When the legislature adjourned last month, some urgent business was left unfinished: joining eight interstate compacts for health care workers.
While Senate Bill 1 was passed to bring New Mexico into the doctor compact, bills to join compacts for psychologists, counselors, EMTs, physician’s assistants, speech therapists and audiologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and dentists died in Senate Committees after passing the House unanimously.
As we wrote in a recent opinion editorial, New Mexicans need these compacts now: students with learning disabilities are waiting a year or more for appointments with speech therapists as their conditions worsen; 845,000 New Mexicans live in an area with fewer than one behavioral health care provider per 30,000 residents; and New Mexico needs an additional 2,326 EMTs just to meet national benchmarks.
Along with increasing access to care, there is also federal money at stake. In New Mexico’s successful application for $211 million in federal funding for rural hospitals, the state pledged to join four compacts: for physicians, physician assistants (PAs), EMTs, and psychologists. During the session, the Chief Medical Officer of the New Mexico Health Care Authority testified that the agency is concerned that some of that $211 million could be clawed back if the PA, EMT, and psychologist compacts are not passed this year. The state also stands to lose out on additional money from the next round of federal funding this fall.
So we are urging Governor Lujan Grisham to convene a special session to pass the rest of the compacts this year. The governor has consistently supported the compacts, as has the House, which passed them unanimously in 2025 and 2026. The key is getting enough state senators on board.
Please join us in emailing your lawmakers and urging them to support passing the compacts in a special session this year!
During the 2026 legislative session, Think New Mexico successfully advocated for the passage of five major reforms:
- House Bill 30, which increases the stipend for teacher residencies, making it more feasible for incoming teachers to participate in this high-quality teacher training. Read more about this reform.
- A record $13 million in this year’s budget bill (House Bill 2) for the Strategic Water Reserve, a water management tool that Think New Mexico spearheaded the development of two decades ago to keep more water in New Mexico’s rivers. Read more about this reform.
Think New Mexico also successfully opposed the passage of Senate Bill 309, which proposed to repeal the law guaranteeing that 30% of lottery revenues must go to the scholarship fund, replacing it with a flat distribution of $45 million per year. Read more about this issue.
Earlier this year a dark money group called “New Mexico Safety Over Profit” (NMSOP) was sued by the state Ethics Commission for refusing to comply with the state law that required them to disclose the sources of their funding. NMSOP was the public face of the opposition to Think New Mexico’s proposed reforms to the medical malpractice law during the last legislative session.
NMSOP was adamant that they would not reveal their donors, telling the investigative news outlet Searchlight New Mexico: “We certainly will not be disclosing our donors, nor do we have to.”
NMSOP has now done just that.
In order to settle the 73-page legal action filed by the New Mexico Ethics Commission, NMSOP is paying a $5,000 fine, the maximum amount authorized for violations of the Lobbyist Regulation Act, and releasing their full list of donors.
So who was secretly funding this dark money group?
As it turns out, 100% of their donors are trial lawyers, law firms, and one paralegal. Over 74% of their donors are current board members or past presidents of the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association (which is itself listed as a donor). You can see the full list here: sorted alphabetically by donor or sorted by donation amount.
Thanks to the New Mexico Ethics Commission, the public now knows that NMSOP is a front group for the trial lawyer’s lobby, which is focused on protecting the financial interests of its members. Reforms that Think New Mexico has proposed—like capping attorney’s fees in medical malpractice lawsuits—would put more money in patients’ pockets but would reduce the amount of money going to their attorneys.
A dark money group, New Mexico Safety over Profits (NMSOP), with deep ties to the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association, attacked Think New Mexico in a recent opinion piece in the Santa Fe New Mexican.
That opinion piece is filled with some wild, over the top conspiracy theories (you can read it here, with our annotations and corrections). You can read our response in the Santa Fe New Mexican at this link.
You can also read the 73-page lawsuit against NMSOP that was filed by the New Mexico Ethics Commission over NMSOP’s refusal to disclose its donors, as well as an investigative piece by Searchlight New Mexico on NMSOP’s misleading practices.
During the 2025 legislative session, Think New Mexico successfully championed the passage of five major reforms:
- Senate Bill 88, which creates a permanent trust fund for Medicaid. The fund will receive recurring revenue until it grows to $2 billion, allowing the state to increase the rates it pays providers to care for patients insured by Medicaid. Read more about this reform.
- House Bill 14, an omnibus tax bill that includes a repeal of the gross receipts tax on coinsurance, on top of the existing deduction for co-pays and deductibles. This will reduce state taxes on medical services by nearly $50 million annually. Read more about this reform.
- House Bill 157, which will raise the standards for principal training by creating a separate licensure track for school principals with enhanced mentoring and other support. Read more about this reform.
- House Bill 156, which ensures that New Mexico teachers will be trained in the best practices for how to effectively teach students how to read. Read more about this reform.
