taking up the issue when he was a state senator

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham joined a group of children, parents and educators at a Santa Fe preschool Tuesday morning to sign her free, universal child care initiative into law.

“I really wanted something that would create a sea change for families and children in New Mexico,” Lujan Grisham said before signing the bill. “Senate Bill 241 is the culmination of decades of leadership of the Legislature and eight years of good leadership by a short little governor and, most importantly, the dedication of the people in the child care industry and the parents and the families.”

After the bill signing, she told reporters she believed that free childcare will ameliorate New Mexico’s deep-seated issues with child well-being. The state routinely ranks 50th for child well-being in the national Kids Count report published by the nonpartisan Annie E. Casey Foundation. Since November, Lujan Grisham said more than 16,000 new children have enrolled in free child care — and more than half of them were already eligible to receive free child care under the state’s previous requirements.

“All of these families struggled for no reason,” she said. “This is maybe the most monumental, pivotal day in New Mexico’s past, its current and the opportunities for its future. We couldn’t be prouder.”

The universal child care effort ranked with medical malpractice reform and education and literacy standards as one of the Legislature’s top priorities in the recent 30-day session. Initial proposals from members of the state House of Representatives would have required co-pays from some New Mexico families to participate, but the bill Lujan Grisham signed into law Tuesday will only require co-pays from families with a household income of than 600% of the federal poverty level under certain signs of economic decline, such as inflation and decreasing oil prices.

A recent report from the state Legislative Finance Committee found a slight decrease in the state’s general fund revenue. “Major” changes in oil and gas revenue would affect the Early Childhood Trust Fund and other similar state funds. The new law allows the state to take up to $700 million from the $11 billion Early Childhood Education and Care Trust Fund to pay for universal child care over the next five years. State leaders created that fund in 2020 with about $300 million.

Lujan Grisham praised Lt. Gov. Howie Morales for prioritizing this issue when he was a state senator and for refusing to let it go when he joined her administration.

“When I received the phone call back in November…saying we’re going to move forward with this and that the governor has made sure that we’re going to implement this coming Nov. 1, I got emotional,” Morales said to the crowd gathered at Tuesday’s bill signing. “I remember sitting there, talking to you as the governor and saying, ‘I don’t think this is a fight we can win,’ and the governor turning to me and saying, ‘Some fights are worth fighting, even if you lose.’”

Lujan Grisham also signed Senate Bill 96 into law, which will ease zoning restrictions on regulated child care homes in residential areas. From inside the “Owl Classroom” at Garcia Street Club School, a decades-old preschool in the middle of a Santa Fe neighborhood, she said she hoped to knock down barriers to where child care facilities can go. 

“If we can do this since 1945, we can do more,” she said, referencing the school’s origination date. “That’s exactly what we want — home, historic environments as well as brand new facilities. We want a hybrid and a mix all throughout the state.”

She said she believes the two laws, taken together, can make New Mexico a replicable model for how the rest of the nation tackles issues of child well-being.

“This really, truly can be a state in America that solves this problem,” Lujan Grisham said. “When a poor state — in terms of our stats, not our money — solves it for America, America will redesign and reshape how we treat our families, and that’s a long time coming.”