Paid leave likely dead for year after stalling in Senate committee

Yahoo

16-03-2025

A bill to create a state-run paid family and medical leave program is not likely to pass this year after failing in the Senate Finance Committee.
House Bill 11 failed on an 8-3 vote Saturday, with just three Democrats voting in favor of the measure.
Advocates for the concept have been pushing for the past several years to create such a program, offering extended paid leave for workers for certain reasons, such as to seek medical care, welcome a new child or care for a family member.
Last year's bill passed the Senate but failed narrowly in the House. This year's version passed the House, after a handful of more moderate Democrats who had opposed it either retired from their seats or lost their primary reelection races.
It then passed one Senate committee a week ago, only to fail Saturday in the Finance Committee, with just a week left in this year's legislative session.
'While we're disappointed, our resolve is not diminished,' Tracy McDaniel, policy director at the Southwest Women's Law Center, said in a statement after the vote. 'We remain committed to fighting for this critical policy that will benefit workers, families, and our economy. This is not the end — it's a call to action to build a stronger, more equitable, and more prosperous New Mexico.'
Opponents of paid leave worry it would burden both employers and employees with a new tax and make things more difficult for employers who have to replace workers who take time off.
'Employees need the money that they earn right now,' Carla Sonntag, president and CEO of the New Mexico Business Coalition, told the Senate Finance Committee during Saturday morning's hearing. 'They can't afford a tax, no matter how low it is.'
The bill had two components. The first would have created a fund paid for by premiums on both employers and employees to pay for six weeks of paid leave for workers who get sick or need to take time off for listed reasons such as domestic violence or grieving a lost child. The six weeks' leave has been controversial among some paid leave supporters, who would have preferred the nine weeks in the bill that was originally introduced this year.
The second component would have created a 'Welcome Child Fund' to pay new parents $3,000 a month for up to three months to take time off for a newborn or just-adopted child.
Letting parents stay home for those first few months would help ensure a the new infant or child 'can prosper as a ... young child and productive adult,' bill sponsor Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, told the Senate Finance Committee. 'We know that bonding with a child is important.'
Overall, Chandler said this year's bill addressed some concerns that had been raised by employers but 'still maintained the kind of core, fundamental policy basis for the program.' And, she noted, this version of the bill gave the state some skin in the game with the Welcome Child Fund.
Danielle Duran, the intergovernmental affairs manager for Los Alamos County, said paid leave would help the county's smaller employers attract workers. Many county residents work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, she said, 'but the rest of the community is made up of smaller businesses that have to compete with the laboratory in order to keep their employees.'
Terri Cole, president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, said it was the wrong time to create something like the Welcome Child Fund when there is so much uncertainty surrounding federal spending cuts that could affect the state's budget. And, she said, it was the wrong time to raise taxes when the state has a $3 billion surplus.
'The state can afford to provide these benefits and simply pay for it,' she said.
Only Sens. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, Michael Padilla, D-Albuquerque, and Linda Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, voted to advance the bill. Trujillo did express some concerns about it, among them that she would have preferred nine weeks' leave instead of six and that she would have liked it to include payments for stay-at-home moms as well as mothers who work.
'I think this discriminates against mothers who have chosen to stay home and care for their families,' she said.
The lawmakers who voted against it expressed a mix of objections, many of them questions about how it would affect small businesses. The committee chair, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, one of the Legislature's most conservative Democrats, said he might have supported a bill that phased in a leave program more gradually but not one that moves as quickly as HB 11.
'It's always to the extreme with this bill,' he said.
In a joint statement Saturday, some of the groups that have been pushing for paid leave expressed disappointment with the vote but promised to keep up the fight.
'Our families deserve the strongest possible policy, and the committee substitute for HB 11 that failed today needed to be strengthened,' said Gabrielle Uballez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children. 'While this is not the outcome we hoped for, we are undeterred, and we'll keep fighting for a robust paid family and medical leave policy until it's passed into law.'
Senate Republicans celebrated the outcome.
'Despite progressive leadership's best efforts, which included taking out moderate Democrats in the previous election cycle, Senate Republicans successfully defended small businesses, employees, and industries throughout the state,' the caucus said in a news release after the vote.