Criminal Justice & Public Safety

APD investigating alleged political shooting mastermind’s campaign finances

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Albuquerque Police detectives found what they think may be illegally obtained campaign contributions while investigating Solomon Peña and the shootings he allegedly masterminded. “APD detectives learned through witness interviews related to the shooting investigation that Peña identified individuals to funnel contributions from an unknown source to his legislative campaign,” an APD news release states. “Detectives are working with other law enforcement agencies to determine whether the money for the campaign contributions was generated from narcotics trafficking and whether campaign laws were violated.”

Campaign finances are regulated under the Campaign Reporting Act, or CRA, which is under the State Ethics Commission’s purview. “Presently, our office is reviewing the matter for CRA violations,” State Ethics Commission spokeswoman Suha Musa said via email. “If the Commission takes action in this matter, it will do so at a public meeting.”

The Campaign Reporting Act dictates how campaign funding can be used.

2020 Legislative Session

PERA reform bill clears House

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A plan that would increase contributions from public workers and the state to the Public Employees Retirement Association to get the pension system on a path to solvency is nearly on its way to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s desk. The House approved the legislation in a 40-28 vote Monday after hours of debate. Senate Bill 72 calls for a rise in contributions and a temporary suspension of cost-of-living increases for some retirees in an effort to ensure PERA can continue pension payouts well into the future, supporters say. It also calls for reduced cost-of-living increases in the years after the suspension ends. The House made a technical change to an amendment to SB 72, so the measure will need to return to the Senate for approval before going to the governor’s desk, said Daniel Marzec, a spokesman for the House Democrats.

Minimum Wage

NM’s minimum wage will be $12 per hour (eventually)

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With a stroke of her pen, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham set into motion New Mexico’s first minimum wage increase in a decade. Lujan Grisham signed SB 437 into law Monday afternoon, bumping the state’s minimum wage from $7.50 per hour to $9.00 per hour by the beginning of 2020. Then by 2023 the rate will increase to $12 per hour. “This session, the Legislature sent a clear signal: We will not tolerate poverty wages in New Mexico. And this administration is putting working families first,” Lujan Grisham said.

News

Late-night deal reached on minimum wage

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The state’s lowest-paid workers are likely to get a raise of $1.50 an hour effective Jan. 1, and their wages will rise each year until 2023. After weeks of debate and disagreement over competing bills to raise the statewide minimum wage of $7.50 an hour, the Senate and House of Representatives were on course Thursday night to settle on a wage scale. A conference committee of three senators and three representatives reached an agreement in what appeared to be a well-orchestrated presentation. As late as Thursday afternoon, Democrats in the House and Senate were at odds over the minimum wage.

Minimum Wage

Minimum wage fight continues as session nears end

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The state House of Representatives and the Senate may be on a collision course when it comes to how best to reset New Mexico’s minimum wage law, a priority issue for Democrats in this year’s legislative session. That’s because the House on Wednesday night refused to budge on its proposal to the raise the statewide minimum wage to $12 an hours by Jan. 1, 2022 and then increase it in future years with a cost-of-living bump. The Senate, however, has approved a more modest proposal designed to increase the minimum wage to $11 an hour by Jan. 1, 2022, without any further cost-of-living increases.

Minimum Wage

Disagreement continues on minimum wage legislation

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With only days left in the 2019 legislative session, the struggle between the Senate and the House of Representatives over how to reset New Mexico’s minimum wage law continued Tuesday when a House committee clashed with a senator over competing proposals. And while the differences may be minimal to some — an extra dollar an hour in the House bill, a lower minimum wage for high school students in the Senate bill, for example — Sen. Clemente Sanchez, D-Grants, said if the two sides continue to butt heads on the matter, the state’s lowest-paid workers will suffer. “I do not want to get to the point where we cannot work something out and we have no minimum wage [increase],” Sanchez told members of the House Labor, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. “That’s more of a tragedy than either one of these bills not passing.” But the five members of the committee present for the hearing on Sanchez’s Senate Bill 437 were unmoved, voting 5-0 to attach what he considered an “unfriendly amendment” to his bill and thus putting it more in alignment with a House bill working its way through the Senate side.

Minimum Wage

Senate panel favors smaller minimum wage hike

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A Senate committee on Tuesday snubbed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s call to raise New Mexico’s minimum wage to $12 an hour over the next several years, advancing instead a more modest bill backed by business groups. Dueling proposals for increasing the wages of New Mexico’s lowest-paid workers collided in a packed hearing of the Senate Corporations and Transportation Committee. After a flurry of changes, the committee ultimately advanced a measure that would raise the wage over time, topping out at all $11 an hour in 2021. While not far off from a minimum wage increase backed by the governor and approved by the state House of Representatives, the proposal omits a key provision to adjust the minimum wage annually in the future based on the rising cost of living. And the committee’s vote, in turn, reflected resistance in the Legislature’s upper chamber to some of the newly elected governor’s agenda.

News

Tipping point: Despite changes, restaurants, servers still nervous about advancing minimum wage bills

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By 9-to-5 standards, Jay Hayden could retire by now. He’s devoted almost 32 years of his life striving to be the best in his trade. But he doesn’t work 9 to 5, and he’s not retiring. Hayden is a lead server at Geronimo, a fine dining restaurant housed in a centuries-old building in Santa Fe on Canyon Road. A modest dinner for two at Geronimo, with an equally modest tip, can easily cost $100.

News

Minimum wage bills advance, but Dems back off tipped wage increase

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Democrats are backing off a proposal to phase out the lower minimum wage for tipped workers like restaurant waiters with a Senate committee voting Saturday to keep the separate rate in place but raise it. House Bill 31 would have eliminated the tipped minimum wage of $2.13 an hour. Employers can currently pay that rate to workers as long as those workers receive tips amounting to the statewide minimum wage of $7.50 an hour. The restaurant industry says the tipped minimum wage is key to its survival and has launched an intense lobbying campaign against proposals to abolish it. But others argue that raising or eliminating the lower tipped wage would amount to a significant boost in the base pay for many restaurant workers.

News

Minimum wage hike passes House with phased-in raise for tipped workers

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The New Mexico House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to raise the statewide minimum wage to $10 an hour in July and increase it annually starting next year. But amid heavy opposition from the restaurant industry, lawmakers backed off immediately abolishing the lower minimum wage for tipped workers and instead elected to phase it out over the next few years. Democrats made boosting the minimum wage a central promise of last year’s campaign and argue House Bill 31 will amount to a raise for about 150,000 workers across the state. With a bigger Democratic majority in the House this year, legislation proposing an increase of several dollars per hour was bound to pass the chamber. But HB 31 is still likely to meet opposition in the state Senate, even from some Democrats, spurring what will likely be a round of negotiations over just how high legislators on both sides of the Capitol can agree to raise the minimum wage.