New Mexico’s two major dailies have been devoting a lot of attention to the advertisements funded by political action committees. The entire legislature is up for grabs on Election Day, and big bucks are being spent to determine which party will control which chamber.

But this sentence, in an article written by the Santa Fe New Mexican’s Andrew Oxford, caught the Foundation’s attention: “The state’s election watchdog does not have any authority over the content of campaign ads.”

In 2015, a legislator tried to do something about that. Senator Howie Morales sponsored SB 675, the “Truth in Political Advertising Act.” It appropriated $5 million to the attorney general to appoint “review agencies” — “public or private [entities] chosen by the office of the attorney general” — that would score every TV commercial, radio spot, and mailing for “truth or falsity” and the extent to which the communication was “misleading.” Scores would range from 1 (“untruth or false”) to 5 (“completely truthful”). Candidates and organizations not agreeing to scrutiny would be assessed a fine “of two times the cost of producing and distributing the advertisement,” and made to disclose that their ads have “not been submitted for a rating.” Refusal to include the disclaimer would induce “a fine of twenty times the cost of producing and distributing the advertisement.”

Rather curiously, SB 675 exempted judicial offices and legislative races. So if it had passed, this year, the review agencies would be scoring just the secretary of state, bail-reform, and GO-bond campaigns.

Fortunately for the cause of free speech, Morales’s bill didn’t get far. An analysis by legislative researchers raised the thorny issue of the attorney general’s office warning that “SB 675 may violate the First Amendment.” (No kidding.)

Few voters like negative campaigning, and the flood of often-nasty election ads appearing on screens and in mailboxes can get annoying. But the best way to sort out the charges and counter-charges is to let reporters, editorial pages, columnists, bloggers, and watchdog groups of varying perspectives and ideologies offer their analysis. A truth squad overseen by the attorney general is no way to help voters make up their minds.

In 2003, at a Capitol Hill briefing, the Cato Institute’s Jerry Taylor warned that the NIMBY fights so common over oil-and-gas drilling are “there, waiting to happen, in the renewable-energy sector.”

The scholar’s prediction was borne out, most famously, with the Robert Kennedy, Jr.-led opposition to the Cape Wind Project, to be sited in Nantucket Sound. (Can’t mar that fantastic view from Hyannis Port.) But plenty of less-high-profile attempts to build the infrastructure of a “green” future have been torpedoed by eco-agitators. One could be taking place right here in the Land of Enchantment.

In 2005, Congress established “the development of environmentally responsible renewable energy as a United States Department of the Interior priority,” and obligated the U.S. Forest Service to “facilitate the development and production of geothermal energy.” In response, federal land-management bureaucrats identified the Santa Fe National Forest — specifically, the Coyote, Cuba, Espanola, and Jemez Ranger Districts — as having significant potential for geothermal leasing. Earlier this year, several public meetings were held to “provide a brief overview of the draft environmental impact statement on the potential effects of geothermal energy development on land within forest boundaries.”

Unsurprisingly, New Mexico’s environmental left is squealing. The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance warns of geothermal’s effect on water, endangered species, and seismic activity. In addition, the organization claims that the “levels of management which would be required” to protect the forest’s resources “are unreasonable, and not practical even for the industry.”

For good measure, the All Pueblo Council passed a resolution asserting that leasing would “exasperate impacts to the Pueblo Nations,” since the “land known as the Santa Fe National Forest has been occupied and used by the Pueblos from time immemorial and continues to be of profound spiritual and religious importance because of the sacred areas within, and the necessary uses of the forest, including the subsurface use of aquifers and natural springs, to maintain Pueblo culture and tradition.”

The Geothermal Energy Association thinks New Mexico has the potential to create 1,840 full-time jobs in the industry. But the state’s not likely to see such an employment boost, so long as the bait-and-switch over renewable energy — i.e., claim it’s preferable to “fossil fuels,” then oppose the siting of wind, solar, and geothermal projects — continues.

With the health care law known as “ObamaCare” clearly failing on its own terms (in terms of keeping your health plan and “bending the cost curve”) , there has been a lot of talk among the Law’s defenders about “fixing” it. Former US Senator (D-NM) Jeff Bingaman was recently quoted along these lines and former President Bill Clinton has both called aspects of the Law “the craziest thing ever” and argued for undisclosed “fixes” to it.

It is hard to understand why Democrats didn’t “fix” the law the first time around when they passed it through Congress with overwhelming majorities and zero Republican votes. It is pretty clear that any “fix” simply means further expansion of government’s role in health care.

What Bill Clinton and ObamaCare’s defenders fail to understand is that American health care was NOT a free market system BEFORE ObamaCare. In fact, the health law actually locks in the worst problem with American health care: third-party payment and does NOTHING to increase the presence of market forces.

ObamaCare cannot be “fixed.” It can be repealed and “replaced” but not with another third-party payment scheme (whether that is through the tax code or government programs) with something resembling a free market or the system will slowly morph into a “single-payer” system with all the issues that entails. I know that is the game plan for many, but it would be worth at least trying the free market before embracing socialism.

