Other Relevant Legislation • SB 216 (Homestead and Other Exemptions): The current law for homestead exemptions is $60,000 for a single person and $120,000 for married couples. The bill increases the homestead exemption to $150,000 for a single filer and $300,000 for married couples. However, the homestead exemption does not apply if the homestead property was pledged as credit for a mortgage or if there was a pre-existing lien on the property before the establishment of the homestead. The bill PASSED. • SB 99 (Rent Control): The bill would have repealed the current prohibition placed upon counties and municipalities regarding rent control legislation. New Mexico is among 37 states that prohibit or preempt rent control. However, privately-owned property under contract for funding or benefits from federal, state or local governments may exercise rent control. The bill DID NOT PASS. • Constitutional Amendments: Proposed Constitutional Amendments regarding legislative salaries and longer legislative sessions (60 days every year) were defeated. New Mexico is currently the only state that does not provide for legislators to receive a salary. • SB 11 (Paid Family and Medical Leave): The most controversial bill introduced during the session, Senate Bill 11, would have established a 12-week Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML) benefit for nearly all workers in the state. The 12-week benefit could be taken intermittently and in increments of no less than four hours at a time. The bill would require employee contributions of 0.5% and employer contributions of 0.4% of wages into a PFML fund. The PFML benefit would be paid for with money in the PFML fund, with some of the money in the fund going toward administrative costs. The bill DID NOT PASS. • SB 46 (Wrongful Foreclosure Protection Act): The bill would have enacted the Wrongful Foreclosure Protection Act which would provide new protections and remedies for homeowners facing foreclosure. The bill would require a new list of dates and amounts related to the underlying default. While most of the information is already obtained and reviewed as part of the foreclosure referral, there are requirements that could prove to be problematic for older defaults or files that have undergone multiple service transfers, such as listing “all instances in which the home loan was accelerated or in which the periodic payments owed on the home loan were demanded to be repaid at one” and “all instances in which the home loan was decelerated or in which the borrower or homeowner was allowed to resume periodic payments after a demand for repayment of the full amount of the home loan had been made.” The bill also restricts any “person” from making a misleading statement or omission of fact or law in a complaint for foreclosure of a home loan or in any motion for summary or default judgment filed when seeking foreclosure of a home loan. The bill provides severe civil remedies for each “discreet violation.” The bill DID NOT PASS but is likely to be reintroduced in 2024. • HB 90 (UCC Revisions): The bill addresses emerging technologies, providing updated rules for commercial transactions involving virtual currencies, distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other technological developments. The bill adds a new article to the UCC, Article 12, addressing certain types of digital assets defined as controllable electronic records. According to the bill, “controllable electronic record” means a record stored in an electronic medium that can be subjected to control pursuant to Section 55-12-105 NMSA 1978. The term does not include a controllable account, a controllable payment intangible, a deposit account, an electronic copy of a record evidencing chattel paper, an electronic document of title, electronic money, investment property, or a transferable record. The bill PASSED. • HB 118 (Office of Entrepreneurship): The bill provided $500,000 to the Economic Development Department for the purpose of creating a permanent Office of Entrepreneurship. The office’s mission would be to grow entrepreneurship in the state by strengthening business policies, working with organizations supporting entrepreneurship, providing technical support for entrepreneurs, and providing access to public resources for entrepreneurship, including acting as a liaison between industry and state government. The bill was VETOED. • HB 8 (Creative Industries Division in Economic Development Department): The bill establishes the Creative Industries Division within the Economic Development Department to support the full breadth of creative industries in the state, including traditional New Mexico crafts, visual and literary arts, software development and video game design, theater and entertainment, architecture, music, dance, culinary arts, and more. The bill was VETOED. • SB 251 (Metro Development Act Changes): The bill amends the Metropolitan Redevelopment Code to expand on the tax increment financing (TIF) mechanisms for funding metropolitan redevelopment projects. The bill would allow a municipality or county to dedicate up to 75% of each entity’s local option gross receipts tax increment over the current adjusted base to fund directly or to bond for the construction or reconstruction of properties within the dedicated metropolitan redevelopment area. The bill PASSED. • SB 26 (Excess Oil & Gas Funds to Severance Tax Fund): The bill reinvests some of the state’s oil and gas windfall into the Severance Tax Permanent Fund to help lessen any impacts to the general fund from future volatility in the industry. Beginning in Fiscal Year 2025, SB 26 will automatically set aside excess oil and gas revenues and send funds to the Severance Tax Permanent Fund. Doing so will allow those excess revenues to earn a projected average return of 5.7% in the Severance Tax Permanent Fund. The bill PASSED. Issue 1 • 2023 9
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