Mayor Keller talks business: a closer look at his comments

Recently, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller spoke to a business group. His “stay the course” comments raised some eyebrows, but with him having won a 3rd term with a resounding 58% of the vote it is hard to see what else he would say.

However, there are other aspects of Keller’s speech (as reported here) raised OUR eyebrows.

Keller remains fixated on bringing a University of New Mexico campus downtown. Keller is even talking about using city money to subsidize this effort. Keller is trying to use the campus to bring people downtown. This has nothing to do with demand for a downtown campus. UNM’s main campus is right up the road just two miles away with ample transit options. There is simply no need for yet another UNM branch campus and (like so many past downtown development schemes this too will likely wind up wasting a lot of money).

Keller’s already bad “pitch” for a downtown campus only worsened when he made the incorrect claim that “We have one of the most underfunded universities in the country.” In reality, New Mexico’s higher education system is the third biggest recipient of tax dollars (per full time enrollee) relative to other states (see page 43) UNM is New Mexico’s flagship university. It is NOT underfunded.

Keller then addressed New Mexico’s massive “permanent funds.” At the Rio Grande Foundation we have noted many times that New Mexico could do something with this money to diversify the economy and preferably reduce taxes and make our state a more desirable place to live and do business.

Sadly, Keller suffers from the same “government-first” mindset of many New Mexico politicians. Instead, he seems to believe spending even more money is the path forward, “We have a crime problem that can be solved by technology and we are sitting on mountains of cash. We have an addiction problem that can be solved by actually paying incentives for people to move here to do treatment and building places for their new treatment and we are sitting on billions and billions of dollars.”

Yes, New Mexico is “sitting on piles of cash” but it does not follow that technology can solve our crime issues or that our addiction problems require even more money than has already been spent.