The Center for Opportunity Urbanism‘s Wendell Cox has devised a system that, as his colleague Joel Kotkin describes, determines “metropolitan areas where salaries are relatively high relative to costs, and you get more for your paycheck.” The Center’s “Standard of Living Index” analyzes “the 2015 mean pay per job in the 106 metropolitan statistical areas with more than 500,000 population and adjusts it by cost of living. Metro areas that have a large proportion of high-wage jobs tend to do best, such as San Jose … and Houston. The biggest differences in terms of cost of living generally have to do with housing; costs for goods varied by 23 percent and for services by 35 percent in 2014 across the metropolitan data, but for rents the differential between the most and least expensive metro areas is 194 percent and, for housing purchased in 2014, a remarkable 775 percent.”

For New Mexico’s sole metro region on the list, the finding isn’t good. Albuquerque ranks #82. Taking a look at the cities in its neighboring states, the picture is equally ugly. Of its 15 competitors, the Duke City just about tied Tucson, and bested only Provo, El Paso, Ogden, and McAllen. Ten metro regions prevailed over Albuquerque. Houston’s victory was crushing — annual pay per job there was 30.2 percent higher.

Kotkin recommends that metro areas seeking to “improve in these rankings need to focus not just on developing their economies, but also policies that keep costs competitive with other regions.” At the city, county, and state levels, lower taxes, smarter spending, and lighter regulations are needed to boost Albuquerque’s subpar standard of living.

The Foundation is tracking announcements of expansions, relocations, and greenfield investments published on Area Development’s website. Founded in 1965, the publication “is considered the leading executive magazine covering corporate site selection and relocation. … Area Development is published quarterly and has 60,000 mailed copies.” In an explanation to the Foundation, its editor wrote that items for Area Development‘s announcements listing are “culled from RSS feeds and press releases that are emailed to us from various sources, including economic development organizations, PR agencies, businesses, etc. We usually highlight ones that represent large numbers of new jobs and/or investment in industrial projects.”

In October, of 10,490 projected jobs, 8,602 — 82 percent — were slated for right-to-work (RTW) states:

As for the sub-metrics the Foundation scrutinizes:

* Ten domestic companies based in non-RTW states announced investments in RTW states. Just two announcements went the other way.

* RTW prevailed in foreign direct investment, too. Thirteen projects are headed to RTW states, with three to occur in a non-RTW state.

* Both domestic relocations made the jump from non-RTW to RTW states.

* One foreign-owned firm relocated its headquarters, moving (surprisingly) from a RTW to a non-RTW state.

Marquee RTW investments included Vector Space Systems’s pick of Arizona for its new factory (400 jobs), KLX Aerospace Solutions’s decision to build “a new corporate headquarters with a state of the art distribution center” in Florida (400 jobs), the opening of ABB’s “advanced technology manufacturing facility” in Mississippi (300 jobs), and OKI Data Corporation’s selection of Texas for a new operations hub (100 jobs).

Methodological specifics:

* All job estimates — “up to,” “as many as,” “about” — were taken at face value, for RTW and non-RTW states alike.

* If an announcement did not make an employment projection, efforts were made to obtain an estimate from newspaper articles and/or press releases from additional sources.

* If no job figure could be found anywhere, the project was not counted, whether it was a RTW or non-RTW state.

* Non-border-crossing relocations were not counted, border-crossing relocations were.

New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee recently issued a report that, to the casual observer, might make indicated that the state bureaucracy in the Land of Enchantment has been “cut to the bone” due to recent budget issues.

It may be true as the LFC says that the ranks of state employees have shrunk to the lowest level in almost a decade. What is definitely true is that more cuts are ahead due to the dire budget situation and the weak rebound in oil and gas prices. According to the LFC report, the number of state employees has declined 3.4 percent since this time last year and 12 percent over the last eight years.

In the comments section of an article written by Andrew Oxford in the Santa Fe New Mexican which noted that we at the Rio Grande Foundation believe New Mexico government needs to shrink further, Rep. Christine Trujillo (former teachers’ union head) stated that my organization “wants to follow Grover Norquist’s desire to shrink all government down to a size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in a bathtub.”

Metaphorical drownings aside, it is indeed our view that New Mexico’s government can and should shrink significantly. Fortunately, when New Mexico’s bureaucracy is compared to those of other states, particularly our neighbors, it is clear our State has plenty of room to cut.

According to data from Governing Magazine, New Mexico has the 8^th-highest ratio of state government workers relative to its population nationwide. The real size of New Mexico’s bureaucracy becomes clear when you compare our levels of state employment with the levels found in neighboring states.

According to the same report, New Mexico has 128 state employees per 10 thousand people. Texas, on the other hand has 65 and Arizona and Colorado each have 63 state workers per 10 thousand people. Utah has the highest ratio of state employees among New Mexico’s neighbors with 95 per 10 thousand people.

In other words, New Mexico’s bureaucracy may be a bit smaller than it has been, but our state employment per capita is much higher than it is in neighboring states. Policymakers should continue to shrink State government.

