On an hour-long virtual event April 30, NFIB New Mexico State Director Jason Espinoza provided small business owners with a legislative recap of the 2025 session and took questions on issues also of concern to members.

Click here or the arrow below to listen. In the presentation, Espinoza discusses four big bills harmful to small business that NFIB helped successfully lobby for defeat:

— More unaffordable paid family and medical leave

— A boost in the minimum wage to $17 an hour

— So-called Environmental Rights and the Green Amendment

— And, an Employee Free Speech Act that limited employers from having their rights.

Looking ahead, Espinoza also said that measures NFIB helped lobby for passage, but which did not make it, were helpful for “shifting the conversation” and laying the ground work for future legislative sessions. They were:

— A mandate review of the rising costs of health care

— Legal advertising transparency (how much goes to trial attorneys?)

— Litigation financing transparency (are there third parties involved?)

— The state’s rulemaking process.

Questions from members included the fate of Medicaid and medical malpractice insurance and its effect on medical practitioners in the state, the latter of which has become so important, “even the media was a lot more balanced on the issue this year,” according to Espinoza.

More than any other association, the continuing education of its members about the important policies affecting them is one of the bigger benefits of belonging to NFIB. Check the NFIB website, www.nfib.com, for more information about what Congress and the New Mexico Legislature are up to.