Legislators: Virtual format makes session different

Local lawmakers are getting into the swing of things as New Mexico's 2021 regular 60-day legislative session rounds the two-week mark. The session, which is operating mostly over Zoom with few in-person meetings in Santa Fe, has 354 bills introduced from the House and Senate.

“This session is very different from past sessions. There's no public access allowed so that's very different. We're totally working off of our computers, so we're working off of a Zoom call with a voting app attached,” said Rep. Jack Chatfield, R-Mosquero. He added they are having to work harder to get feedback from the public on bills as they come up. “The capital is getting all of the kinks out of the system, but I think we've been doing pretty good and it's going fairly smoothly.”

Sen. Pat Woods’ assessment of the session concurred with Chatfield's and he added that, “it is a very odd deal not to be able to go to a committee room and present a bill.”

“It's just hard to be there and not be there, and to tell if you're getting your point across or anything else,” said Woods, R-Broadview.

“It is completely different. As a matter of fact they shut down the House (on Friday) because there were some positive (COVID-19) tests, and the meetings are cumbersome at best,” said Rep. Randal Crowder, R-Clovis, noting that while things were going slower he also felt that it was not as thorough as past years.

So far five cases of COVID-19 have been reported at the Capitol, resulting in House leaders further restricting access to the House floor sessions and to capital building meeting rooms. New rules specifically for the virtual session had to be created so that representatives could participate and vote remotely and for public comments to be made by Zoom or over the phone. All in all, it is a session that represents the times.

Despite the times however, local representatives are looking forward with the bills they have sponsored and co-sponsored so far.

Senate Bill 48 “Election Changes” covers amendments made to the election process in New Mexico, which Woods sponsored after being reached out to by constituents this past election season.

“I would like to see if we can change our election laws and give it more transparency,” Woods said. “I had so many complaints on that, probably a couple hundred emails about the last election, and I think that this law that I have could give it more transparency. That is the main one that I would like to do.”

Several of Woods' other sponsored bills involve the climate, from reforestation to weather modification. His focus is to provide funding for projects that would help farmers and ranchers and expand access to weather information.

“We also have a bill that I'm co-sponsoring that's about state meat inspection and state packing plants, and that is trying to help keep some of the beef in New Mexico sold in New Mexico, helping New Mexico customers and helping New Mexico ranchers. That's really important to me,” Woods said.

The meat inspection and packing bills are being backed by many local legislators, including Chatfield and Crowder.

“House Bill 121 creates an office in New Mexico State University to help attract packing houses to our state. If you remember awhile back, one packing house burned and they threatened to close another one because of COVID,” Chatfield said. “All the beef packing houses are basically controlled by three multi-national corporations. If they stop killing cattle then the feedlots don't have any place to go with their cattle … It just kills the cattle market. It really hurt the cattle market in a matter of days this last time.”

What Chatfield and others hope to accomplish though HB 121 is to set up a system that would help organize the production line and resources needed to support mid-sized packing houses and provide New Mexico beef producers with reliable packing options.

“House Bill 33, that would allow for in-state beef inspections. It kind of goes along with the packing one. One of them doesn't require the other, but one of them accentuates the other. And House Bill 33 would set up a system that allows the New Mexico Livestock Board to conduct in-state meat inspection,” Chatfield said.

He explained that in-state meat inspection was cut a few years ago, which meant that small-scale beef producers could not get their cattle slaughtered for resale because it would not be USDA certified.

“This bill would reinstate that so that we could have more meat inspectors and not be totally dependent on the federal government to inspect our beef. Then I could take a beef down, have it killed, inspected by an in-state inspector, and then I could sell that at my local grocery store,” Chatfield said.

Another bill Chatfield is drafting is for a study on elder care in rural New Mexico. He hopes that conducting the study would lead to better elder care and in-home care for rural areas like Northeastern New Mexico and on reservations.

While Crowder is co-sponsoring several bills during the session, he is working on a project close to home as well.

“I'm actually focused on something different. I have co-sponsored a few bills and signed onto several bills but I'm working very hard to get funding lined up to repair the road between Clovis and the Melrose Bombing Range,” he said.

Though he is focused on that project, other legislative issues coming up during their session have caught his attention, especially relating to oil and gas.

“We had a meeting to discuss the impact of an order that put a 60-day moratorium on leases on federal lands, and then that was followed up by an executive order by President Biden. Within that … is language that extends that moratorium indefinitely. So there's very deep concern about funding that would available to the state of New Mexico as a result of some of these efforts,” Crowder said.