- Senate Bill 37, which enhances the Strategic Water Reserve, a water management tool that Think New Mexico first developed two decades ago to keep a little more water in New Mexico’s rivers. Read more about this reform.
Think New Mexico has just released a new report proposing a ten-point plan with 20 separate legislative recommendations to address the urgent crisis of New Mexico’s health care worker shortage! Click here to read more about the reforms we’re proposing.
If you like what you read and you’d like to be part of this effort to revitalize public schools in New Mexico, please contact your legislators and the governor and urge them to enact these reforms during the upcoming 2025 legislative session!
In 2024, Think New Mexico is celebrating its first quarter-century! Check out our latest annual report for for a timeline of the results we have achieved through the years as well as updates on our policy reform initiatives. Click here to download the annual report.
During the 2024 legislative session, 54 education-related bills were introduced, just four of which made it through the process and were signed into law. One of those bills was Senate Bill 137, which enacted the reforms proposed in Think New Mexico’s Education Roadmap report to upgrade the training and transparency of the state’s school boards. Read more about this reform.
While we were unsuccessful in getting a one-semester course in financial literacy included in the high school graduation requirements for all students, we are now reaching out to each of New Mexico’s 89 school districts and urging them to adopt financial literacy as one of the two graduation requirements that they have to establish at the local level. We are joined in this effort by a broad-based and growing coalition.
In addition, the 2024 capital outlay bill included an additional $1 million for the Strategic Water Reserve, the water management tool that Think New Mexico successfully championed nearly two decades ago to keep our rives running to prevent conflicts over endangered species and interstate river compacts. The 2024-2025 budget also extended the timeline for the $7,500,000 appropriation to the Strategic Water Reserve from last year, allowing it to be expended through 2028. Read more about this reform.
The 2024 legislative session is underway, and we are working to enact more of the potentially transformative education reforms we proposed in our 2022 policy report, A Roadmap for Rethinking Public Education in New Mexico. Here are brief summaries of the bills we are currently working on, with links to our Action Center so you can easily contact your legislators and the governor about any of them:
- Upgrade the training and transparency of local school boards. We are advocating for Senate Bill 137, which would upgrade the training and transparency requirements of local school boards. A growing body of research has found that the decisions and actions of local school boards can positively impact the learning environment when school boards are focused on elevating student achievement. Read more about this reform and email your legislators and the governor to urge them to pass it!
- Reduce elementary school classes sizes. We are supporting House Bill 227 to phase in a cap of 20 students in grades K-6, one grade per year over six years. Smaller class sizes enhance the positive impacts of extended learning time by allowing teachers to spend more time with each student and provide more personalized instruction. They also reduce teacher stress and burnout, keeping more good teachers in the profession. Read more about this reform and email your legislators and the governor to urge them to pass it!
- Make personal finance a high school graduation requirement. Today, only 11% of students complete this course, but every student needs to learn essential skills like how to make a budget, open a bank account, save and invest for their futures, and avoid high-cost debt. We are urging lawmakers to include a one-semester class in financial literacy in the high school graduation requirements. Read more about this reform and email your legislators and the governor about it!
- Ensure high-quality teacher preparation programs. We are advocating for House Bill 256, which would set high standards for the state’s public colleges of education. The number of people completing traditional teacher training programs at New Mexico’s colleges of education has fallen by 75% over the past decade, and graduates report that the programs too often emphasize abstract theory over the practical, skills-based learning that is most valuable to future teachers. House Bill 256 would convert the final year of a four-year program into a teacher residency, a paid year-long experience in a classroom teaching alongside a master teacher. It would also ensure that they are offering evidence-based curricula that reflects the current best practices in areas like math and reading instruction. Read more about this reform and email your legislators and the governor to urge them to pass it!
- Improve school principal pay and training. Principal quality is the second most most important factor after teacher quality in student success, because good principals are the key to recruiting and retaining good teachers. Unfortunately, New Mexico is one of the ten worst states for principal retention, with principals remaining in their jobs for less than four years on average. Among the main reasons why principals leave their jobs are inadequate preparation and low salaries. House Bill 22 would ensure that incoming principals have access to residencies, where they have the opportunity to shadow an experienced principal for a year. It would also improve principal pay. Read more about this reform and email your legislators and the governor about it!
- Fund the Strategic Water Reserve. The Strategic Water Reserve is an innovative water management tool that Think New Mexico proposed and won passage of in 2005. It allows the state to buy and lease water rights to help keep our rivers flowing to meet the needs of endangered species and the state’s water delivery obligations under interstate compacts. Read more about this reform and email your legislators and the governor to ask them to fully fund it!
On January 1, 2024, Think New Mexico marked 25 years since its founding.
We are proud of the track record of results that Think New Mexico has delivered for New Mexicans in our first quarter century, from repealing the food tax to ending predatory lending to making full-day kindergarten accessible to every child in the state. We have some exciting plans in the works to magnify our impact over the next quarter century, and we look forward to sharing more information about them throughout 2024.
