Sen. Katy Duhigg (D-Albuquerque) speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Jan. 29, 2025. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM)
A proposal to open up opportunities for more people to become New Mexico’s state lawmakers by paying them salaries passed through its first committee hearing with bipartisan support.
The Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday morning voted 7-2 on a proposal to ask New Mexicans to vote more than three years from now on whether to provide salaries to state lawmakers.
Senate Joint Resolution 1 would create an independent commission to set and limit salaries for lawmakers. It still needs to go through the Senate Finance Committee before it could go to a full vote in the Senate.
Albuquerque Democratic Senators Katy Duhigg and Natalie Figueroa are sponsoring the resolution, and argued it would make the Legislature more diverse and accessible to their constituents.
Duhigg argued that state government has already professionalized the executive and judicial branches, but not the legislative one, making them “not truly co-equal.”
“This would allow the Legislature to perform the really important oversight function that we are supposed to be performing, that we are supposed to be performing, that we truly can’t do now,” she said.
The bill would put the question on the ballot for voters in 2028.
This question has been put before voters at least five times in the state’s history, most recently in 1992, Figueroa said.
The Citizen Commission on Legislative Salary would not be made up of lawmakers, “so there would be no self-dealing,” Duhigg said.
“We would not be involved,” she said.
Resolutions are not laws and do not need to be signed into law by the governor.
If a majority of New Mexican voters choose to create the commission, details like the commissioners’ terms, who appoints them and their rules would be worked out in enabling legislation in future sessions, Duhigg said.
A coalition of nearly a dozen organizations, including Common Cause New Mexico, Center for Civic Policy and League of Women Voters, back the proposal, and have announced a “day of modernization” at the Roundhouse on Feb. 11 to promote it.