Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham | Facebook
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham | Facebook
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will veto a bill that would curtail the power of the executive branch to extend public health orders.
“In (the bill's) current context, yes,” she said, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported. “That’s not to say governors should be “omnipotent.”
Republicans were quick to react.
“Following her scandalous misuse of taxpayer funds and flagrant defiance of the isolation order she has forced on the people, the governor has decided she will do everything in her power to not allow New Mexicans to have a voice during emergencies.” The New Mexico House Republicans said.
According to Sen. Mark Moores (R-Albuquerque), emergency declarations have been seen by the public as an “unlimited power for an unlimited time.”
The governor emphasized that “states that don’t have that — and local governments decide that, and they start and they stop — have had more deaths, more problems, more hospitalizations, higher infection rates, and now are having trouble, so much trouble with vaccines, that the federal government is coming in to do them directly.”
Rep. Greg Nibert (R-Roswell) said that the emergency power has “impacted every New Mexican for the last 10 months without any real legislative involvement,” according to The NM Political Report.
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