Paid family medical leave bill returns to the Legislature

By Susan Morée

A bill that seeks to provide paid time off for workers who have major medical needs, including the birth of a child, will be heard in the Legislature again this year.

State Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, pre-filed the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill earlier this month. This will be the fifth attempt to get the bill to the governor’s desk. 

The bill aims to give employees in every industry in New Mexico the ability to request paid time off for up to 12 weeks for parental leave and up to 9 weeks to care for a loved one requiring significant care. If an employee is a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault, that person would also be allowed to request up to nine weeks of paid time off for recovery.

Previous versions of the bill came close to the finish line for the last two years until some Democrats sided with Republicans to kill it. Last year that happened on the House floor after complaints from some Democratic lawmakers about the state’s low Medicaid reimbursements rates. They argued the 0.4% employer contribution for organizations that provide services for the elderly, the differently abled and for those who provide early childcare to be too difficult, as their profit margins are already slim. 

The New Mexico Healthcare Authority announced last week it has received federal approval to increase Medicaid rates for developmentally and intellectually disabled and medically fragile by an average of 16.5%. Tracy McDaniel, policy advocate for Southwest Women’s Law Center, told NM Political Report there will be no changes or costs to employers for paid leave until January 2027.

“That means any impacts on employer budgets will not be realized until FY2027, allowing the legislature to respond accordingly in the next legislative session to any need to adjust state contracts to reflect the small increased costs to those employers due to PFML implementation,” she said. 

If enacted, the bill would require employers with five or more employees to contribute 0.4% into a fund managed by the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions. Employees would contribute 0.5% per paycheck into the same fund. It would also require a $35 million contribution from the state’s general fund to get started, mostly to pay for technology and to hire more full-time employees to process the claims. But Chandler, who has sponsored the bill in the past, as well as McDaniel and other bill proponents, argue the fund will both pay for itself after a few years of operation and will be able to refund the state’s general fund within six years. The Workforce Solutions secretary would produce actuarial studies to ensure the fund can remain solvent.

McDaniel said one reason she is confident the bill will pass the legislature this year is because Southwest Women’s Law Center, one of the main proponents of the bill, hired an outside actuarial firm to provide an analysis to demonstrate the long-term fiscal sustainability of the state fund. One of the main concerns from Republicans in previous years has been whether the fund would remain solvent.

“We are more confident than ever about the ongoing financial solvency of the fund,” McDaniel said. 

Some advocates say that the bill can make the difference between life and death.

Lan Sena, the policy director for the Center for Civic Policy, told NM Political Report that she believes she survived her months-long recovery last year from a bone marrow transplant because her employer has its own paid family medical leave program which she said is modeled on the bill. 

Sena, who has been battling Hodgkins lymphoma for 15 years, said she was one of six New Mexicans on a hospital recovery ward in Colorado last fall. She attributes the fact that she made it home sooner than the others on her ward and had an easier return to the fact that she had paid time off.

“Only one of us — me — had access to paid family medical leave. Seeing the struggles of being a New Mexican in my transplant ward, they were having to work while receiving the most intensive chemotherapy. They were barely able to walk, eat, but had to work,” Sena said.

Republicans have been unified in voting against the bill, mostly arguing it will hurt New Mexico’s small businesses. One small business owner, Deborah Condit, who owns Books on the Bosque in Albuquerque, told NM Political Report that she supports the bill and believes that if it is enacted, it will help her offer a benefit to her employees that, otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to do and allow her to compete better with larger, corporate-owned bookstores.

“We don’t have deep pockets. If I have an employee who needs to take care of a grandparent, [PFML] is one of those tools I as a business owner can provide,” she said. 

Condit said that as a single mom, she’s been on the other side of the equation, where she had a job making low pay. If her daughter got sick, she couldn’t go to work.

“It was a big hit for me. One day off means a bill won’t get paid. It’s really difficult,” Condit said. 

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story stated that Lan Sena was the only New Mexican to survive on her hospital ward after a bone marrow transplant. She was the one who returned home the soonest and had an easier return. We apologize for the error.