The 2023 New Mexico 60 Day Legislative Session starts at noon on - January 17th. I am your lobbyist and will represent NMUCA during this session. 

Support or opposition is determined by the board of NMUCA. Lobbying for or against legislation is measured first and foremost with our mission. 

Below are instructions for - 5 Easy Steps to Stay Informed and Get Involved - that contains both general and specific information about the NM Legislative Session, and how you can attend virtual meetings, communicate with legislators, and make your voice heard while our legislators make decisions about NM’s future. 

2023 NM Legislative Session

5 Easy Steps to Keep Informed & Involved 

2023 January 3, 2023 - January 13 Legislation may be pre-filed

January 17 Opening day (noon)

February 16 Deadline for introduction

March 18 Session ends (noon)

April 7 Legislation not acted upon by governor is pocket vetoed

June 16 Effective date of legislation not a general appropriation bill or a bill carrying an emergency clause or other specified date

Step One – Know your legislator!

Although you can contact every legislator or those serving on a particular committee, you have much more weight as a direct constituent.

Click Here to Find Your Legislator  

Step Two – Get familiar with the committees & who serves on them.

 Click Here and then Click on “Committees” Committee make up is determined the first week of the session.

Step Three – Find Legislation 

Click Here to search for legislation by list, number, sponsor or keyword.

To keep track of legislation, set-up your own Bill Finder using MyRoundhouse - https://www.nmlegis.gov/MyRoundhouse/ Once you have it set-up simply click the “PLUS” button to add a locator; you can then add legislation to that locator. It will keep track of the legislation and let you know when there is movement on the bill. You can set up more than one locator if you want to keep track of bills by category. I have a NMUCA one and a personal one for example. 

Step Four – How to Read a Bill, see changes, & track Votes

We will use HM 3 for an example. Once you have clicked on a specific bill, you will see the following information displayed:

·        ID

·        Title

·        Sponsor (s)

·        Current Location

·        Text in HTML and Text in PDF

·        Sponsors

·        Votes

·        Analysis

·        Committee Reports & Amendments

·        Floor Amendment

·        Actions

·        Governor’s Vetoes

Analysis is your best friend here. Every bill introduced will undergo a “Fiscal Impact Report” often called an FIR. It will show the financial impact for the state, but it will also have a summary of the bill and include merits or issues with the bill found during review by the Legislative Council Services and other State Agencies that it may affect if passed into law.  

Step Five – Participate

Webcasts are available for most committee meetings as well as House and Senate Chamber Meetings. Some Committees will allow interactive communication, but it will be extremely limited. A word of warning – the audio and visual capabilities at the NM State Capitol are quite old and very inefficient; expect a rough experience while trying to participate via online services. 

You can also watch proceedings two ways by using 

Webcast Click Here to visit

NMUCA will send out Legislative Alerts during the session. These can be for information purposes only or they may be a Call to Action. If there is a Call to Action, you will either receive a link where you can quickly fill out a pre-filled form to contact legislators, or you will be asked to call and email. I will make this as easy as possible for everyone. I will also send out weekly reports and share the NMUCA bill tracker. 



I welcome your input during the session. If you see a bill that I should be aware of, please let me know. 

Remember, the most effective way to have influence on the decisions of our legislators is to educate them on our industry and to inform them how their decisions on legislation can affect our industry and our businesses. It's also very important that legislators are aware that we are paying attention to what they are doing and the decisions they are making.  

Clean Water Construction Coalition Report

January 3, 2023

$1.7 Trillion Federal Consolidated Appropriations Act

With the FY23 Continuing Resolution deadline to fund the federal government approaching, Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022. On December 23rd, President Biden signed the act into law.

Of note for the CWCC, the Act included:

• $1.639B (state base funding including earmarks) for the Clean Water SRF, which is in addition to the $2.750B provided in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) totaling $4.389B for next funding cycle; and

• $1.126B (state base funding including earmarks) for the Safe Drinking Water SRF, which is in

addition to the $2.750B provided in the IIJA / BIL totaling $3.876B for the next funding cycle;

and

• “Not less than $20M” for WIIN grants.

This funding MEET / EXCEEDS what the CWCC established as priority funding levels for 2022. We will continue to push to “fully fund commitments” with both IIJA and Base FY Appropriations.

