New Mexico lawmakers have been hustling some bills through the chamber in these waning days of the legislative session.
The legislative pace has certainly picked up this week, with just today and tomorrow morning left in the 60-day session.
On Wednesday, the House passed Senate Bill 21, which gives New Mexico authority over permitting and protecting its own streams.
Court rulings in recent years had rolled back federal clean water protections, and New Mexico is on the verge of joining most other U.S. states in establishing its own process for protecting its streams.
Senate Majority Leader has said that he and his colleagues fought to reclaim “primacy” over its own waters after controversy exploded in the wake of the Bishop's Lodge resort’s announcement last year that it planned to release treated wastewater into Tesuque Creek.
The Senate Floor session last night ended just before 1 a.m. this morning.
The last bill the chamber acted on in the wee hours of the morning was House Bill 255, designed to expand access to resources for juveniles transitioning out of detention.
It was crafted to include referrals made by the Children Youth and Families Department to reduce recidivism.
Senators debated the measure for about 90 minutes before voting it down 13 to 24.
The bill split the Democrats with some voting in the affirmative, some in the negative.
Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez gave voice to one of the objections, an expansion of the definition of “youthful offender” to include voluntary manslaughter.
“A voluntary manslaughter is specifically the kind of crime that is not about intention to kill," said Sedillo Lopez.
"That there is some 14-year-old that could be treated like an adult in a juvenile system—which is supposed to be about rehabilitation and about helping our young survive—is one reason that I simply cannot support this bill.”
As of this morning, HB-255 is one of five bills that have thus far died. One hundred-five bills out of the 1,182 measures introduced have passed.
