A top state Senate Democrat lamented this week lawmakers ceded too much control to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham during this year’s legislative session by striking a deal to water down a bill creating a new oversight agency for the troubled New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department.

“We could have done a better job, and we chose not to,” said Sen. Joseph Cervantes, a Las Cruces Democrat who also chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, during a Legislative Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee meeting Wednesday in Albuquerque.

The bill in question, House Bill 5, created a new Office of Child Advocate, an agency outside of CYFD tasked with looking into complaints and other problems at the child welfare agency.

Lujan Grisham and her administration fought the bill through

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