Kumbaya?

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday, Steve Terrell over at the Santa Fe New Mexican did a short piece discussing efforts by an organization calling itself We Are New Mexico which outlined its own budget fix ideas at about the same time as we released ours.

Their ideas included:

Bonding of Deficit Items.
Closing Foreign Corporate tax loopholes.

Review of top-heavy administrative positions vs. service positions.

Establishment of a ‘Blue Ribbon’ commission headed by the Governor and the Legislative leadership, and consisting of (but not limited to) business, organized labor and non-profit members to review state government and recommend long-term adjustments to make state government more effective in delivering the services that New Mexico’s citizens desire.

Provisions for an honest review and assessment of all tax incentives, to determine which actually create jobs and an improved New Mexican Economy.

A demand that proposed cuts are accompanied by an assessment of the impact on other aspects of New Mexico’s economy, fiscal status and especially on the most vulnerable people of our state.

The head of We Are New Mexico indeed has reached out to us at the RGF and we do plan to meet to discuss potential ideas that we share. And how about that verse of Kumbaya?

We’re definitely in favor of seriously looking at tax credits and incentives as most of them (the film industry’s in particular) are not effective. Also, reducing administrative expenses throughout government would be a wise move. The difference, of course, is that We Are New Mexico’s recommendations seem to be mostly general while ours are specific. We’ll see how things go at our meeting.