Carlsbad Current-Argus (March 22, 2023) – Southeast New Mexico’s Republican lawmakers said the 2023 Legislative Session could have been worse as the GOP was able to block several bills aimed at reducing pollution and tightening regulations on oil and gas producers.
The state was working with a $3.5 billion budget surplus this year, a surge largely attributed to booming oil and gas production in the Permian Basin region, and Republicans chided Democrat-led initiatives they said either spent too much to threatened to stymie the state’s leading revenue source.
A series of environmentally focused bills during the session that ended Saturday were either voted down in committee or stalled during the session and didn’t receive the needed votes to go to the desk of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to become law.
