Senate OKs paid family leave bill

Michelle Lujan Grisham will sign it into law.

“The governor is always interested in policies that ensure workers’ rights while continuing to foster a healthy and supportive business climate,” Maddy Hayden, the governor’s spokeswoman, wrote in an email.

“In 2021, she was proud to champion The Healthy Workplaces Act,” Hayden added, referring to a bill requiring private employers to provide paid sick leave to their workers. “We are closely following this legislation as it moves and are evaluating amendments as they are made by the Legislature.”

Sen. Bill Sharer, R-Farmington, introduced a handful of amendments, all of which the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected.

Among Sharer’s proposals: allowing businesses to opt into the program.

If the program was as good as the sponsors said it would be, Sharer argued, they would join voluntarily.

“Why not allow freedom as opposed to the bashing and twisting and forcing of actions?” Sharer asked. “This is going to bash us into submission because obviously small business owners in New Mexico are just too stupid to know what’s good for them.”

Sharer also proposed moving the threshold for employers to be exempt from participating from five employees to 50, as well as reducing the amount of leave workers would be eligible to take from 12 weeks to six weeks.

“Everybody still has to pay taxes,” he said. “Tax increase on everybody in New Mexico. Extra burden still on all the new businesses and small businesses. All of that still exists just like we want.”

A fiscal impact report on SB 11 said initial cost assumptions may have been too low and projected “potential risk for fund insolvency” in a few years, a concern raised by Muñoz, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.

“I can’t figure out where we’re really going to be on the fund, and if we’re going to do this, we need to make sure that we create funds that are stable, that people can use,” he said. “I think stability is the No. 1 thing that this fund needs.”

Ivey-Soto wrote in a text message after the meeting he supports paid family leave.

But, he wrote, some of the definitions in SB 11 don’t align with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

“In addition,” he wrote, “I am concerned that the formula for the fund is overly optimistic and we will have to bail out the fund within a few years, followed by having to raise the assessment going forward. Had either or both of those issues been worked out, I would have enthusiastically voted for the bill.”