But this “right-sizing” can’t be achieved by just leaving existing positions unfilled. Rather, it must be done by thoroughly reevaluating all areas of New Mexico government and eliminating unnecessary institutions, agencies, commissions, and programs.

This is not meant as a criticism of those government workers. In fact, when positions are left unfilled, work loads do get heavier for those remaining. But it is high time to rethink the way New Mexico government operates.

As a starting point, past LFC reports have found that New Mexico has too many institutes of higher education and too many branch campuses. Those sites and schools could be consolidated in ways that improve student outcomes and cut costs at the same time.

Another report (this one from the Census Bureau) finds that New Mexico’s K-12 administrative spending as a percentage of per-pupil spending is severely out-of-whack with levels found in other states. New Mexico was at 15 percent while the 2^nd-highest state was North Dakota at “just” 9.4 percent.

The ongoing budget crisis should be seen as an opportunity to improve efficiency in some areas and eliminate or reduce government’s role in others.

I’m not sure at what size New Mexico government would be small enough to drown in Grover Norquist’s proverbial bathtub, but I know we’re not even close. State government in New Mexico remains bigger than it is in most other states.

Worse, absent a miracle turnaround in oil and gas prices or dramatic economic policy reforms resulting in strong private sector growth, we can’t afford the government we have. If serious changes aren’t made, red ink, not a bathtub, will be the cause of New Mexico’s demise.

Paul Gessing is the President of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

A chart showing how New Mexico’s state bureaucracy compares to its neighbors can be seen below:

Source: Marijuana Policy Group, “The Economic Impact of Marijuana Legalization in Colorado”

Proponents of marijuana legalization often cite its potential to boost states’ tax revenue. It’s an argument that the Foundation finds compelling, as Errors of Enchantment has noted before.

But a new report on the economics of the pot industry in our neighbor to the north supplies another justification: economic development.

The Marijuana Policy Group, a “collaborative effort between researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder Business Research Division and BBC Research & Consulting in Denver,” has crafted “the world’s first marijuana economic impact model,” with the goal of helping Colorado “voters, policymakers, and regulators understand how … legalization impacts the state economy.”

Some of the MPG’s findings:

* With the market — at least for now — totally under the control of the state, nearly “all spending on marijuana flows to workers and businesses within the state.”

* As the above chart indicates, in 2015, legal marijuana supported 18,005 direct, indirect, and induced full-time equivalent jobs in Colorado.

* While workers in retailing “have relatively low average wages and few fringe benefits,” more than 75 percent of industry employment is in other fields, including management, manufacturing, and agriculture specialties.

* Ancillary job-creation is on the rise as the industry matures and boosts demand for “law firms, consultancies, and … professional service providers.”

* In 2015, sales “grew by 42.4 percent, to $996 million.”

Here’s the full analysis. Definitely worth a careful perusal by all working to revive New Mexico’s moribund economy.

If marijuana legalization is inevitable, why not be an “early adopter” — and reap both the fiscal and economic benefits?

As votes continue to be cast for ALL legislative races in New Mexico, the issue of “right to work” hangs in the balance. The Rio Grande Foundation tracks national job creation data on “right to work,” but time marches on and “right to work” states continue to flourish relative to their “forced unionism” brethren.

Vincent Vernuccio of the Michigan-based Mackinac Center had the following data in a recent piece published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Some highlights from that article follow:

*From 2000 to 2015, personal income in right-to-work states increased 91 percent compared to 72 percent in non-right-to-work states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

*Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that since right-to-work was passed in Michigan, weekly earnings increased by almost 5 percent or $38.86 per week on average. In Indiana, which also recently enacted right-to-work, earnings are up. Since 2012, they have increased by $83.87 per week.

*When we look at what people can actually buy with their money, workers in right-to-work states have 4.1 percent higher incomes than workers in non-right-to-work states.

*Census data show that people are voting with their feet. Population increased 22.3 percent in right-to-work states but only 9.5 percent in non-right-to-work states from 2000 to 2015.

*Over 480,000 people moved to right-to-work states from July 2014 to July of last year.

*All seven of the top states for private-sector job growth from 1995 to 2015 were right-to-work states.

This election will determine control of the New Mexico Legislature. We don’t get to vote on Senate control for another four years. Absent market-based reforms like “right to work,” New Mexico’s poor economic performance (and difficult spending cuts) is likely to continue.

Fair’s fair. A few weeks ago, Errors of Enchantment looked at the communities that impose the highest gross receipts taxes in New Mexico. Now let’s examine where the levy hurts the least.

The unincorporated regions of the counties below impose the lightest GRT rates — 6.1250 percent or less. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the counties are all quite rural, so the benefits aren’t widespread.

Beyond the unincorporated-county level, the picture doesn’t get much brighter. Bonito Lake, owned by the City of Alamogordo, imposes a rate of 5.5000 percent. But the facility, damaged by the Little Bear Fire in 2012, won’t be reopened until 2018. Other jurisdictions of limited value to Joe and Jane Taxpayer include the Lovington Industrial Park (5.5000 percent), Socorro Industrial Park (6.0000 percent), and Clovis Municipal Airport (6.1250 percent).

