Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, speaks at a news conference on the House floor on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, to discuss the progress lawmakers have made in addressing crime and behavioral health. Nathan Brown/The New Mexican

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, speaks at a news conference on the House floor on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, to discuss the progress lawmakers have made in addressing crime and behavioral health. Nathan Brown/The New Mexican

Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, speaks at a news conference on the House floor on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, to discuss the progress lawmakers have made in addressing crime and behavioral health. Nathan Brown/The New Mexican

By NATHAN BROWN
The Santa Fe New Mexican

Democratic legislative leaders on Saturday celebrated the progress they’ve made on tackling New Mexico’s struggles with crime and behavioral health but promised not to rest on their laurels during the second half of this year’s legislative session.

“We put in the hard work and today we’re seeing the fruits of that labor,” Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, said at a news conference on the House floor.

On Saturday, the House and Senate voted to concur with each other’s amendments to House Bill 8 and Senate Bill 3 respectively, sending both to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk. The former combines six originally separate anti-crime measures, including a major overhaul of criminal competency laws and measures to crack down on shooting threats, fentanyl trafficking, vehicle theft and drunken driving and ban possession of devices to convert semiautomatic firearms into fully automatic ones.

“It reflects the fact that we have listened to the community and made the community’s priorities our priorities,” said House Majority Leader Reena Szczepanski, D-Santa Fe.

Senate Bill 3 would restructure the state’s behavioral health system, creating a “Behavioral Health Executive Committee to oversee the development of regional behavioral health resources and identify service gaps, tailoring solutions to meet local needs,” according to a Saturday news release from Senate Democrats. A related bill to create a trust fund to help pay for behavioral health programs passed the House on Friday after having passed the Senate a week before.

House and Senate leaders praised the process that went into crafting the bills passing now, after a one-day special session in July ended with lawmakers not taking up any of Lujan Grisham’s crime proposals. Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, noted most Republicans in that chamber voted for House Bill 8.

“That reflects what meaningful debate and deliberation yields when we take that time and effort,” he said.

With a little less than a month left in this year’s 60-day session, Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said the state Children, Youth and Families Department will be a major focus of the next few weeks. Several CYFD-related bills are working their way through the process, including ones to vest oversight of the department in an independent commission, improve the agency’s data collection, increase oversight and strengthen plans of care for newborns exposed to drugs.

“You cannot talk about public safety without talking about reforming CYFD,” said House Speaker Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque. He connected the issue to juvenile justice, noting that many horrific crimes are committed by children who have been failed by their parents and the state.

Lujan Grisham and Republicans have criticized the crime package for not going far enough and have said lawmakers should do more before the session is over. Martínez said lawmakers plan to keep working on the issue, but he wouldn’t say which bills in particular he wants to see passed, saying they should go through the committee process.

“We’re not in the business of passing legislation just to score points or just to get on the 5 p.m. newscast,” he said.

Republicans have been calling on the state to sentence some serious youthful offenders more harshly and introduced amendments to House Bill 8 in both the House and the Senate to accomplish that which were voted down. Martínez indicated the issue would continue to be discussed.

“That bill is in committee and I think it’ll get its fair hearing,” he said.