How did the votes shake out on HB 547 “omnibus” tax bill?

As we’ve mentioned before here, the tax omnibus bill passed in the 2023 session was one of the most complicated pieces of legislation to have passed the Legislature, not just this year, but for some time.

There were extensive changes to the legislation made in both the House and then in the Senate. In our Freedom Index we rated the House-passed version a +2 and the Senate version a -1. With potential point totals ranging from “-8” to “+8” we obviously feel that this bill was not great or terrible public policy, but missing the opportunity to reform the GRT pyramiding limited the bill’s positive score.

The variations had to be resolved through a process called concurrence after which leaders from both houses hammered out an agreement (here’s our take on that).

Curiously, the New Mexico Legislature’s website does not include those concurrence votes (you can look here). We had to ask for them.

The House passed the final version on a voice vote meaning everyone supported it. The Senate passed it, but there was a formal vote taken (click here). We actually felt the final bill was so mediocre as to merit a “0” score so the Senate concurrence vote was not included in our final vote tally. Nonetheless, we think this information should be public.