At 7.3125 percent, the GRT rates in Albuquerque and Los Alamos are the lowest for New Mexico’s major municipalities. But tribal lands shouldn’t be overlooked — Kewa Pueblo (Sandoval County), the Jicarilla Apache Nation, Laguna Pueblo, Pueblo de Cochiti, Pueblo de San Ildefonso, Sandia Pueblo, and Santa Ana Pueblo all impose a rather forgiving rate of 6.2500 percent.

In its October newsletter, the Legislative Finance Committee claims that the “number of state employees is down 3.4 percent compared with this time last year and is down 12 percent from FY09.” (See graph, taken from the publication, above.)

The LFC appears to be counting state workers outside the higher-education system, but that’s a very dubious approach. Toss in the number of employees (full-time equivalent) for New Mexico’s colleges and universities, and the total number of people on the state’s payroll more than doubles.

But the proper way to count nonfederal “public servants” is to tally both state and local employees. By that measure, labor productivity has been disappointing during the last decade and a half. The chart below shows how little has been accomplished. The peak number of jobs came in 2007. Since then, the number of positions has fallen by just 5.9 percent — not impressive, given the state’s drooping population and the increasing availability of technology that enhances per-worker output.

This summer, Governing magazine did some computations that should make every New Mexico taxpayer blanch. It found that when all states are ranked, New Mexico has the 10^th highest ratio of noneducation public employees to population. The comparable metric for the state’s K-12 schools wasn’t too bad, landing at about the median. But for the colleges-and-universities ratio, the finding was mighty scary. New Mexico fell behind only North Dakota as the state with the most higher-education employees.

The bottom line? Month-to-month — and even year-to-year — analyses of government payrolls aren’t very useful. It’s best to look at the long-term trend, counting at both the state and local levels. Examining how the Land of Enchantment compares with other states is essential as well. When those data are scrutinized, it’s clear that taxpayers in New Mexico can justifiably demand more from the men and women on public payrolls.

“Health groups” held a rally in Santa Fe yesterday to push for hiking the state’s taxes on tobacco. It’s a familiar refrain — smoking kills, it drives up the costs of “public” health insurance, government must aggressively target bad habits, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But those who consider tobacco-tax hikes a silver bullet for revenue-creation and improved health outcomes don’t study the issue closely enough. Smokers respond to higher coffin-nail taxes in several ways. One is border-crossing. As a Clovis clerk lamented in 2010, when New Mexico’s tax became higher than the levy imposed by our neighbor to the east, “All the Texas-jumpers are going to stay home. Why pay more and use your gas to come up this way?”

Smuggling is another byproduct of higher cigarette taxes. Recent work by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Tax Foundation found that smuggled smokes’ share of  total cigarette consumption in New Mexico is quite high — fourth in the nation. “Excessively high taxes” on cigarettes, researchers wrote, foster “many other unintended byproducts,” including “violence against police, people and property.”

After New Mexico’s last cigarette-tax hike, revenue did rise. But the “progress” was brief: For the past five fiscal years, the funds generated have been flat. (See graph below.)

However popular, higher taxes on politically incorrect products aren’t the answer to New Mexico’s fiscal woes. The state’s spending gap must be closed with smart cuts and an effective economic-development strategy that yields adequate revenue for government’s legitimate duties.

There has been a lot of talk about “rigged” elections this year and, while we don’t buy into the conspiracy theories, giving one side unlimited resources and giving another zero resources certainly comes close to determining the outcome of an election, right?

Take the $140 million in higher education bonds on the ballot this fall in New Mexico. If you log on to UNM’s website, you’ll find a large message (screen shot below) urging you to go vote for the higher education bond.

A website solely dedicated to passage of Bond C is available to tout the benefits of passing the bond along with the requisite claims about “no tax hikes” and job creation. What is never mentioned is how taxes would go down or how many jobs might be created if people kept their own money instead of having it taxed away.

And, not that I’m complaining (because we wouldn’t take it anyway), while the “pro” side obviously has access to deep pockets from those who would benefit from the flow of your tax dollars, those who want to see taxpayers keep their money must rely on their own resources or those of donors “to the cause.” Perhaps the Legislature should put a stop to some of the most egregious abuses such as express advocacy on a taxpayer-funded website like UNM’s?

Think the special session, and the governor’s signing of its budget-cutting bills, have resolved New Mexico’s deficit woes? Think again. Yesterday brought two pieces of bad news on the fiscal front.

First, Moody’s Investors Service “downgraded the State of New Mexico’s general obligation bonds to Aa1 from Aaa, affecting $327 million of outstanding debt.” In addition, the firm “downgraded to Aa2 from Aa1 the state’s Lease Appropriation Bonds (Fort Bayard Project) Series 2008, issued through Grant County, affecting $53 million of outstanding debt; and downgraded to Aa2 from Aa1 the ratings of the New Mexico School District Enhancement Program (post March 30, 2007) and the New Mexico School District Enhancement Program (pre March 30, 2007), affecting approximately $2.1 billion in enhanced school district debt.”

