Your money, your choice — the fight to eliminate NM’s income tax

why does a state sitting on billions in oil and gas royalties still need to tax your paycheck at all? Gail Armstrong, Alan Martinez and Rebecca Dow didn't send a press release full of talking points. They asked the governor to call lawmakers back for one specific purpose, killing the personal income tax outright. That's a real proposal with a real number attached, not a slogan.

New Mexico's budget has been flush for years now thanks to the Permian Basin, and the state keeps piling up surpluses it doesn't quite know what to do with. Meanwhile working families in Farmington and Hobbs and Las Cruces still get their checks docked every two weeks for a government that's already swimming in severance tax revenue. If there was ever a moment to test whether New Mexico actually needs an income tax to function, this is it. The oil money isn't going anywhere soon, and lawmakers have had years to plan for the day it might.

Lujan Grisham doesn't have to call the session, and there's a decent chance she won't. Special sessions are hers to grant, and a governor who has built her brand on climate ambitions and expanded state programs isn't eager to hand Republicans a win on tax cuts, let alone one that would strip a permanent revenue stream from the budget she controls. But refusing to even discuss it while the state banks record surplus after record surplus is its own kind of answer. If Santa Fe won't seriously consider giving money back to the people who earned it during the best budget years the state has ever seen, voters deserve to know that's a choice, not a necessity.