New Mexico Executive Orders Bypassed $553.8M in Appropriations
Summary
Since 2023, New Mexico's executive branch has issued 811 executive orders committing $553,800,000 in emergency spending -- money that never went through the Legislature's ordinary appropriation process, according to the Legislative Finance Committee's own June 2026 review. Of that, $331,800,000 came from the general fund operating reserve since FY22, a fund state law says only the Legislature can authorize spending from. Two out-of-state contractors, DRC Emergency Services and AshBritt, collected 57.2% of the disaster-response money the LFC sampled, and DRC's contracted equipment rates ran as much as double FEMA's own benchmark prices. Meanwhile the state is still owed $229,641,000 in federal reimbursement -- 97.2% of what FEMA has deemed eligible since FY22 -- money that, by the state's own three-to-four-year track record, may not arrive for years.
A fund only the Legislature can tap -- tapped anyway
New Mexico's emergency spending is supposed to run through the appropriation contingency fund, which state law (Section 6-4-2.3 NMSA 1978)⧉ reserves for use "when there is no unappropriated surplus in the general fund." But that fund keeps running dry, and when it does, the executive branch has instead drawn on the general fund operating reserve -- the state's primary savings account, which a separate statute (Section 6-4-2.1(B) NMSA 1978)⧉ says "may be expended only upon specific authorization by the legislature."
The LFC found the executive has drawn from that reserve for emergencies every year since FY19; since FY22 alone, the draws total $331.8 million -- $26.4 million in FY22, $71.9 million in FY23, $39.1 million in FY24, and $194.4 million in FY25.
View data as table
| 2020 | $56.2M across 85 executive orders |
|---|---|
| 2025 | $304.9M across 417 executive orders |
Where the $553.8 million went
Of the $553.8 million committed since 2023, $466.2 million (84.2%) went to natural-disaster response and recovery -- fires, floods, and their aftermath. Outside natural disasters, the executive committed $29.7 million to public-safety measures in Rio Arriba County and Albuquerque, and $43 million to an "Other" category spanning public-health orders on gun violence and drug use, snow squalls, National Guard deployments, and food assistance during 2026. Most of that money moves through emergency procurement, which the LFC notes carries "fewer guardrails and can lead to higher costs than would be obtained through regular procurement or compared with benchmarks."
Two out-of-state firms, more than half the money
In a sample of 509 executive orders spanning the Departments of Transportation, Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources from 2022 to 2026, two contractors dominate: DRC Emergency Services LLC⧉, headquartered in Texas, took 40.9%, and AshBritt Inc., headquartered in Florida, took 16.3% -- 57.2% combined, both firms based outside New Mexico. In the 2024 Lincoln County Salt and South Fork fire response alone, DRC accounted for $132,084,417.81 of $171,949,508.25 in total DHSEM voucher spending -- 76.82% of it.
The LFC also found DRC's contracted equipment rates for that response frequently exceeded 's own 2025 benchmark schedule: a 100-ton crane billed at $650/hour against a $339/hour benchmark, a CAT 966 loader at $265/hour against $143.78, and a skid-steer loader at $140/hour against $60.67 -- more than double. Not every rate ran high: DRC's bulldozer rates came in at or slightly below the benchmark. Personnel on the DRC contract billed $35 to $286.65 an hour; a separate -grant-management contractor, Plexos Group LLC, billed $85 to $250 an hour depending on role.
View data as table
| DRC Emergency Services LLC | 40.9% |
|---|---|
| AshBritt Inc. | 16.3% |
| FEMA | 11.7% |
| All other vendors | 31.1% |
The federal money that may not come for years
New Mexico's Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management has recorded $309.283 million in disaster response spending since FY22, of which $236.136 million was eligible for reimbursement -- but only $6.495 million (2.8%) had actually been reimbursed by the time of the report, leaving $229.641 million (97.2%) pending. The state's own history suggests that wait is long: 89% of -eligible costs from 2022 have been reimbursed, and 97.3% from 2023 -- a pace implying roughly three to four years for 90% of a given year's eligible costs to come back, with full project closeout commonly taking seven to ten years. Mora County illustrates the gap in real time: as of May 2026, had obligated $42.6 million to the county for Calf Canyon/Hermit's Peak Fire recovery, but the county had received just $27,000 of it -- 0.07%.
