BBER’s Phantom Task Force

Heard of the “Family-Friendly Workplace Task Force”? If not, don’t blame yourself. The entity, created by a House Memorial in 2015, is a bit of a phantom. The Foundation had forgotten all about it until we spotted a very odd, no-byline article in the Clovis News Journal a few days ago. Apparently, the task force held a meeting at the North Annex of the Clovis-Carver Public Library — the first in “a 10-city tour around the state to gauge the interest and ability for a statewide paid leave policy.”

The memorial that created the Family-Friendly Workplace Task Force charged it with crafting recommendations for “the establishment of a parental paid-leave program to provide paid leave to parents for childbirth and to care for newborn or newly adopted children or for newly acquired foster children” and naming “a state agency to manage the parental paid-leave program and the parenting workers’ leave fund.”

The executive director of the far-left Southwest Women’s Law Center was “requested to serve as chair of the parental paid-leave working group,” and the establishment-left Bureau of Business and Economic Research, housed at UNM, was to “convene” the group.

But dig around on the web for anything regarding the Family-Friendly Workplace Task Force, and you’ll find zilch. The BBER doesn’t offer any information on its website. (We’ve contacted them to inquire further.) Neither does the Southwest Women’s Law Center’s online presence. News coverage, except for the Clovis News Journal article, has been nonexistent.

So what’s going on? Don’t citizens, taxpayers, and businesses deserve to know what the Family-Friendly Workplace Task Force has been up to? And where is the list of the nine cities remaining in the group’s statewide tour?

The deadline for the task force’s “findings and recommendations” is October 1st — just three and a half months from now. The Foundation will stay on the case, and report what we find.