Pay our legislators and demand ethical behavior: Support Constitutional Amendment 4

By Sherry Robinson | All She Wrote

After years of debate, voters will have the chance to weigh in on a paid Legislature in Constitutional Amendment 4. In all the pros and cons so far, however, nobody has raised the big question: Who benefits by having volunteer legislators?

Supporters (mostly Democrats) have long maintained that paying lawmakers would open the field to people who can’t afford to serve now. In rural areas, I would add, the candidates are often the only people who can afford to be without a paycheck during legislative sessions. Paying lawmakers would make races more competitive and recognize the time they put in all year long. 

Opponents (mostly Republicans) argue that it rewards lawmakers for not solving the state’s problems and prompts some candidates to run just for the paycheck.

Since 2023 New Mexico has been the last state in the nation with an unpaid Legislature, an outlier status we’ve held for years. Opponents have defeated ballot measures many times, and legislators themselves have often been opposed.

It’s time to ask who benefits from this arrangement? One answer is: People who can reap the unpaid benefits and connections of being a legislator.

Lawyers, for example. In private practice they can arrange their own schedules, and the perception of being connected brings more clients in the door. The higher they rank in the legislative hierarchy, the greater the benefit. This has been true since I first covered the Roundhouse in the days when Raymond Sanchez and Manny Aragon were House and Senate honchos. It’s no accident that the same leadership roles are still held by lawyers; if you could peer into the books of the House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader you would probably find they’ve done well for themselves.

Add to this category self-employed folks, such as real estate and insurance agents, marketers, consultants and the like. How many deals come their way because they have access to people and information? 

A second category of people who benefit are those who work for large organizations that enable them to serve because it benefits the organization. 

One example is Sheryl Williams Stapleton, the former House Majority Leader whose corruption trial just ended. Stapleton worked for Albuquerque Public Schools. For years, Stapleton and APS were the 800-pound gorilla in any education debate, and she was effectively an APS lobbyist. The outcomes didn’t necessarily favor smaller districts. I covered such stories.

Not every lawmaker is self-serving, of course, but our current system makes us dependent on “volunteers” who may have irons in the fire. Who, exactly, are they serving? As former Sen. Dede Feldman wrote in 2014, “Almost every day, legislators are called upon to vote on issues that have a financial effect on them.”

Conflicts of interest have always been with us, but in recent years it seems worse.

The most egregious was the trial lawyers’ 2021 change in state law that targeted doctors, clinics and hospitals. Trial lawyers tried to kill the medical malpractice reform bill; failing that because of public outrage, they severely limited the reform. And one doctor-suing trial lawyer killed bills to ease our doctor shortage before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by another trial lawyer who sues doctors. That same chairman persuaded his buddy, the Senate Majority Leader, to carry a bill creating a new judgeship to hear the rising tide of medical malpractice and personal injury cases. That would have cost taxpayers more than $450,000. It died on bad publicity.

I’ve been shocked at how blatant and shameless it all is. Aren’t they required to recuse themselves when they have a conflict? 

In a new report from the nonpartisan, good-government group Think New Mexico, we learn there are no rules. The state Constitution gives each legislative chamber the power to regulate voting and recusal. Not only that, the chamber insists on a vote even when conflicts are apparent. 

“New Mexico’s approach is at odds with the practices of most other states,” according to the report. And the group’s survey in August found that 81% of New Mexico voters wanted legislators to recuse themselves when they had a conflict of interest.

Ethics experts have told us for some time now that unpaid legislative service and conflicts of interest go hand in hand; in New Mexico we wink at bad behavior because they work for free. “The volunteer status of New Mexico’s legislature has long ben cited as the primary reason for the state’s relatively lax approach to ethical requirements,” the report says.

In other words, if we were paying them, we would insist on ethical standards.

The full proposal calls for a salary of about $67,800, the state’s gross median annual household income, beginning in 2029. That’s about $7.6 million a year. The amount would be adjusted annually. It may be a median, but in this state that sounds like a lot of money for alternating 60- and 30-day sessions and interim meetings. And the salary would be on top of per diem and pension benefits. Opponents don’t like it.

But let’s remember that this is just part of needed reforms. Sixty days are inadequate to hear and vet complex bills, and 30 days are a bad joke. Other states pay their legislators and hold longer sessions. 

Constituents are fed up. I believe the same public outrage can fuel the entire reform. As I’ve said before, slapdash governance from unpaid lawmakers during short sessions is one of the reasons New Mexico stays poor.

Sherry Robinson is a long time New Mexico journalist and historian. She's worked for the Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Tribune, Gallup Independent and New Mexico Business Weekly, among other papers. Her most recent books are I Fought a Good Fight: A History of the Lipan Apaches and James Silas Calhoun: First Governor of New Mexico Territory and First Indian Agent. Read her columns at nmopinions.com.

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