Week 4: Legislative update from Piñon Post editor and state Rep. John Block

A legislative update from Piñon Post founder and editor and state Rep. John Block (R-Alamogordo). John gives a weekly update during the legislative session. If you don’t already get the update, you can get it here or by subscribing on the website JohnForNM.com.

What a week it has been at the Roundhouse! Here’s what happened in my committees, as well as other events of note.

On Monday, in the House Government, Elections, and Indian Affairs Committee (HGEIC), I moved to table a bad piece of legislation (H.C.R. 1), which would limit the number of bills each member could present to just five — silencing the voices of New Mexicans who want their voices heard in the legislative process. The committee tabled the bad legislation.

On Tuesday, in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee (HCPAC), we had multiple bad bills (and some good bills) being heard, but Rep. Stefani Lord (R-Sandia Park) and I were repeatedly silenced by the chairwoman, Rep. Joanne Ferrary (D-Las Cruces), who tried to cut off Rep. Lord’s debate, continuously interrupted our lines of questioning and pushed all Republican bills to the bottom of the agenda. She then stymied debate on Rep. Jimmy Mason’s (R-Artesia) bill (H.B. 162), of which I am a cosponsor, and rolled all the other GOP bills we were supposed to have heard. After the meeting, I told the chairwoman that I would go to the speaker with these concerns, and she told me, “Yeah, good luck with that.”

On Wednesday, Rep. Lord and I addressed the full House of Representatives and told the speaker of this grievous abuse, asking him to talk with the HCPAC chairwoman.

In HGEIC on Wednesday, we heard H.B. 85, which is a really bad bill banning all so-called “non-functional” turf (like grass) from public medians and government buildings, forcing them to be replaced with “zeroscape.” This would apply to ALL state-funded projects, including in our cities and counties. These changes would cost our localities millions of dollars and would ban grass medians (such as on Juniper Drive in Alamogordo, where people use the medians to walk their dogs), and create inconveniences for all people — not to mention the budgetary process. It would also extend to projects, such as domestic violence shelters, that get state funding, making it even more detrimental to the state and to our district. Unfortunately, the terrible bill was advanced through the committee along party lines.

On Thursday, HCPAC met again, with many controversial bills on the agenda, including a good bill (H.B. 185) that would protect women’s sports from biological men being able to take titles away from women. It would have also protected these female athletes, who, in many cases, have been injured competing against biological men. During the discussion, Ferrary cut us off repeatedly while we asked questions, demanding we only ask questions and not make statements. However, when a Democrat representative read a 5-6 minute-long written statement, the chairwoman allowed it — blatant political discrimination against Rep. Lord and I because we are Republicans.

On Friday, I was forced to once again give another floor speech to the speaker asking for us to be treated equally and showed him the specific passages in the rules where we were not being given our equal voice in the committee — a disservice to the great people of our districts.

That morning in HGEIC, I voted against H.B. 252, which aimed to try to skirt around the anti-donation clause to give large checks to guardians of children (handouts) by working with foundations that would help match the grant. Although this might be worth doing in the private sector with fully private funding, I don’t believe it is the government’s role to intervene to administer the program. Also, the pilot program, which the bill references, only serves a handful of counties (none in southeast New Mexico), so that further cemented my opposition to the legislation.

On Saturday, I jumped between HGEIC and HCPAC, which both met that day, and we heard multiple bills, including H.B. 76, which would take away doctors’ authority to use their best judgment — forcing every newborn infant to have tests that would result in cardiac tests requiring airlifting to Albuquerque. Many physicians, including pediatric cardiologists in our district, opposed the bill, so I voted against it along with Rep. Lord.

We also heard in that committee H.B. 253, which aimed to seal eviction records after three years of the eviction, giving landlords less information when renting to new tenants who may have had evictions, even in the most grievous cases of past tenants using rentals for meth labs, causing damage (such as holes in the walls, ripping copper out of the pipes), or domestic violence situations, etc. Both Rep. Lord and I voted against it.

Another bill that was heard in the committee, H.B. 250, was to give free menstrual products to inmates, but the bill did not have important definitions and was very vague, so I voted against it. The chair rolled all the rest of the bills on the agenda (which so happened to all be Republican bills).

That afternoon and evening on the House floor, we debated the Democrats’ weak and ineffective “public safety” bill (H.B. 8), which will have little to no tangible effect on crime. We put forward our own substitute bill on the floor to give real solutions (such as addressing juvenile crime and increasing penalties for felons), but the Democrats rejected these ideas on mostly partisan votes. The House ultimately voted for the bill, with only 20 of us rejecting it (myself included), and the legislation now makes its way over to the Senate.

The week ahead will be very eventful in my committees, with lots of bad bills scheduled for the upcoming week. We are also set to debate legislation on the House floor, so watch for those agendas below.

Here are the legislative items that will come to the committees I am a member of:

To see all schedules for all committees and the House and Senate floors, click here.

To see the latest House committee calendar, which includes Zoom links to testify, click here.

To access all of my proposed legislation and the status of each bill, please click here.

It is an honor to represent Alamogordo in the Legislature and fight with every fiber of my being to protect our Constitutional rights. You can always count on me to stand with our shared conservative American values.

God bless you,
John

Rep. John Block
NM House District 51
Republican, Otero County