History has taught us that gutless or greedy lawmakers will dawdle until public pressure forces them to solve problems.

Various members of the New Mexico Legislature for years were happy to accept campaign contributions from the storefront lending industry while ignoring its destructive practices. Legislators authorized these companies to charge annual interest rates of up to 175%.

Like neighborhood shylocks of old, predatory lenders trapped desperate consumers in a cycle of poverty. Someone who borrowed $1,000 might spend four or five times as much to repay the loan.

House members such as Rep. Eliseo Alcon, D-Milan, tried to justify the exorbitant rates by parroting lobbyists for storefront lenders. Cut interest rates too much, he said, and credit would dry up for consumers unable to qualify for lower-cost loans from banks.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham once embarked on a mediation campaign in hopes of reducing the interest rates. She assigned Lt. Gov. Howie Morales to bring together lobbyists for lending companies and advocates for consumers.

Morales is a talented politician, but mediation was a fool’s errand. Predators charging triple-digit interest rates had no incentive to change anything.

Annual interest rates finally were capped this year at 36% because of relentlessness by two Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Bill Soules of Las Cruces and Rep. Susan Herrera of Embudo. They and members of the public shamed the 112-member Legislature into eliminating government-sanctioned usury.

Republicans typically had sided with storefront lenders. But Herrera won over eight Republicans and one independent lawmaker as her bill passed the House 51-18. Soules was equally effective in the Senate.

Bureaucratic huddles with the army of lobbyists for storefront lenders didn’t change anything for the better. Progress occurred when legislators used their power.

I am recapping this history because state legislators again will try to raise the excise tax on alcoholic beverages. And one of New Mexico’s bright, diligent lawmakers, Democratic Rep. Derrick Lente, wants to mediate conversations between industry lobbyists and advocacy groups that believe additional tax revenue would lessen alcohol-related deaths and diseases.

A true citizen legislator, Lente was at work on his alfalfa farm in Sandia

Pueblo when I reached him by phone.

“Advocates and industry should at least come together. I’d love to sit in a room with them and mediate a discussion,” he said.

As chairman of the House Taxation and Revenue Committee, Lente has more important work to do.

He can make the case for a tax increase on alcoholic beverages and help sell it, just as Herrera and Soules did in cutting those ridiculous interest rates.

New Mexico lawmakers have not raised the excise tax on alcohol in 40 years.

The industry is happy with its lot, and lobbyists are paid to knock down any measure that might curb profits.

Certain legislators favor the tax increase to combat the negative effects of alcohol use. The money would flow to treatment and prevention programs in a state endangered by drunkenness.

New Mexico in 2021 had 2,274 deaths related to alcohol use, highest per capita in the country, according to the state Department of Health.

Other recent data compiled by the Legislative Finance Committee should be just as sobering.

“Between 2019 and 2021, the state’s alcohol-related death rate increased by 31 percent,” the committee’s report stated. The five most dangerous counties were McKinley, Cibola, Rio Arriba, San Juan and Socorro. All had death rates exceeding 150 per 100,000 people.

Two Democrats, Rep. Joanne Ferrary of Las Cruces and Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez of Albuquerque, early this year introduced identical bills to raise the excise tax on alcohol.

They proposed an increase of 25 cents per serving. Some $155 million eventually would have gone to a special fund to alleviate harms caused by people who drink to excess.

Their bills sputtered as lobbyists for beer and liquor companies went to work. A shriveled increase of about a penny per drink landed in a tax bill.

Lujan Grisham used her lineitem veto power to stop even that minuscule increase. She said it would not have made a difference.

“I don’t buy the governor’s rationale that it was too little. It would have been a start,” Lente said.

Sedillo Lopez and others hope to raise the tax on alcoholic drinks when legislators convene in January for 30 days.

“And, yes, we are speaking with the governor and her staff,” Sedillo Lopez wrote in a text message.

Getting Lujan Grisham’s ear is more important for legislators than shadow boxing with lobbyists.

The sky is always falling when lobbyists are orating. With straight faces, they praised triple-digit interest rates as helpful to low-income people. They spoke of a tax increase threatening the imminent demise of businesses that sell beer, wine and liquor. Like hounds to the chase, paid advocates will buttonhole Lente, Ferrary, Sedillo Lopez and every other breathing legislator.

Forget mediation. Lawmakers should worry about keeping lobbyists at bay long enough to get the bill typed up.

Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.