HB 50: Counterproductive for Environmental Progress, While Devastating Small Businesses, Economy

Jan 26, 2021 by AFP

SANTA FE, NM – Americans for Prosperity-New Mexico (AFP-NM) today urged lawmakers to reject HB 50, a bill that creates an unnecessary expansive private right of action under New Mexico’s environmental statues. The bill ignores the role of common law in adjudicating environmental matters and goes well beyond even the most aggressive citizen suit provisions in our federal environmental statutes. It would misalign incentives for cooperation on continued environmental progress while chilling economic activity through frivolous litigation.

AFP-NM issued a Key Vote Alert on the bill.

In the Key Vote Alert, AFP-NM’s Community Engagement Director Brenda Boatman writes:

“Rather than create the tools for citizens to hold state environmental agencies accountable for carrying out our environmental laws, this bill would instead deputize unaccountable, anti-energy third parties, resulting in runaway litigation, frivolous citizens’ enforcement actions, and less economic opportunity for low-income New Mexicans.”