New Mexico is the last state to utilize a “Citizen Legislature” – meaning our elected officials in the Roundhouse are not paid a salary. This may have made sense when our state was founded, but the system no longer serves our communities and CCP is proud to be a part of the efforts to modernize our legislative bodies and infrastructure. We support efforts like increasing capacity with paid internal staff, which is new this year, amending New Mexico’s constitution to create a citizen commission on legislative salaries, and increasing the length of our legislative sessions to ensure important bills and policies are not stalled or curtailed.