View data as table
| FY2022 | $309K pending |
|---|---|
| FY2023 | $54K pending |
| FY2024 | $13.3M pending |
| FY2025 | $153.7M pending |
| FY2026 | $62.3M pending |
| Total, FY22-FY26 | $229.6M pending (97.2% of eligible costs) |
The takeaway
- New Mexico's executive branch committed $553.8 million through 811 executive orders since 2023 -- spending that never went through the Legislature's ordinary appropriation process, growing nearly 5.4-fold since 2020 by the LFC's own count.
- $331.8 million of that has come from the general fund operating reserve since FY22 -- a reserve fund state law reserves for the Legislature alone to authorize, tapped by the executive branch every year since FY19 regardless.
- Two out-of-state contractors, DRC Emergency Services and AshBritt, took 57.2% of the disaster-response money the LFC sampled -- and DRC's contracted equipment rates for the 2024 Lincoln County fires ran as much as double 's own 2025 benchmark prices, though not every rate exceeded the benchmark.
- $229.6 million in reimbursement remains pending -- 97.2% of what's eligible since FY22. New Mexico's own track record suggests three to four years is typical before 90% of eligible costs come back; Mora County has received just 0.07% of what has already obligated to it.
- The LFC's own recommendation is to close the loophole: formalize a statutory definition of "emergency," require unspent funds to revert once one ends, bar the executive from tapping the operating reserve for emergencies, and set a time limit after which the executive must return to the Legislature for approval.
All figures in this piece are drawn directly from the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee's Program Evaluation No. 26-02, "Emergency Orders," transmitted to the Department of Finance and Administration June 12, 2026 and presented June 16, 2026. The 543%-equivalent growth figure and the $1,000-level rounding differences noted in the reimbursement total are this outlet's own arithmetic on the report's reported figures (methods and results in analysis.json); the report itself states the 543% figure directly without showing its derivation. No Wayback Machine snapshot of the report PDF had indexed by publication time (a Save Page Now request was submitted July 17, 2026), so the capture link points directly at the Legislative Finance Committee's own hosted copy. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary document alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
Sources(1) ▾
- New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee, Program Evaluation: Emergency Orders (Program Evaluation No. 26-02) (2026-06-16) — LFC Program Evaluation No. 26-02, transmitted to the Department of Finance and Administration June 12, 2026 and presented to the full Legislative Finance Committee June 16, 2026. Source for every dollar figure, executive-order count, statutory citation, and vendor/rate figure in this piece: the $553.8M/811-EO topline and 2020-vs-2025 comparison (p. 1), the $466.2M/$29.7M/$43M category breakdown and the $331.8M reserve-fund withdrawal with NMSA 6-4-2.1(B) and 6-4-2.3 citations (pp. 4, 9-10), the vendor-concentration chart and DRC/AshBritt shares (p. 17), the DRC-vs- equipment rate comparison (p. 19), the reimbursement-by-year table and Mora County snapshot (pp. 22-23), and the DRC personnel-rate and Plexos Group staffing-rate appendices (pp. 46-47). nmlegis.gov · original document
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Since 2023, New Mexico's executive branch has issued 811 executive orders committing $553.8 million in emergency spending⧉ -- funding that moved through a mechanism the Legislature never voted on, according to the Legislative Finance Committee's own Program Evaluation No. 26-02, presented June 16, 2026. Emergency-order spending grew from 85 orders costing $56.2 million in 2020 to 417 orders costing $304.9 million in 2025 -- a nearly 5.4-fold jump in five years. The report's authors call this pattern a direct tension with the state constitution's "power of the purse" clause⧉, which says money can be paid from the treasury "only upon appropriations made by the legislature."