COVID-19 relief bill passes Legislature special session

SANTA FE — A COVID-19 relief bill was passed by New Mexico Legislature during a special session on Tuesday. The bill will provide over $300 million to various sectors of New Mexicos economy that are struggling during the second shut-down of the pandemic.

Funds used by the bill come from $309 million remaining from the federal CARES Act and $10 million in state dollars.

The largest portion of the funds will go to 161,000 unemployed New Mexicans who will soon receive a one-time payment of $1,200.

Other designated spending includes:

• $100 million for grants to small businesses or non-profits. These grants will be capped at $50,000 per recipient.

• $15 million for emergency housing and rent assistance.

• $10 million for COVID-19 contact tracing, testing, and vaccine distribution.

• $5 million to be used for $750 one-time payments to low-income households that did not get aid from the federal coronavirus relief bill.

• $5 million to food banks for emergency services, including the Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico.

The bill passed 59-11 in the House and 33-5 in the Senate, and was signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham Wednesday.“We must continue to evaluate how we can get more assistance to more New Mexicans who need it in this time of crisis. I’m grateful to the Legislature, both chambers and both parties, for their work yesterday. New Mexico will always step up, even when the federal government won’t,” Lujan Grisham said in a press release on Wednesday.

Though the bill passed with a large majority, local lawmakers critiqued some aspects of the bill that they felt they did not have enough time to change or add real input to.

“It would be nice if we as representatives could take the voice of the people to Santa Fe in a more organized way, because we were not given ample time by the governor,” District 63 Rep. Martin Zamora, R-Clovis, said. “We received the bill, I believe it was Saturday, and the session started on Tuesday, and those things were done as a political strategy to keep us involved as little as possible.

“There was still some issues I could see with the bill, but it’s about getting the money to the people and that’s the bottom line. We needed to get some money, some help out there to the people of the state. I’m glad the bill went through.

Zamora attended the session virtually due to conflicting health issues, but said that he ultimately voted for the bill.

District 67 Rep. Jack Chatfield, R-Mosquero, and District 7 Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, both voted against the bill.

Chatfield said he saw the bill as “feel-good” legislation which was being pressed by the state “to ameliorate the pain caused by the governor herself,” referring to the economic repercussions the emergency health orders have had.

“It sounds good to go on TV and give you free money,” he added. “We need to do what our great country has done for centuries — allow the freedom for people to make money, for their businesses to thrive, for their employees.”

Zamora said that one of the issues he had with the bill was the amount of money that will be going out to individuals.

“We don’t want people to make more money for staying at home and not working than they do when they work because that goes against all our beliefs in what this country is about and that’s what the big fight is,” he said.

In both the House and Senate, debates were sparked about the distribution of funds to just the unemployed instead of to other groups like essential workers. It was ultimately decided by party leaders that there was not enough time to set up a system to distribute funds to essential workers before the end of December when the CARES Act would expire.

“Why don’t you give an amount,” Zamora said, “where everyone could be helped across the board instead of giving $1,200 dollars a person and you give to just 1/4 of the people that are needy. It doesn’t make sense.”

Woods, like Zamora, took issue with the rushed timeline of the bill.

“We’ve had at least three months to do this,” Woods said of the special session during a telephone interview Wednesday. “Why was it so imperative to wait until the last minute and then all of a sudden call a special session when we had to have this money out by the end of December? Why didn’t the governor call us in sometime back and give the departments in the state time to put out $319 million? Can you imagine spending $10 million a day?

“If we’d been called into session three months ago, we could do a whole lot better getting this money out to the citizens of the state of New Mexico. We really didn’t think this thing through.”

One issue that Chatfield and Woods could agree that was done right by the bill is the amendment that designates leftover money to be allocated to the unemployment insurance fund.

Woods said that it “was the best part of the whole deal,” and that he would have voted “yes” on that alone.

Chatfield said that the state should have put more of the $319 million into the unemployment insurance fund because of the funds dramatically increasing debt which could be $220 million in the red by year’s end.

The next time the Legislature will meet is for a 60-day session in January, where Zamora hopes the people that were left out of this bill will be helped.

“At the end of the day somebody gets left out and thats not what I stand for,” he said. “We’ll keep fighting for those people that get left out, for the people in general, and to get things done right. And the way things get done right is when you don’t push your power around like that, you open your doors, you make it transparent and you make it where it’s transparent to the people, and when you’re doing all that you do it because you’re being honest and fair about things. And that’s what we fight for in Santa Fe.”

Other local legislators voting no were District 66 Rep. Phelps Anderson, R-Roswell, and District 64 Rep. Randal Crowder, R-Clovis. District 27 Sen. Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, voted in favor.

Clovis Media Inc. writer Ron Warnick contributed to this report.