Harrison lists the benefits of leaving office

By Kristen Davenport
For the Independent

SANTA FE — The special session of the New Mexico legislature will have to wage its final battles this week with one of its members missing.

Rep. Irvin Harrison, 53, who finished his third session of the legislature Saturday, will not attend the session this week, having resigned his seat effective Thursday.

"My last day was the day we adjourned," Harrison said Tuesday, as his former colleagues filed back into the Roundhouse.

Harrison said he started his new job Monday as executive assistant to Carol Sloane, the recently elected Public Regulation Commission officer a job that comes with benefits.

"That's really what it was about I haven't really had a full-time job since I took my (House) seat," he said. "I had some part time jobs, but it's hard to get a full time job when you're in the House."

New Mexico's citizen legislature, he said, makes it hard for people who aren't retired to accept jobs on the Senate or House, because employers have to allow legislators to leave for 30 or 60 days every year, for the legislative session. And that doesn't count another dozen or so days in the off-season for special meetings in Santa Fe.

"A lot of the people there are retired or they have some other business they are doing that allows (time off)," Harrison said.

New Mexico has considered changing the way the citizen legislature works a dozen times over the years, contemplating going to a paid salary job for lawmakers. Those attempts have so far failed. So, Harrison said, he instead has taken a job full time, with benefits.

But, he leaves behind this legacy: He passed a bill this session, a non-binding memorial asking the state to look into changing Columbus Day in the state to Indigenous Day. Harrison has asked for the change, saying the day should instead be set aside to honor not the conquering Spaniards but the native people who lived here before Europeans arrived.

A similar bill Harrison introduced, which would have mandated the change by state statute, was tabled in a House committee.