Heath Haussamen
Disclosure: State Rep. Sarah Silva, D-Las Cruces, is my spouse. Our family would benefit from legislative pay. Read about my commitment to transparency when I have a personal interest in what I’m writing about by clicking here.
Every year the N.M. Legislature convenes in the dead of winter in a town in the mountains. We’ve done this since the beginning. So in spite of the lore of the Roundhouse, I question whether the Legislature was ever designed to serve citizens.
We call it a “citizen legislature” because we don’t pay our state representatives and senators. Some say, proudly, that this means we’re not represented by career politicians.
But the same people who decided that our lawmakers wouldn’t receive a salary also determined where and when to hold sessions — back when winter travel was much less reliable than it is now.
Today, hundreds of elected officials, lobbyists and state staffers make their way to the Roundhouse to debate, influence and decide the direction of our state. Some constituents go too, but as has always been the case, the vastness of New Mexico is a barrier for most.
The Roundhouse is literally filled with people whose profession is influencing politics and policy.
The Roundhouse was not accessible for the majority of folks for most of our state’s history — really until we forced webcasting on the resistant culture there 15 or so years ago.
Today you can watch proceedings online and ask questions during public input from your home. This is one of the best changes I’ve ever seen to increase government accessibility.
But it’s not enough. It’s time to take another step towards a Legislature that better serves people. We need to pay our state lawmakers.
Nearly two decades of debate
Lawmakers have been engaged in an ongoing debate about this issue for at least 19 years, ever since former state Sen. Leonard “Lee” Rawson, a Republican from Las Cruces, proposed a constitutional amendment in 2006 that would have created a salary for state legislators equal to 15 percent of the pay for federal lawmakers. Today that would be $26,100.
“There are a lot of people in my district who could do every bit as good a job as I believe I’m doing, but can’t simply because they’re too busy taking care of their responsibilities,” Rawson told me back then.
Rawson’s proposal died without receiving a hearing, but it helped start a discussion that was furthered when former Gov. Bill Richardson’s ethics task force considered the idea later that year. We’re having the same debate all this time later because a handful of powerful lawmakers keep blocking the proposal.
This year the legislation is Senate Joint Resolution 1. Voters alone have the ability to amend the N.M. Constitution, which is what currently prohibits lawmakers from receiving a salary. The Legislature’s only role is determining whether to give voters the chance to decide.
The resolution would ask New Mexicans in the next election whether to create an independent, bipartisan commission of nine members of the public. Those folks, not lawmakers, would be responsible for setting salaries.
The only state that doesn’t pay
New Mexico is the only state that doesn’t pay its representatives and senators. Given today’s economy, that means the Legislature is not representative of New Mexicans. Few working-class people and parents of small children can afford to serve. Retirees, business owners and lawyers have a much easier time serving than so many other folks.
Because the Legislature lacks a more diverse range of voices, too many of our elected officials lose touch with the people they serve.
Some are also juggling legislative work with a job that pays their bills, and they’re stretched thin. This does not create optimal conditions for people to effectively address our state’s very serious challenges.
We’ve made some progress in recent years. The Legislature has beefed up its staff. It is doing a better job of producing and analyzing data and providing constituent services.
But that hasn’t changed New Mexico’s reality. We need additional reform.
It’s time to modernize
We need the Legislature to be more thoughtful and deliberative, more flexible and responsive to what’s happening. We need it to meet more than 60 days one year and 30 the next to keep up with the speed at which society moves today.
Many legislators can’t afford more time than they’re putting in now, so we can’t change that unless we pay them.
“One of the first things any growing community will do when it has the resources is to convert volunteer services to paid, or salaried ones,” former state Rep. Terry McMillan, another Republican from Las Cruces, wrote in 2016 in a guest column for the news website I used to run, NMPolitics.net. He named firefighters, police officers, health-care workers and teachers among those we prefer to pay.
That’s because, McMillan asserted, “we rightly expect increased reliability, productivity, and professionalism when we pay for services as opposed to them being provided voluntarily.” He also wrote that as a community grows, “the complexity of meeting the community’s needs increases beyond what volunteerism can be expected to supply.”
‘They like the status quo’
Ten years after Rawson’s failed attempt, McMillan was sponsoring another proposed constitutional amendment to let voters decide the pay question. His proposal, which would have paid a salary equal to the state’s median household income, $60,980 in 2023, also went nowhere.
Nine years after McMillan’s unsuccessful attempt, there’s a heavy push this year to finally send a constitutional amendment to voters. State Rep. Angelica Rubio, a Democrat from Las Cruces, is one of the sponsors of this year’s effort. She has proposed a constitutional amendment to pay lawmakers every year she’s been in office. In 2023 her legislation passed the House but died in the Senate.
In an interview with the Las Cruces Bulletin, Rubio said some legislators who oppose pay view the job “as an aristocratic type of thing” and “think they’re maybe smarter and understand policies better.”
“They already see how our legislature is changing: We are electing more women. We’re electing more women of color,” Rubio said. “And for some, they don’t want to see that. They like the status quo.”
My personal experience
I’ve been writing positively about the idea of paying legislators for nearly two decades. But this year, for the first time, it’s personal. My spouse, Sarah Silva, is an elected state representative. She is part of the changing demographics of the Legislature, and we would obviously benefit from a salary.
The insight I’m gaining this year because Sarah is in office only strengthens my belief that we need to do this. Sarah and I are small-business owners. Our children are teens and more independent than they used to be. We fall into the category of folks who can afford to serve, but only barely.
It would not have been possible for us even a few years ago. Figuring out how to do this financially was a hell of a stretch for us, and it required help from family members.
Sarah is currently in Santa Fe for the 60-day session and serves on the busiest committee, Appropriations and Finance. She’s juggling helping create a state budget that’s more than $10 billion with doing the work that pays our family’s bills.
All she did during her first week in session was work and sleep. It will only get busier as the session progresses.
These are not optimal conditions for doing the people’s work. Paying Sarah would benefit her constituents because she’d be able to devote more time to the work they elected her to do.
New Mexicans deserve change
What’s difficult for Sarah would be impossible for so many others. And yet, we’d craft better legislation if more minimum-wage workers, for example, had voices and votes during deliberations.
As McMillan wrote in 2016, “New Mexico is a relatively small, rural state, but is no longer a part of the ‘frontier.’ New Mexicans, I believe, are sophisticated enough to know that their interests are best represented by an inclusive, motivated, professional, 21st century legislature.”
I agree. Over and over, people in House District 53 respond with shock when they learn that Sarah isn’t paid to represent them. Folks work hard for their money, and they believe she should be paid for her work, too.
New Mexicans understand that when they don’t pay their own legislators, someone else will. They understand that our Legislature is dominated by lobbyists and other powerful interests. They want that to change.
Frankly, they deserve that change. The current system is undemocratic. It’s time for those who have been standing in the way of legislative-pay proposals to step aside.