Bill Ideas                                                                 Youth and Government page  
   
Here are some ideas for bills.   Perhaps they will spark in you an idea.  If not, read some local papers, especially the opinion/editorial pages.    They might actually say something like, "there ought to be a law for...".    Letters that people write to the editor are sometimes a good source of ideas too.
 

Offering tax incentives for making your house more energy-efficient, perhaps by increasing the R-value.

Allowing the option of physician-assisted suicide for recipients of the death penalty/life sentence in prison. 

Making any bicycle expenses tax-deductible, as long as the bike is used for commutes to work?  

Ceasing any state funding for any institution that bears the name of a Conquistador?    Or bears the name of a Native American?

To provide incentive for recycling, and buying items with less packaging, make the cost of trash collection dependent on the weight of each resident's trash. 

Raise minimum wage state-wide.  Currently, the governor is pushing for an increase to $7.50/hr by 2009.  You could write a bill that implements the change more quickly, or slowly.  You could also change the amount, higher or lower as  you see appropriate.   Some have suggested that a company might be allowed to have a smaller increase in minimum wage if they also offered benefits to accompany the lower wage.

Make physician-assisted suicide legal or illegal.    Oregon passed a law making it legal, and the legitimacy of the law was just upheld by the supreme court.

Making illegal any interpretation of the state science standards to include so-called "intelligent design".    (or on the other side of the argument:   requiring the mention of "intelligent design" in the public schools.) 

RAISE taxes on gasoline.   Yep, raise ‘em!  This would use economic disincentives to help Americans wean themselves from dependence on foreign oil.

Along those lines:  a memorial (like a memo to the United States congress) insisting that congress legislatively raise CAFE  (Corporate Average Fuel Economy)  standards, which would mandate that auto manufacturers must increase the average fuel efficiency of the fleet of automobiles they make each year.

Making it illegal to own, for private purposes, a gasoline-powered vehicle that gets less than 12 mpg.  (Good bye Hummers!)

Add soda to the list of controlled substances, placing it as a peer of alcohol.  Perhaps a minimum age (16?  18?) for drinking soda?    (obesity in America costs us WAY more than illicit drug use).  Controversial!

Law providing consequences to students for not passing Standards Based Assessments.

Eliminating advertising in public schools, including Channel 1, and soda machines.

Setting a limit on the number of properties that may be bought by non-residents of New Mexico.  (to prevent a cause of hyper-inflated housing costs)

State-subsidized parental leave (ie “maternity” and “paternity” leave).  Perhaps only for first child?   or limit.....

Change voting system to IRV - Instant Runoff Voting.   Candidates are ranked during a single vote by each taxpayer.  If no candidate wins a majority of first choice votes, the last-place candidate is eliminated.  Second choice votes for the losing candidate are distributed to the remaining candidates to determine a new majority.  This process continues until someone has a majority.  This would allow you to vote for a smaller third party, and know that your vote will not be "thrown away", because if your candidate doesn't win, you have a second-place vote that goes to someone else.

no-interest loans or outright subsidation of New Mexico farmers installing drip-irrigation systems.  (these systems deliver about 95 percent of pumped water to the plants.  Conventional irrigation methods deliver 50 to 70 percent.  Yields with drip irrigation typically increase yield from 20 to 90 percent.)

50% sales tax (or another absurdly high value) on any GMO product so as to provide economic disincentive to purchase genetically modified food and products.  http://www.greenpeace.org/~geneng/

memorial:  do not open arctic national wildlife refuge for oil drilling.

tax incentives for conversion to domestic solar power.

mandatory labeling of all food products from NM indicating which pesticides and which herbicides were used in growing.

A memorial  -- Asking the federal government to increase the amount of financial aide provided to impoverished nations. 
 
A memorial -- Asking the federal government to eradicate or ease the debt that many third world countries owe the U.S.. 
 
A memorial -- Asking the federal government to increase the HIV/AIDS assistance to African countries without any restrictions based upon religion or abstinence only propaganda (ie. more lives would be saved with the distribution of condoms as well as teaching safe practices).
 
A law -- Banning the use of cell phones completely while operating a motor vehicle.
 
Farmer subsidies for organic farming (or increase them if they already exist).
 
A memorial -- Do not open ANY national wild life refuge, national park, etc to oil drilling.
 
State law -- Do not open any state parks or wild life refuges to oil drilling or natural gas drilling.
 
Cap limits on the percentage of money New Mexico school districts spend on bureaucracy and administration.
 
Limit the class size in an elementary school to no more than 12 per teacher for k-3, 15 per teacher 4th and 5th.  Funding provided by idea above.