{"id":47276,"date":"2021-04-16T18:02:13","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T00:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-governor-signs-bill-to-require-paid-sick-leave\/"},"modified":"2021-04-17T00:02:13","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T00:02:13","slug":"new-mexico-governor-signs-bill-to-require-paid-sick-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-governor-signs-bill-to-require-paid-sick-leave\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico governor signs bill to require paid sick leave"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=18a17037-2637-4c58-8276-5d20fde63130&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham speaks following the end of New Mexico\u2019s annual legislative session March 20 in Santa Fe.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham speaks following the end of New Mexico\u2019s annual legislative session March 20 in Santa Fe.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Cedar Attanasio\/Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Signed Thursday, the Democrat-sponsored legislation ensures that employees accrue an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 64 hours of leave annually.<\/p>\n<p>The law takes effect on July 1, 2022 \u2013 a delay in concession to employers who argued that businesses already are under intense financial pressure from the pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Democratic legislators argue the requirement is essential to ensuring public health and a stable workforce. They advanced the bill over unified Republican opposition in the state House and Senate.<\/p>\n<p>Lujan Grisham said the coronavirus has driven home the need for paid sick leave.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo one should ever be compelled to come to work when they are sick,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The governor also signed a bill that increases the surtax on insurance premiums from 1% to 3.75% to shore up subsidies to health insurance policies for low- and moderate-income patients provided through New Mexico\u2019s health insurance exchange.<\/p>\n<p>The changes proposed by state Democratic Sens. Martin Hickey of Albuquerque and Jeff Steinborn of Las Cruces are offset by the recent elimination of a federal fee on insurance. The governor\u2019s office says the law will eliminate copayments and cost sharing by patients to access mental health services.<\/p>\n<p>Lujan Grisham, a first-term Democrat, also signed a bill that allows air-quality regulators in the Albuquerque area to adopt more stringent rules than current federal requirements and give the state a stronger hand in limiting air pollution.<\/p>\n<p>The governor has until Friday to sign or veto bills approved during a 60-day legislative session that ended March 20, including a $7.5 billion state spending plan for the coming year. The governor also can veto a bill from the closing days of the session by ignoring it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham speaks following the end of New Mexico\u2019s annual legislative session March 20 in Santa Fe.Cedar Attanasio\/Associated Press Signed Thursday, the Democrat-sponsored legislation ensures that employees accrue an hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 64 hours of leave annually. The law takes effect on July [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,1922,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-47276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-labor","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47276"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=47276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}