By DANIEL J. CHACÓN & ROBERT NOTT 
The Santa Fe New Mexican

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham hasn’t made much use of her pen this legislative session.

With only about a day and a half before the session ends, lawmakers were feverishly debating a number of bills Tuesday night with the hope of getting them over the finish line and onto the governor’s desk for her signature.

So far, their record is nothing to brag about.

As of 6 o’clock Tuesday, only 35 pieces of legislation out of 777 bills, memorials and resolutions filed before and during the 30-day session had made their way past both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Of those, just three — one to update the state’s high school graduation requirements, one to raise salaries for New Mexico Supreme Court justices and one funding the legislative session — had been signed by the governor, whose own priorities have failed to gain traction, not just in the form of legislation but within the state’s massive $10.22 billion proposed budget.

Days before the start of the session, Lujan Grisham unveiled what she called the “largest, most comprehensive package“ of public safety bills in the history of the Legislature and said she felt “very confident“ she had the support of Democrats, who control both chambers.

“But we’ll have to wait and see,” she cautioned at the time.

Of the 21 public safety bills included in the package, only one had cleared both chambers by Tuesday night — a seven-day wait to purchase a firearm. A Senate measure prohibiting firearms within 100 feet of a polling place passed the House late Tuesday but will need to return to the Senate for a concurrence vote after an amendment was added on the House floor.

Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, (D-Santa Fe), said he spent a lot of time Tuesday with the governor, who “expressed concern about the crime package.”

Some of those bills would reach the Senate floor after making it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, he said, predicting the pace would pick up in the final stretch of the session.

“I’m feeling cautiously optimistic as we count down the final hours,” he said. “I think when we come up for air on Thursday at noon, I am hoping that we’re going to be able to have a list of accomplishments. We’ve done some really good things for New Mexicans [so far] and so I think there’s a lot to be proud of at the end of the day. We just got to put the final pieces in place.”

“The clock is ticking, and I urge legislators to act on behalf of the New Mexicans they serve,” the governor said in a statement noting House Bill 129, which creates the mandatory seven-day wait to purchase guns, had passed the House on a concurrence vote late Monday night and was sent to her desk. She hadn’t yet signed it Tuesday.

Other bills awaiting her signature Tuesday included one changing the number of hours of training required for school board members and one creating a state meat inspection program.

Despite lots of action, including committee hearings and weekend and late-night sessions, Meredith Machen, projects director and education chair of the League of Women Voters of New Mexico wrote in an email her group is “very concerned about the extremely slow pace of this short session. Too much time has been spent debating the details in legislation and arguing for floor amendments that make no difference in how they will ultimately vote on the measures themselves.

“This game-playing tactic is disingenuous and extremely disappointing because it prevents the body from engaging in meaningful debate on well vetted bills that now will die because the clock will run out before they are heard,” she added.

Wirth said he wouldn’t call the pace of the session slow.

“We’re trying to do a whole range of things in a 30-day window, which is a very tight timeframe,” he said. “What I have really tried to do is prioritize the must-pass bills,“ including the state’s $10.22 billion spending plan, which is headed to the governor, and a proposed tax package.

Rep. Andrea Romero, (D-Santa Fe), said 30-day sessions are “really, really tough.”

“Every minute counts in a 30-day,” she said. “It’s just crazy.”

Romero said there may be disappointment more bills didn’t pass both chambers.

“But we still have a lot of time,” she said.

Romero sponsored one of the most contentious bills of the session, the waiting period on gun sales, although a proposed 14-day wait was cut in half to seven. She said she expected at least one other bill she sponsored to reach the governor’s desk.

“That’s a huge victory,” she said.

Sen. Jeff Steinborn, (D-Las Cruces), acknowledged not a large number of bills had been passed by the Legislature but said the measures that have are of “big substance.”

“We’d all love to get more of our bills passed, that’s for sure,” he said.

Asked whether lawmakers bit off more than they could chew this session, Steinborn said his philosophy is that “you gotta go for it.”

“You never know if it’s your last session, so there’s no time like the present to try to accomplish some of these big ideas,” he said. “You have to be an eternal optimist in the legislative process because things always seem like pushing a rock uphill.”

The 30-day sessions are supposed to be focused on building and approving a budget for the coming fiscal year, but this year’s session included a number of crime, education, water, energy, and oil and gas industry bills.

Some lawmakers interviewed earlier in the session said they feel a lot of non-budget bills “clutter up” the session, slowing things down, as Sen. Bill Sharer, (R-Farmington), put it. 

“I’m always a little bit upset when we just keep piling on things,” he said, adding he hopes a lot of initiatives pitched by both major parties don’t get anywhere “because this should be a budget session.”

Rep. Tara Lujan, (D-Santa Fe), said midway through the session, when there were already over 500 pieces of legislation introduced, she did not “like to see that many bills filed.”

She said it’s an indication that “yes, we’re going to get stuck.”

As for what to expect in the last day and a half of the session, Sen. Greg Nibert, (R-Roswell), said in many ways the balance of power shifts to the minority party, which can use the legislative rules to debate for three hours on the House side and with no limits on the Senate side. 

Citing gun safety bills that have raised issues of constitutional violations, he said his party has “done a pretty good job of trying to derail” many of them.

And not, he added, without the help of some Democrats, who control both chambers with huge majorities and can choose to slow down bills on their own. 

Sen. Craig Brandt, (R-Rio Rancho), said one of the reasons more bills, including several controversial gun-control measures, haven’t reached the governor’s desk is because it’s an election year for all 112 lawmakers in the House and Senate.

“It’s a lot easier to hold someone accountable from six months ago than it is from 3 1/2 years ago,” he said.

Machen said her group has its eyes focused on pushing for ways to ensure more progress on future sessions. She said the league “will be working in the interim to recommend rule changes used by other legislatures to ensure adequate, rather than excessive, debate occurs. The people of New Mexico are not well served when time is not used wisely. We cannot address our serious problems unless we have a much more efficient legislative process.”

Steinborn said while the clock is winding down, and fast, lawmakers can’t give up hope. 

“The moment you get pessimistic, you just throw in the towel,” he said. “Everybody’s fighting to get their agendas through. I’m the same. You win some, and you lose some.”