Moody’s action on the GO bonds was “driven by the depletion of general fund reserves following a very large and unanticipated shortfall in tax revenues for fiscal 2016 and 2017. Reserves are expected to equal only 1% of recurring revenues at the end of fiscal 2017, even after significant budget balancing actions taken by the legislature in a recent special session.”

Second, the Legislative Finance Committee released a revenue report for accruals through July. Total recurring revenue for the first month of the new fiscal year “was $384.3 million, down 10.7 percent from the same month a year ago.” GRT for July “represented the lowest July number recorded since July 2010.” Revenue from the personal-income tax was down, too. See the graph above for a breakdown by source.

One month isn’t a trend, of course — perhaps things will improve. But New Mexico’s unemployment rate is now the highest in the contiguous states. The LFC report noted that only three industries in the private sector gained jobs year-over-year. Mining employment, battered by the decline in oil-and-gas production, fell by 27 percent. Manufacturing dipped by 6 percent, and retail trade shrank by 1.7 percent.

There’s every reason to believe that we haven’t seen the last of the Land of Enchantment’s river of red ink. Get ready for an exciting 2017 legislative session.

Immigration has been a hot-button issue in the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. No matter what your position is on immigration policy, it is widely recognized that a leading motivating factor behind immigration is the search for better work opportunities.

The conservative Heritage Foundation (which favors strict limits on immigration) has put out a very interesting chart (below) detailing the growth of immigrant populations by state between 2010 and 2014. Interestingly, New Mexico saw a zero or even negative “growth” in its immigrant population. It was one of a handful of states to do so. Not surprisingly, all of New Mexico’s faster-growing neighbors had faster-growing immigrant populations.

Whether you are a fan of immigration or not, this comports with New Mexico’s slow overall population growth (especially as compared with other Western states). It is yet another indicator of New Mexico’s challenged economy. Check out the detailed post from Heritage Foundation.

Yesterday, the Santa Fe New Mexican’s Bruce Krasnow examined “From Volatile Severance Taxes to Sustained Revenue,” a Pew Charitable Trusts analysis of how states use the revenue they derive from levies placed on natural resources. The reporter dutifully traced the history of the Land of Enchantment’s Severance Tax Permanent Fund (STPF), writing that it “was created by the Legislature in 1973 and given constitutional protection by voters three years later. Money from it is used to pay off capital construction projects around the state known as severance tax bond projects. Money is also transferred every year to the state general fund, which pays for the day-to-day operations of state government, from courts to public education.”

As Pew’s researchers noted, the STPF’s purpose is “implied and broad” rather than “explicit and narrow.” And unlike similar accounts in Alaska, Wyoming, and West Virginia, legislators are permitted to withdraw from the fund’s principal.

The report should be required reading for lawmakers and candidates for the legislature. A look at how other states handle severance-tax revenues is valuable, and a discussion on how the STPF serves New Mexico taxpayers is overdue. But beyond technicalities, the fund’s very existence should be debated.

All taxes on “natural resources” are predicated on the notion that revenue from non-renewable commodities should be “invested” for “future generations.” The justification has a superficial appeal, but it suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding — one well-articulated by the Institute for Energy Research’s Robert L. Bradley Jr.: “What are resources today may not be tomorrow, and vice versa.”

Economist Erich Zimmermann wrote that resources “are highly dynamic functional concepts; they are not, they become, they evolve out of the triune interaction of nature, man, and culture, in which nature sets outer limits, but man and culture are largely responsible for the portion of physical totality that is made available for human use.” (Petroleum offers an excellent example. Technological advancements enable drillers to return to “played out” wells for another crack at extracting black gold.)

New Mexico faces an almost existential crisis. It is losing population, its economy is arguably the worst in the nation, and it may not be able to meet meet its long-term unfunded liabilities. Perhaps the best way the STPF — along with its sister account, the far bigger Land Grant Permanent Fund — can serve the state’s future is to go away. Spending down the funds over a decade would enable the state to eliminate its taxes on personal and corporate income. Real economic-development policies would go a long way toward ensuring that New Mexico actually has a future.

New Mexicans are desperate for some good economic news (see the grasping for straws over the Facebook “success”).

Unfortunately, the path forward involves making hard and politically-difficult moves that involve standing up to special interest groups whether they be the unions, the film industry, or business advocates for more “corporate welfare” like LEDA and JTIP (to name just a few). Unfortunately, the free market path to reform isn’t going to be the first choice of a Council stocked with dozens of politicians and interest group representatives.

So, according to today’s Albuquerque Journal, here is what they came up with followed by a brief statement added by the author:

Expanding broadband access: This CAN be done by removing regulatory barriers (and we support that) but most broadband discussions are involve more tax dollars (that we don’t have);

Marketing New Mexico to retirees: An obvious idea because retirees don’t NEED jobs and New Mexico has nice weather. Fine idea as far as it goes, but it really isn’t a jobs creation strategy unless you work in food-service or retirement homes;

Expanding the state’s film incentive program: This costs money which we don’t have and study after study says film subsidies are money-losers.

