Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed three bills Wednesday that she said would open the door for more investments in housing, roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
House Bills 177, 232 and 195 enable the spending of at least $200 million in spending, including $125 million in loans for new housing development, and adds more staff for infrastructure planning and development.
Another bill approves $75 million in funds allocated to help local governments in the state meet the financial match requirements for federal grants, including some federal disaster programs that require these governments to pay 25% of costs to receive the other 75% from the federal government.
“It’s better for our health and our public safety when we have solid, safe infrastructure like roads and safe drinking water,” the governor said before signing the bills at a news conference Wednesday. “But it’s also necessary to a robust economy.”
Taken together, the governor said the new laws should reassure New Mexicans that roads will be safe to drive on, that local governments will be able to invest in new infrastructure or disaster response, and that housing will be more affordable in the future.
The housing bill the governor signed was one of her priorities in the 30-day legislative session that wrapped up earlier this month. It allows the New Mexico Finance Authority to issue loans for housing development from a revolving fund that previously was only used for commercial development.
New Mexico lacks around 32,000 units of affordable housing, according to a study conducted by the Mortgage Finance Authority last year. One solution, Lujan Grisham said, to combat homelessness and help more families live where they work is to vastly increase the supply of housing across the state.
“We gotta build houses,” she said. “And we gotta figure out more opportunities for affordable housing.”
Before any homes are built, the New Mexico Finance Authority has to create rules for developers applying for the funds, and then it will evaluate the projects. It’s not clear how long that will take, or how long before the ribbon is cut on new housing developments. The governor said she is hopeful that money would start flowing out of the loan fund in July and that projects could be approved to break ground by this fall.
“We do need tens of 1000s of houses, and we needed them last year or the year before,” she said. “So we are really highly motivated.”
The $125 million in loans is on top of $50 million in one-time funding for a housing trust fund, plus $20 million for programs to combat homelessness, that the governor and lawmakers have touted as the biggest housing investment in state history.
The glut of federal infrastructure money made possible through recent acts of Congress motivated lawmakers this session to approve $75 million in a “matching fund” that allows local governments to qualify for some of those projects.
Sen. Pete Campos (D-Las Vegas) said at the bill signing event that small, rural areas have had to leave federal money on the table in the past because they couldn’t come up with sufficient money to cover even a portion of project costs.
For example, rural towns and counties struggled to qualify for federal disaster aid after wildfires and floods battered northern and southern New Mexico in the spring and summer of 2022. Last legislative session, the Legislature approved $100 million in loans to help local governments qualify for disaster aid.
Campos has said the matching fund tries to build on the success of that loan program, and widens the scope to more than just disaster recovery.
“I represent all our parts of 36 communities,” Campos said of his sprawling northern New Mexico district. “These are small communities. Most of them don’t have that match to go ahead and continue to build their particular infrastructure.”
The governor is expected to sign additional bills in the coming days, including a suite of laws related to guns and criminal justice. She will sign health care bills on Friday in Truth or Consequences.
She has so far, however, not signaled whether she will call a special meeting of the Legislature regarding public safety legislation, a possibility she floated when the 30-day session wrapped two weeks ago.
Lawmakers sent 78 pieces of legislation to her desk during the short session, including a budget of more than $10 billion.
Other signed bills
After the signing ceremony on Wednesday, the governor’s office released a list of additional bills she signed:
House Bill 211: Water Project Prioritization
House Bill 148: Water Project Fund Projects
Senate Bill 169: Land and Water Conservation Fund Changes
House Bill 28: Public Project Revolving Fund Projects
House Bill 29: Public Project Fund Appropriations
House Bill 5: Workforce Development and Apprenticeship Fund
Senate Bill 216: New Mexico Finance Authority Affordable Housing Projects
