Jordan Garcia, alongside students from West Las Vegas, dance to La Bamba while practicing for their performance later in the day outside of the Capitol building on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. Gabriela Campos/The New Mexican
The Santa Fe New Mexican
Capital outlay bill: The Senate Finance Committee Thursday morning unanimously approved a bill to rein in the problem of billions of dollars going unspent in capital outlay.
House Bill 247, sponsored by Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, limits reauthorizations for capital projects.
A growing backlog of projects and unspent funds has been a concern for lawmakers for years. The bill passed out of the House on a 48-20 vote earlier this week.
The committee chair, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, said the change is overdue. “I mean, we have $7 billion sitting in that parking lot, and it’s not doing anybody any good,” he said.
The city of Santa Fe has been trying to convince state lawmakers to reauthorize $1.7 million in unspent state capital outlay for a range of projects, from road construction to affordable housing and police equipment.
Freshman hazing: Sen. Rex Wilson, an Ancho Republican who was appointed to the vacant District 33 Senate seat just before the start of the session, got his first bill through the chamber Thursday — but not before his colleagues had a bit of fun with him.
Senate Bill 21 would require issuers of Medicare supplement policies to offer a yearly 60-day open enrollment period to policyholders age 65 and older, starting on the first day of a policyholder’s birthday month.
Wilson’s colleagues from both parties asked him increasingly nonsensical questions about the bill. A line of questioning about the birthday month provision from Sen. Angel Charley, D-Acoma, revealed Wilson is a Capricorn. Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, claimed he had received 100 emails from Wilson’s Lincoln County hometown of Ancho opposing the bill. Wilson implied those emails might have come from his four-legged constituents.
“It’s the springtime of the year and in Ancho, N.M., we’re having a burst of our baby calves coming and in Ancho, N.M., they all vote,” he said.
The bill initially failed 9-27.
“Might have been better off keeping Sen. [Liz] Stefanics [D-Cerrillos] as the lead sponsor on that,” quipped Lt. Gov. Howie Morales.
Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer, “reluctantly having voted with the majority,” then moved to reconsider and SB 21 passed 36-0, a show of bipartisan support that pleased Aging Department Cabinet Secretary Emily Kaltenbach.
“Medicare should provide peace of mind, not uncertainty,” she said in a statement after the vote. “This bill modernizes our Medigap protections and brings New Mexico in line with a growing number of states working to ensure Medicare beneficiaries have greater flexibility and security.”
Tax tweaks pass: Nothing can be said to be certain except death and the tax code cleanup bill.
The annual measure, which this year goes by House Bill 291, passed that chamber 59-8 Thursday afternoon. It contains a number of tweaks, according to a news release from the state Taxation and Revenue Department, including addressing “loopholes in the film tax credit and clarifies the technology jobs and research and development tax credit and the tobacco products tax, ensuring these tax programs work as intended.”
It also lets the department — which includes the Motor Vehicle Division — “round tax amounts due to the nearest five cents in accordance with the federal elimination of the penny. “
“I am proud to sponsor this year’s tax code cleanup bill,” Lente, the sponsor and chair of the House Taxation and Revenue Committee, said in a statement. “We need to do everything we can to make New Mexico’s tax code clear and fair.”
House Republicans slammed the majority for voting down an amendment proposed by Rep. Mark Duncan, R-Kirtland, that would have made a number of changes including getting rid of taxes on tips, overtime pay and social security plus additional tax cuts and credits.
“House Democrats love to talk about helping working families, but when it comes time to actually vote for real relief, they always say no,” Duncan said in a statement. “They protected big government spending and bureaucracy at the expense of everyday people.”
License plate privacy guardrails: A bill limiting the sharing of information gathered by automated license plate readers is headed to the House.
Senate Bill 40 passed that chamber on a 32-8 vote Thursday afternoon, with the Democrats in favor and the Republicans split. The next stop for the Driver and Safety Privacy Act the House Judiciary Committee.
The bill would ban the sale or sharing of automated license plate reader data to third parties if the user has a reasonable belief it could be used for immigration enforcement; to investigate or punish “a protected health care activity,” which would include abortion or transgender care; or to aid with efforts to punish someone based on their “participation in activities protected by the United States constitution or the constitution of New Mexico, including assembly, petitioning and speech.”
Bill sponsor Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth has backed greater guardrails around license plate readers for the past several years. He said he was prompted to introduce the bill when the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico learned through a records request that “out-of-state private entities were accessing this information from New Mexico license plates to look into women’s health care decisions” as well as immigration cases.
Wirth, D-Santa Fe, said he has “come full circle” on the use of the readers by police and understands they are an important tool. He noted several law enforcement agencies support the bill.
“Nothing in this bill limits the use of this data for law enforcement purposes,” he said.
Co-sponsor Sen. Cindy Nava, D-Bernalillo, said the bill would “ensure our laws reflect our values and our constitutional obligations in the face of modern surveillance technology.” She noted her brother, a police officer in Illinois, was “really a fan of the regulations we’re putting in place.”
Quote of the day: “I know I have red hair but I did not do that, Madame President.” — Sen. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, after a fire alarm triggered a brief evacuation of the Capitol in the middle of a Senate floor debate.