill 5, which reforms both the commission and the Game and Fish Department.
Currently, the governor can remove members of the commission. The proposed change would require the State Ethics Commission to file an action in district court to remove a board member and created the potential for appeal at the New Mexico Supreme Court.
“Given the many pressing matters addressed by district courts and the Supreme Court, it would take years to remove even the most blatantly incompetent or corrupt individuals — allowing those individuals to continue to hinder or corrupt the Commission in the interim,” the governor wrote.
She tied her approval for the rest of the bill to acceptance of her partial veto, and cited a 2011 advisory letter from the state Attorney General’s Office regarding what types of bills are subject to line-item vetoes. “As SB 5 appropriates money, it is subject to line-item veto pursuant,” she wrote.
While lawmakers and advocates expressed skepticism about the governor’s legal reasoning for striking the provision of the bill, one of the bill’s main sponsors, Rep. Matthew McQueen (D-Galisteo) doesn’t plan to challenge her, and noted that the governor’s staff told him they would work with him on the issue in a future session.
“Signing a bill on a contingent basis doesn’t mesh with my understanding of the [New Mexico] Constitution,” McQueen said. “But that would only come into play if the bill was challenged, and I say we should move forward.”
Senate Bill 5 passed the House along near-party line votes as Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo) joined Republicans in opposing it, while the Senate passed the bill with more bipartisan support.
But while lawmakers heavily debated many provisions of the bill expanding the scope of the agency, the language for changing the process for game commissioner removal faced little pushback.
“That was the one provision that was completely noncontroversial,” Jesse Duebel, the executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, told reporters on Thursday.
Duebel said the remaining language makes some of the most substantial changes to the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish in a century by raising its budget; increasing hunting and fishing fees; changing its name to the New Mexico Department of Wildlife to reflect a more broad effort to preserve declining species.
Lawmakers again aim to reform New Mexico Department of Game and Fish
“We’re very disappointed that the process for commissioner removal was vetoed from the bill,” Duebel said. “The removal of commissioners from the state wildlife commission is one of the most important processes that exists for the hunting community in this state, and for too long that process has been purely political.”
Duebel alluded to issues over multiple administrations when high turnover and sudden vacancies on the board have hampered its ability to meet, as the board did not have enough people to conduct its business. Two former commissioners, Joanna Prukop and Jeremy Vesbach, said they were forced off the commission during Lujan Grisham’s first term over their positions on stream access issues – which a New Mexico Supreme Court order rendered moot.
Judy Calman, the director of policy for Audubon Southwest, said the coalition of more than 20 groups, which includes hunting, wildlife and conservation groups, will pursue future legislation, even if the veto goes unchallenged.
“The vast majority of our coalition is committed to getting a removal process in place at some point, somehow,” Calman said. “I don’t think that that fight is over for us or that we will let that go because it’s such a crucial part of this for us.”
In 2023, lawmakers passed a much narrower bill, also sponsored by McQueen, which gave lawmakers picks for the New Mexico Game and Fish Commission. The bill passed both chambers but Lujan Grisham pocket-vetoed —aka didn’t sign —it into law.
Brittany Fallon, a policy manager with Western Resource Advocates, who advocated for SB5, said the governor’s staff did not accept multiple proposals during negotiations for different types of removal processes, and did not put forward their own.
“The big picture is that she asked us to make multiple compromises and didn’t make any of her own,” Fallon said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.