Paid family leave advances, narrowly, to Senate floor
Opponents portray idea as anti-business
SANTA FE — A proposal to launch a state-run New Mexico paid family leave program is headed to the Senate floor, despite fierce opposition from business groups and Republican legislators who described it as a tax on workers and employers alike.
After a three-hour hearing, the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday voted 6-5 to approve the measure, Senate Bill 11, creating a new state fund that would make payments to employees who take time off for the birth of a child or to attend to serious medical situations for themselves or family members.
Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, the committee’s chairman, voted with the panel’s four Republican members against the bill, saying he had concerns about the fund’s future solvency and the legality of taking payroll deductions from employees before they were eligible to take paid leave.
Others offered sharper criticism.
“We want to be compassionate,” said Sen. William Sharer, R-Farmington. “We just don’t want to have our hands tied about how compassionate we have to be.”
But backers insisted the bill had been thoroughly vetted and said it could actually help businesses by providing a level playing field across the state.
“We want employees to want to go back to work,” said Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, who is one of the bill’s sponsors.
This year’s proposal, officially called the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act, was crafted with feedback from a task force featuring advocacy groups, business owners and labor union representatives that met last summer and issued a final report in October.
It would require both employers and their workers to start making regular payments into the state fund in 2025, though businesses with fewer than five employees would be exempted. That fund would then be used to compensate employees who qualify for paid leave, starting in 2026.
New Mexico lawmakers recently enacted a separate paid sick leave law — it took effect last year — and some business groups said the cumulative effect of the policies could prompt some small employers to leave the state.
“If you pass this bill, New Mexico will become more corporate and less unique,” said Terri Cole, the president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.
However, Stewart said about two-thirds of the state’s roughly 44,000 businesses with more than one employee would not have to pay into the leave fund, though their workers would have to do so.
Meanwhile, several skeptics of the bill cited a recent Legislative Finance Committee analysis that said last year’s task force likely underestimated how many people would file to take paid family leave under the proposed law.
Specifically, the bill analysis projected the fund could face a $516 million deficit by the 2028 budget year — a figure that could cause the state Workforce Solutions Department to order an increase in the premium amount that businesses and employees would have to pay into the fund.
But backers of the bill have disputed the analysis, saying it relies on U.S. Department of Labor surveys about the federal Family and Medical Leave Act — which requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in certain circumstances — and not on other states’ experiences with paid family leave laws.
Sen. Siah Correa Hemphill, D-Silver City, who was one of two senators to vote remotely Thursday under a Senate rule that allows members who have tested positive for COVID-19 to participate from afar, referenced her experiences as a mother and said the proposal would help women in particular.
“This bill will protect women in the workplace,” said Hemphill, who cited data showing only 53.2% of New Mexico women age 16 and older held jobs over a recent five-year period.
Some New Mexico employers already provide paid family leave, and could decide whether to join the state program, as long as they offer similar benefits. That list includes the University of New Mexico, Netflix and the state of New Mexico, under a 2019 executive order issued by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
But the Democratic governor has not taken a stance on this year’s bill, with a spokeswoman saying this month she was evaluating the proposal.