May 30—A special legislative session is just a month and a half away, and New Mexico’s governor acknowledged during a public forum Thursday that her and lawmakers are “not all on the same page” about what will be debated.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham previously announced a public safety-focused session would start July 18 and said she anticipated it’ll only take a few days. On Thursday, during a luncheon held by a commercial real estate development organization at the Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown, she briefly talked about the upcoming special session.

She said legislators still need to agree on solutions to New Mexico’s public safety issues, and “we’re not all on the same page yet about which things make the biggest difference.”

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, told the Journal there aren’t really any specifics on the special session yet . Cervantes chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and introduced multiple public safety bills in this year’s regular session.

“I came today to get a better understanding of what that special session might be,” he said.

The governor expressed confidence that all of the state’s elected leaders want to get the special session right. During this year’s regular session, a handful of public safety bills related to guns and no-bond holds passed, but other measures failed.

Lujan Grisham wants to address competency issues, she said. A bill died in the 2024 session that would have mandated court-ordered treatment for a defendant deemed dangerous and incompetent.

“A criminal competency statute means we can hold those folks and give them the treatment they need in the criminal justice system,” she said.

Lujan Grisham said the state also needs a good civil commitment process. A pretrial detention bill also failed to make it through the 2024 Legislature, though a no-bond hold bill pass.

“Really, doing the work requires more tools in the toolbox,” she said.

A decade ago, about 2,300 people were in jail in Bernalillo County, Lujan Grisham said. She said today, there are about 1,600 people in jail in the county.

“A decade later, that number is less, in a context where we eroded all of our behavioral health. We had a recession. You don’t have housing. We didn’t make investments in education for a decade. We have a lawsuit that says we discriminated against students and families,” she said. “So it’s the perfect storm.”

Lujan Grisham said she thinks pretrial detention would really help, despite New Mexicans not all being in agreement on the issue.

“We mean business that bad actors will be held accountable, and the people who need our help will have a place to go,” she said.