SANTA FE - Bullying would be a crime.

Spanking students in public schools would be outlawed.

The Native American Squash Blossom necklace would become New Mexico's "official necklace."

Thieves who embezzle from school districts would be subject to losing their vehicles and other property.

Thursday was the last day to introduce bills for this 60-day legislative session, and with the last-day flurry more than 1,000 laws have been proposed.

Some are weighty and sobering, such as attempts to reinstate the death penalty. New Mexico is one of 15 states that does not impose capital punishment, having barred death sentences in 2009. Rep. Dennis Kintigh and Sen. Rod Adair, both Roswell Republicans, have proposed bills to bring back capital punishment.

In what may come as a surprise, corporal punishment is still on the books as an option for public schools. Sen. Cynthia Nava, D-Las Cruces, has filed a bill to outlaw paddling.

Nava, superintendent of the Gadsden Independent School District, said she did not know of any districts that still allowed staff members to spank students. Her bill, she said, was intended to make sure corporal punishment does not happen by removing it from a statute that lists acceptable forms of school punishment.

Theft, unlike paddling, still goes on in schools.

Nava filed another bill to subject school employees to forfeiture of property if they are charged with stealing.

The bill sprang from a years-long, $3.4 million embezzlement scheme in

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the Jemez Mountain School District, home to fewer than 400 students. The district's business manager, Kathy Borrego, pleaded guilty to embezzlement last year. Police said she killed herself two days before sentencing.

Another bill on crime and punishment would make it a fourth-degree felony to recruit people for gangs. The sponsor is Sen. William Sharer, R-Farmington.

Rep. Mary Helen Garcia, D-Las Cruces, filed a bill this week to make bullying a misdemeanor. Garcia is a retired school principal.

A shifting of resources to fight crime is proposed by Rep. Moe Maestas, a Democrat and former prosecutor in Albuquerque. He wants to eliminate thousands of misdemeanor cases statewide by preventing the Motor Vehicle Division from suspending somebody's driver's license for missing traffic court. Maestas said the threat of a bench warrant is enough for most people to keep court appearances.

Maestas would take savings from the reduced load in traffic court to lengthen sentences in homicide cases.

Money is scarce in this legislative session, but spending bills still pop up now and then.

One, by Sen. John Pinto, D-Tohatchi, would allocate $175,000 for a feasibility study on a National Navajo Code Talkers Museum and Veterans Center in McKinley County.

Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, is the man behind the necklace legislation. His bill would designate the American Squash Blossom as the state necklace.

New Mexico has an official tie - the bolo - and an official insect - the menacing tarantula hawk wasp - so a necklace has been hard to argue against.

Munoz's bill for the necklace cleared the Senate on a 33-0 vote and now is in the House of Representatives.

Santa Fe Bureau Chief Milan Simonich can be reached at msimonich@tnmnp.com or (505) 820-6898. His blog is at http://elpasotimes.typepad.com/newmexico.