By MERILEE DANNEMANN
Triple Spaced Again
© 2025 by Merilee Dannemann
One of her projects, said the recently hired legislative aide, is to track the capital outlay projects for her district that were passed before her senator was in office. This legislative aide works for a first-term senator. The project is nonpartisan, it is not controversial, and it may not be particularly difficult, but it certainly could be useful. With this information, she will know what capital outlay projects were passed by her boss’ predecessors, what progress has been made on getting them done and whether any of them are stuck in limbo. Good idea, I thought.
Legislative aide, the astute reader might ask. What’s that?
District legislative aides are a new feature in the New Mexico legislature and very likely will cause major change in the way our legislature works – probably positive change.
Each legislator, both senator and representative, can have one legislative aide working in the legislator’s home district, not in Santa Fe. The law enabling this was passed in 2024.
After all these years of trying to do the citizens’ business with not much help, our legislators now have a paid staff person, year-round. Each aide can have an office, preferably in a public building but not necessarily if none is available. There’s a budget for office supplies.
The program is administered by the Legislative Council Service and some functions are centralized but each legislator hires his or her own aide. Detailed rules can be found in the legislative policy handbook, which is on the nmlegis.gov website.
The aides all get a taxpayer funded phone number, which may be connected to a separate phone or the aide’s own personal cell phone. The phone numbers all begin with 505 – 946 and are connected through a system in Santa Fe. There might also be a separate phone number for the office, which may be a landline or something that looks like a landline.
You can contact an aide directly. The name, phone number and email address are listed under the legislators’ names on the nmlegis.gov web site – the same web site from which legislators’ home addresses have been deleted for safety reasons.
According to the rules, “ A district legislative aide may provide support to include: (1) correspondence; (2) scheduling; (3) policy research; (4) constituent services at the local level; (5) organization of nonpartisan town halls; and (6) other duties as assigned by the legislator; provided that if there is any question regarding the appropriateness of the duty, the issue should be referred to the legislative council service and the district office liaison.”
So far, one aide told me, the most common task is research on legislative issues, including issues brought to their attention by constituents.
The aides are supposed to stay strictly to legislative business and avoid campaign or partisan business. For example, they are not supposed to meet with donors or take outside employment related to campaigning. I can guess there might be some incidents where the lines are questionable, and both the aide and the legislator will have to use their best judgment.
New Mexico legislators themselves are still volunteers, earning a reasonable per diem for expenses but no salary. The discussion about whether to pay a salary is ongoing. Most likely there will be a proposal for a part-time salary, with the expectation that the legislators will still have to have another job or source of income. That is how it works in most states.
A curious question, which only time and experience will answer, is whether having legislative aides will make legislators’ job easier or increase public expectations so that their workload will be greater. We’ll see.
Merilee Dannemann’s columns are posted at www.triplespacedagain.com. Comments are invited through the web site.
