Legislative Council discusses hiring legislative staff

Legislators could look at a bill that would give the option of hiring staff.

Lawmakers discussed a draft report and its appendices on legislator staffing at Monday’s Legislative Council meeting.

Staff from The Focus Group, Research and Polling, Architectural Research Consultants and the National Conference of State Legislatures prepared the draft report for the legislative leaders.

“There is no single optimal design for how to authorize, organize and implement a staffing model. While most states provide personal staff for legislators, these states have adopted a range of models dependent on their priorities and political contexts,” the draft report states.

The team assessed how comparable states provide legislator staffing and recommended a hybrid staffing model.

This model proposes allowing 56 partisan staff distributed across 12 regional offices where they will support legislators with administrative assistance and community engagement job duties, the draft report states.

There would also be three non-partisan staff members who would focus on policy support for legislators. These three workers would work from the Roundhouse and report to the Legislative Council Service, the draft report states.

“The model incorporates surveyed New Mexico legislators’ needs for administrative assistance, community engagement and policy work; balances partisan and nonpartisan staff support; and enhances geographic access for both constituents and legislators via regional offices while seeking economies of scale by co-locating staff,” the draft report states. 

The estimated cost of this model would be about $7.28 million annually which includes staff costs, overhead, IT/security, furniture, space, utilities and per diem/mileage, the report states.

The draft report is expected to be official later this year after legislators submit their questions, comments and concerns about the proposal.

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