Enacting or broadening tax breaks, including one for out-of-state investors: New Mexico has enacted numerous such incentives over the years with dubious results. Perhaps it is time for real tax reform?

Ironically, the many coordinating the Jobs Council was quoted as saying that New Mexico was at risk of a “death spiral” if it continued “business as usual.” Unfortunately, “right to work,” real school choice, and tax/regulatory reform were never going to come from this “Jobs Council.”

The Clinton vs. Trump morass seems to have sucked all of the oxygen out of the 2016 election. New Mexico is not identified as a “swing state” worthy of too much time and attention from either major candidate, so in a sense we are lucky enough to have a (relative) reprieve from the pounding drumbeat of presidential campaign ads that are running in other stats.

While we are not a “swing” state, the reality is that New Mexicans are voting on some very important candidates and issues this fall. In fact, I’d argue that in New Mexico there are no more important votes to be cast than the ones for your state representative and senator.

It is no secret that New Mexico’s economy is in bad shape. The combination of over-dependence on oil and gas and an under-developed private sector has left New Mexico with the 2^nd-highest unemployment rate in the nation, high poverty rates, and few growth prospects.

Weeks ago, Gov. Martinez was forced to call the Legislature in for an acrimonious special session to discuss ways to cut hundreds-of-millions of dollars from the budget. While crime-related bills were added to the agenda, New Mexico’s myriad social and educational problems are worsened by both poverty and the lack of economic opportunities available in many corners of our State.

So, to summarize, the most important elections this year are for the Legislature (followed closely by New Mexico’s Supreme Court) and the most important issues are economic. Turning our moribund economy around is the critical starting point to solving any of New Mexico’s problems.

Notably, New Mexico is surrounded by states that are more economically-free, pro-business, and have stronger economies. Those are the policies that can help New Mexico prosper, but it starts with the Legislature embracing them.

Specifically, New Mexico voters should consider candidate stances on issues like:

• Right to work: Legislation along these lines passed the New Mexico House in 2015 only to be killed in the Senate. The Rio Grande Foundation has been tracking real job creation nationwide in “right to work” and “non-right to work” states for nearly two years as reported by Area Development Magazine.

With the states about evenly split in terms of being “right to work” or not, from January 2015 through September 2016 (21 months), the jobs *total* was 305,566. “Right to work” states got 239,124 or 78.3 percent of those jobs.

• School choice: We know monopolies like the Post Office don’t work very well. Shouldn’t we give our children the opportunity to learn in the ways that make the most sense for them? While not making the headlines of Gov. Martinez’s other education agenda items, in 2015 a school choice bill passed out of the House only to be killed by the union lobby in the Senate;

• Prevailing wages: A lot has been made over reforming New Mexico’s arcane capitol outlay process and we support reforms. But New Mexicans are being forced to over-pay for roads, schools, and bridges by 10-20 percent due to the influence of powerful special-interests.

Under New Mexico law, “public works” projects pay inflated wages set by political, not economic considerations. Reforms have been introduced in the Legislature only to be killed by those who care about campaign contributions more than having well-maintained schools, bridges, and roads.

These are just a few of the literally dozens of proven economic reforms that need to be addressed by the Legislature in order to unlock New Mexico’s economic potential. Before you vote, find out what candidates in your area have to say about them.

As early voting continues and we head towards Election Day, we can’t get caught up in the drama and anger over the presidential race. We have a rare opportunity to chart a new course for New Mexico by electing legislative candidates that support economic reforms. Focus your time and attention on those all-important races.

Paul Gessing is the President of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

In the Albuquerque Journal on Tuesday, there was a candidate profile done for New Mexico Senate district 15 and the race between incumbent Democrat Daniel Ivey-Soto and Republican challenger Eric Burton. On the question of “right to work,” the Journal noted that Ivey-Soto was “dubious.” Ivey-Soto has voted against “right to work” twice: once in 2015 on whether to have a vote of the full Senate and once in the Senate Public Affairs committee in 2016.

Ivey-Soto clearly opposes “right to work.” But, quickly looking up the exact definition of “dubious,” I found: two definitions:
1. hesitating or doubting.
2. not to be relied upon; suspect.

It would be safe to say that the latter definition applies in this case especially since the Journal has a more detailed response online: There, Ivey-Soto replied: “Before we consider making New Mexico right-to-work, we first need to address the significant deficiencies that keep companies from relocating to New Mexico. These include lack of broadband, low graduation rates, high crime, an out-of-date and dysfunctional tax system and a dearth of skilled workers. Otherwise, nothing will change.”

It sounds more like Ivey-Soto doesn’t want things to change. After all, the issues he cites have been around New Mexico for literally decades of Democrat control. What have they done about them (aside from spending more money)?

The reality is that he’s avoiding the issue at hand. “Right to work” could also have some pretty significant, positive impacts as seen in the following charts from the Illinois Policy Institute.

