New Mexico has the lowest rate in the nation of workers with paid sick leave, according to New Mexico Voices for Children, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advocating for policies to improve the health and well-being of New Mexico’s children, families and communities.
One of the hardest decisions to make is whether to stay home sick and not draw a paycheck, or go to work sick and get paid. In New Mexico, nearly half of all employees have to make that decision when they get sick.
Veronica Garcia, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children, expressed a view similar to Udall’s. She said the state Legislature should have taken a stand by freezing corporate tax cuts to help people who need it the most. “The already glacial pace of phasing in pre-K education has essentially been halted,” Garcia said.
Veronica García, executive director, New Mexico Voices for Children, also pointed to corporate tax breaks as a reason for the budget crisis. “This revenue free fall has hardly come out of the blue. We’ve been cutting taxes for well over a decade in the hopes that somehow jobs will materialize and we’ve created so many exceptions to our gross receipts tax that it’s got more holes than Swiss cheese.”
Many families already struggle to put food on the table, said Executive Director Veronica Garcia. “New Mexico has the highest rate of child poverty in the nation, the highest unemployment rate and the third-highest child food insecurity rate,” Garcia said in a statement. “Why would we do anything that could make child poverty and hunger worse?”
The left-right agreement on dental therapists in the Land of Enchantment includes the free-market Rio Grande Foundation as well as the left-leaning Health Action New Mexico and New Mexico Voices for Children.
Bill Jordan, a lobbyist for New Mexico Voices for Children, says the bill would take away about $6,000 a year from a Santa Fe worker now making $22,000. “It’s a good way to increase poverty,” Jordan said.
"A proposed constitutional amendment on creating an independent redistricting commission had support but consensus that more work is needed in the House, Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee on Monday."
Perhaps the harshest and most valid criticism of Gov. Susana Martinez’s State of the State speech wasn’t so much for what she said as what she didn’t say. She made no mention of child poverty in New Mexico.
The annual scorecard found that more New Mexico children lived with parents who lacked full-time employment in 2014 than those in 2008—35 percent and 30 percent, respectively. Amber Wallin, director of New Mexico Voices for Children, which published the 72-page report, said poverty holds back the state’s children.