Lawmakers and advocates are restarting a years-long campaign to pass paid family and medical leave in the legislative session that begins next week.
At a press conference at the Roundhouse, sponsors of a new bill, as well as advocates, spoke in support of paid leave for people who get sick, have babies, or need to support family members.
Rep. Linda Serrato (D-Santa Fe), said supporting family was key for New Mexicans, mentioning the multigenerational households in her district on Santa Fe's south side.
"It is time for our policies and our budget and our money to reflect these values," she said.
The United States is the only rich country with no guaranteed paid maternity leave. But nationwide, 13 states and the District of Columbia have laws that create paid family and medical leave programs for eligible workers, according to the Department of Labor.
In New Mexico, a long-running debate about how to fund a plan sustainably seems set to continue.
During the last legislative session, Democrats' efforts to pass a paid leave act ran into trouble when the Legislative Finance Committee, or LFC, raised concerns that the proposed framework underestimated the number of people who would take the leave, and that the fund created by the legislation could become insolvent. Democrats as well as Republicans voted against the bill in committee.
This time around, advocates and lawmakers said the draft legislation has several changes, including that the Department of Workforce Solutions do an actuarial analysis of the paid leave program, designed to ensure the state spending is responsible.
Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart (D-Bernalillo) said that the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau gave a presentation to the Legislative Finance Committee since the last legislative session.
"And basically said, this plan is viable, is solid, will be actuarially sound," she said, adding she was hopeful that the LFC would make a different Fiscal Impact Report this year. A representative of the LFC said that the committee had not yet seen the proposed legislation and could not predict what their report would look like.
Sponsors said the bill would be funded by an initial budget appropriation, and then by contributions from employers and employees.
Another representative, Marian Matthews (D-Bernalillo), said she and others planned to sponsor an alternative family and medical leave bill that would be funded by a payroll tax.
"Our bill is really focused a lot on best practices," she said. "Looking at the states that already have done these programs, what they learned from them in terms of doing it and avoiding some of the problems that they experienced."
Matthews said that attempts to negotiate with advocates to produce just one proposed bill had gone nowhere.