It’s happened again.

Another space start-up has chosen to avoid New Mexico.

Vector Space Systems, which aims to launch “small reusable rockets carrying micro-satellites into orbit,” picked the Tucson area for its manufacturing facility. Within the next few years, the company plans to hire 400 employees. Vector’s CEO praised the “very deep supply chain” in Tucson and Phoenix, which means that “most of our components are going to be sourced in Arizona.”

Adding insult to injury, Vector has no plans to do business at “Spaceport America.” It’s looking to launch from Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

A year ago, New Mexico joined the Aerospace States Association (ASA), and sent a “team of state officials to an international aerospace expo in Los Angeles.” But the sad reality — one you won’t hear from the happy talkers in “economic development” — is that the Land of Enchantment isn’t much of an aerospace state. As the chart below indicates, employment in the manufacturing sector is small, and trending slightly downward.

With UTC Aerospace shuttering its Albuquerque operation, the job numbers, at least in the short term, look to worsen. Perhaps it’s a bit premature for New Mexico taxpayers to be forking over “dues” to the ASA.

While there isn’t much direct democracy in the Land of Enchantment, this year voters will get the chance to vote on an important component of state fiscal policy: debt.

General obligation (GO) bonds, backed by a statewide property-tax levy, go to the electorate in even-numbered years. The capital expenditures are separated by category, a useful breakdown that allows voters to approve one type of borrowing while rejecting another.

* Bond Question A would borrow $15.4 million “for certain senior citizen facility improvement, construction and equipment acquisition projects.”

* Bond Question B would borrow $10.2 million “for academic, public school, tribal and public library resource acquisitions.”

* Bond Question C would borrow $142.4 million “for certain higher education, special schools and tribal schools … improvements and acquisitions.”

* Bond Question D would borrow $18.2 million “for state police, public safety communications and national guard facilities statewide.”

Add it all up, and legislators are asking voters to put another $186.2 million on the state’s credit card. (Here’s a link for more details about the individual projects to be funded.) The vast bulk of that borrowing would benefit government-run universities and colleges, and higher-educrats know it. Here is Dr. Christopher Dyer, CEO of UNM’s branch campus in Gallup, asking voters in McKinley County to approve “$1.5 million … to be used for planning, designing, construction and equipping of a new physical plant facility.”

New Mexicans usually approve the issuance of GO bonds. But it’s worth noting that in September, Moody’s Investor Service announced that it was “considering downgrading the state’s top rating for general obligation bonds.” The recent special session may have alleviated concerns about New Mexico’s finances, but with stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, and a low workforce-participation rate, there’s little doubt that ratings entities will remain suspicious.

The State Board of Finance estimates that if approved, “over a ten-year period, the four issues on the ballot would increase the average annual property tax bill by approximately $9.34 per $100,000 of asset value.” That may not sound like much of an additional burden to some. But this year, perhaps a majority of voters will decide that any tax hike, in a state that still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession, isn’t wise.

Every eight years, the University of New Mexico Hospital must ask Bernalillo County voters to renew their property-tax mill levy. The tax raises approximately $95 million per year and costs the owner of a $200,000 home between $300 and $400 annually.

The median overall property tax burden on a $200,000 home in Albuquerque is $2,698, so UNMH claims a significant proportion of your property-tax bill.

And while the hospital claims, rightly, that your tax burden won’t increase if the levy is renewed, the fact is that public-policy conditions have changed that should allow the hospital to require less of county residents’ hard-earned money.

A big portion of UNMH’s mission is “indigent care.” That means providing services for the uninsured and others who can’t pay for their own health care. But since the last mill levy passed, Obamacare took effect, with a primary mission of “insuring” indigent care via a massive expansion of Medicaid.

Whether you think Medicaid expansion was a good decision or not, UNMH has seen indigent care needs drop dramatically. In 2013, UNMH served approximately 27,000 county residents. UNMH is now serving less than half the uninsured county residents it did in 2013.

So why is UNMH requesting the same mill levy for a rapidly declining number of uncompensated-care cases? Perhaps it assumes that voters will blindly go along with yet another feel-good scheme to separate them from their money?

Voters should carefully consider not renewing the mill levy – and instead, force UNMH to come up with a different, smaller ask in the future. After all, it isn’t as if we’re not paying for Medicaid expansion already.

As federal taxpayers, we have been funding – and borrowing money to fund – Medicaid expansion for years. But over the next five years, New Mexicans will be on the hook for a bigger portion of the overall bill: $778 million, to be exact.

We know how bad our economy is. What no one knows is how we’re going to pay the huge new bill for Medicaid expansion.

Perhaps more troubling, as far as UNMH is concerned, is why a government-owned entity with a core mission that includes indigent care advertises its services. The Rio Grande Foundation requested data for the calendar years 2014, 2015, and 2016, and found the hospital spent $1.3 million over that time period on advertising.

Yes, the U.S. Postal Service, which like UNMH, is government-owned, advertises, but that doesn’t make it right or necessary. (And at least the post office charges its customers.) Why spend hundreds of thousands annually to tout that UNMH exists and that it is New Mexico’s “only Level I Trauma Center?”