Additional details are included in the attached report.

This SRF FY23 “base” appropriation is slightly complicated by the fact that it includes “earmarked” projects. “Earmarked” funding is essentially subtracted out of the base funding, lowering the base appropriation amount for each state. The actual earmarks are listed in this “explanatory statement” that accompanies the omnibus appropriations bill, beginning on p. 80 of the pdf. This impacts each state differently depending on the level of projects with “earmarked” funding.

Did You Know?

OSHA's construction infrastructure webpage provides resource for employers, workers and others involved in the job of improving and building our nation’s infrastructure. It includes information about common construction hazards and how to better identify and control them using safety and health programs.

¿Sabías?

La página web de OSHA sobre la construcción de infraestructuras proporciona recursos para empleadores, trabajadores y otras personas implicadas en el trabajo de mejora y construcción de las infraestructuras de nuestra nación. Incluye información sobre peligros habituales en la construcción y sobre cómo identificarlos y controlarlos mejor mediante programas de seguridad y salud.

By Stephen E. Irving | Sunday, October 30, 2022

Safety , OSHA

Construction Executive

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is having an active year, perhaps emboldened by an administration increasingly engaged in its long-term institutional goals. Much of the discussion this past year has focused on the agency’s efforts to address the hazards of heat injury and illness on the job.

However, contractors are well advised that the agency continues to focus on a broad array of matters that should be of continuing concern in the construction industry. Notably, OSHA continues to point to the construction industry as accounting for more than half of all OSHA citations.

Fatalities remain high, with a total of 1,008 fatalities in construction work in 2020, the latest year with complete Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The actual breakdown of the most common causes of fatalities on construction sites in 2020 was:

• Falls to lower level: 351 (34.8%);
• Struck-by object: 153 (15.2%);
• Electrocutions: 53 (5.2%); and
• Caught-in/between: 28 (2.7%).

The most common violations found by OSHA on construction sites in 2022 include the following.

The detailed statistics show that the findings of violations remain remarkably consistent on the whole.

OSHA has widely publicized that there were 22 excavation-related fatalities in the first six months of this year (2022). Three of the seven largest penalties issued by OSHA this year were for trenching violations. There were a number of additional fatalities that month. Media reports in the months since indicate that the trend of excavation injuries has continued apace. A review of recent excavation citations shows the most commonly cited violations relate to the excavation standard. Failing to protect a trench from collapse is cited in approximately two-thirds of all excavation OSHA matters, while failure to provide proper ingress and egress, placing spoils too close to a trench, failure to provide daily inspections and failure of the “designated competent person” are also very common citations. OSHA continues to emphasize trenching safety through its National Emphasis Program, which has been in place since 2018.

Violations of the fall protection standard (29 CFR §§ 1926.501-503) remain the most common citations. These violations account for approximately 25% of all citations and three times the number of any other group of violations. They also constitute an overwhelming number of the repeat and willful citations issued by the agency and four of the largest seven penalties issued so far this year. To address fall protection hazards (and thus OSHA citations), contractors need to have a sufficient training program and ensure that workers are trained to understand and avoid the hazards of a fall. Moreover, contractors should take steps to:

• cover floor holes;
• provide guardrails and toe boards around open-sided platforms; and
• provide safety harnesses, nets and railings.

The new arrival of aerial lifts on the list is bound to draw additional emphasis from OSHA going forward. OSHA has noted that aerial lifts—such as extendable boom platforms, aerial ladders, articulating (jointed) boom platforms, and vertical towers—have replaced ladders and scaffolding on many jobsites due to their mobility and flexibility.

OSHA guidance emphasizes training, worker awareness of potential hazards, and inspections of jobsites to avoid workplace incidents. OSHA has further stressed fall protection, proper equipment operation, work zone stability and overhead protection in operating aerial lifts. Perhaps more than most construction standards, the regulations require employers to evaluate and understand the unique hazards of their particular workplace and address them in policy and training.

Going forward, contractors must remain vigilant of these violation notices issued by a seemingly revitalized agency—and the related causes of fatalities—to best protect their workers, worksites and business operations. Best practices call for instituting programs developed with safety and legal professionals to ensure full OSHA compliance.

Link to Article