Jun. 24—As a full-time lawmaker with no dedicated staff, Rep. Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, said she has to pay someone out of her own pocket to manage her busy calendar.

By noon Monday, she had 59 voicemail messages and more than 4,500 emails to go through, an arduous task she planned to tackle on a drive from Santa Fe to Hobbs.

“I’ve got to get back to them all,” she said.

Help for Armstrong and other members of the New Mexico Legislature is on the way.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers unanimously approved a set of policies Monday that pave the way for each of New Mexico’s 112 lawmakers to hire a legislative aide.

“I think we’re helping the legislative body catch up with modern times,” House Speaker Javier Martínez said in an interview after the Legislative Council approved policies for staffed legislative district offices on a 10-0 vote.

In addition to legislative aides, the policies allow for liaisons for each caucus in the House and Senate, and the Legislative Council Service estimates it would need eight to 10 additional staff to provide administrative and logistical support — for a total of 120 to 125 new employees.

The total cost, which includes salaries, benefits, furniture and office space, is about $16 million a year.

The push to hire 112 staffers in district offices across the state is part of a yearslong effort to professionalize and modernize the Legislature. A proposal to pay lawmakers a salary as part of that effort is all but guaranteed to resurface during the 60-day session next year.

New Mexico remains the only state in the country that does not pay its legislators a salary, although they do qualify for retirement benefits and receive a per diem during legislative sessions and other meetings. Last year, salaries for state lawmakers around the country ranged from $100 a year in New Hampshire to about $140,000 a year in New York.

Martínez said New Mexico is the last so-called citizen legislature in the country, which means lawmakers are “strictly volunteers.”

“What I tell constituents is we’re dealing with issues of the 21st century with a 19th century process,” he said. “Even the fact that we meet in the dead of winter, you know, they did that because they weren’t necessarily tending to the land, to the farms, and so they came up here to legislate. Things are very different now, obviously.”

The push to hire full-time staff, led by a group of female legislators, has gained momentum over the years, Martínez said.

“It seemed to really ruffle very specific feathers — I wouldn’t say across the board that it was controversial — but it did raise the temperature of some folks,” he said.

“Over the last few months, as we’ve engaged in what is a very transparent and open and collaborative process, folks, even those who had concerns about this, realize that this is a really good idea. Ultimately, it’s about our constituents, it’s about providing better services to them, and it’s about good government,” he added. “I think that’s why today you saw a unanimous vote.”

Under the policies approved by the Legislative Council, a district legislative aide “shall not engage in electioneering” and nepotism is prohibited.

An aide may be hired at classification E, in which the salary range is $49,402 to $77,049.

“New staff should not be hired at more than 75% of the max, which is $57,786,” Legislative Council Service Director Raúl Burciaga wrote in an email.

A timeline proposed by a staff working group allows an incumbent with no general election opposition to hire an aide starting Sept. 1 and an incumbent who wins the general election to hire a staffer starting Dec. 1. A newly elected legislator may hire an aide April 1.

The Legislature included $6 million in the current fiscal year budget for legislative staffing, which will allow lawmakers to start hiring personnel this year.

“The additional funding for the full-out program would be considered during the regular session in January,” Martínez said.

Armstrong, a member of the Legislative Council, said lawmakers have a heavy workload.

“If you do this job right, in my opinion, it’s 24/7, so I’m really excited to have an aide,” she said.

“I’ve been thinking about who that would be,” Armstrong added. “My House district is the largest House district in the state, so I’m really trying to strategically place them somewhere where I can get them and constituents can access them.”

Another Legislative Council member, Rep. Alan Martinez, R-Bernalillo, said he’s struggled with the decision.

“I am not a big fan of increasing state government,” he said. “But I have balanced that with the phone conversations I’ve had with constituents who have said, ‘I would like to meet with you someplace other than Starbucks or a local restaurant or driving up to Santa Fe to find out you don’t actually go to that office every day.’ So, I have gone back and forth: Do I want to put an additional $16 million of taxpayer money to grow government with the benefit that my constituents are going to have?”

Martinez ultimately voted in support.

Martínez, the House speaker, said he considers himself to have a “team of people” now that he’s in a leadership position, though he noted they also work for the entire chamber.

“I spent eight years as a rank-and-file member, and I had to do all my scheduling myself,” he said. “I had to take all the meetings myself. I had to respond to all the emails myself, take all the phone calls myself, and that’s having a full-time job, coaching Little League and all the other things we do. It is very, very hard work as you can imagine, and I think for the people of New Mexico this is a very, very wise investment.”

Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.