UNMH already has a website set up in support of the mill levy. The deck is always stacked against those who oppose publicly funded entities in campaigns to either raise taxes or keep the tax revenue flowing in.

To the extent that any grass-roots opposition to the UNMH mill levy forms, it will be outspent dramatically. Amazingly, the hospital’s annual advertising budget far exceeds the annual budget of the Rio Grande Foundation.

There is nothing new about the forces of limited and responsible government being outspent, but with the amount and cost of indigent care on the decline, shouldn’t Bernalillo County residents have a fully informed debate about the UNMH mill levy before Election Day?

D. Dowd Muska (dmuska@riograndefoundation.org) is research director of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.

Santa Fe’s mayor has drafted a resolution directing the city manager to “explore active ways of reducing sugar intake among … residents, and the benefits that would result.” For good measure, Javier Gonzales has thrown in a demand that state legislators address “the impact of excess sugar consumption among New Mexico residents,” and wants the FDA to “remove fructose from the generally regarded as safe … list.”

Seriously.

The document doesn’t specifically endorse a tax on soda, but that’s been the preferred tool for the left’s army of lifestyle police. Embraced by Nanny Statists from Michael Bloomberg to Hillary Clinton, a soda tax is in effect in Philadelphia, and could be imposed by voters in San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, California, and Boulder, Colorado, next month.

For New Mexico’s taxpayer and personal-freedom activists seeking to nip Gonzales’s mission creep in the bud, here are some resources worth reviewing:

* “The Case Against Regulating or Taxing Soda,” published by the Center for Consumer Freedom in 2013, is invaluable.

* Last year, a Cornell-University of Iowa study concluded that a soda tax adopted in Berkeley, California “so far has fizzled, raising retail prices for high-calorie sugary drinks by less than half the amount expected.” One of the paper’s authors noted that a “sugar-sweetened beverage tax is a very narrow approach to internalizing the external costs of obesity, because there are many other food and drink items that are also energy dense and lack nutritional value.”

* A recent Gallup poll found that the “majority of Americans report they try to avoid drinking soda, regardless of whether it is regular or diet. This is a drastic change from just over a decade ago.”

* In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mexico’s soda tax of “one peso per liter has raised more than $2 billion since January 2014,” but nevertheless, sales of liquid candy were “rising … after an initial drop, making the country a key-growth market again for soda giants Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc.”

* In June, the Competitive Enterprise Institute published “Soda Taxes: A Failed Experiment that Needs to End,” which contained the inconvenient fact that in the U.S., “researchers estimate that calories from sugary drinks comprise just 7 percent of total calorie intake.”

With serious fiscal, economic-development, and housing-affordability issues impacting the denizens of Santa Fe, the city’s mayor needs to get his priorities right. A crusade against sugar doesn’t belong on his to-do list.

The entire New Mexico Legislature is up for election this November. And, while the presidential race is generating a lot of noise, New Mexicans’ votes will have a far more significant impact on those legislative races.

We recently encouraged New Mexicans to use our “Freedom Index” bill tracking tool to make better informed decisions about the floor votes taken by New Mexico’s Legislature. While we do rank all legislators based on their floor votes, there are other approaches to ranking the track records of legislators and the prospective records of their challengers. The New Mexico Business Coalition rates all legislators and candidates in its scorecard here.

Additionally, the national American Conservative Union has ranked all of New Mexico’s legislators based on votes taken on particular issues. Their ratings can be found here.

They rated Sens. Cotter and Rue as the top two performers in the Legislature and gave Reps. McQueen and Stapleton the moniker “Coalition of the Radical Left” for their poor performances. There is no doubt that Sheryl Williams-Stapleton is truly part of the radical leftist coalition, but McQueen isn’t the first Democrat I’d lump in there with her.

Every eight years, University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) must ask Bernalillo County voters to renew the Hospital’s Mill Levy. Bernalillo County imposes a mill levy for the Hospital at a rate approximating 6.400 on both residential and non-residential property in the County. This money is used to fund Hospital operations. Initially, $95 million will be collected annually although the exact number will fluctuate based on property values and economic conditions in the County. The trend should be upwards, however.

• As of June 2016, UNMH served 6,812 uninsured county residents. If that trajectory holds through December that would mean the Hospital will serve 13,624 uninsured patients in 2016.

In 2013, UNMH served approximately 27,000 county residents. UNMH is now serving less than half the uninsured county residents as they did in 2013.

New Mexicans are paying the bills for both the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion that is reducing those “uncompensated care” rates, but UNMH wants to continue taking hundreds of dollars from both commercial and residential property owners throughout Bernalillo County for another eight years!

As the Rio Grande Foundation’s Paul Gessing argues in a new issue brief, voters should consider sending UNMH “back to the drawing board” for a smaller mill levy that reflects the falling costs of uncompensated care. The image below illustrates how the current UNMH mill levy impacts at least one property owner’s tax bill.