The University of Cincinnati Department of Geology recently completed a three-year study of fracking. The results further buttress the pro-fracking view that it is a safe process. But the political wrangling over the study show “anti-fracking” forces, including those in government, aren’t nearly as interested in science as they’d like us to believe.

First, the conclusions: as the lead researcher, Dr. Amy Townsend-Small noted, “We haven’t seen anything to show that wells have been contaminated by fracking.” More details on the study and its findings can be seen in this video.

That was apparently not the right answer for the University or some of the study’s funders because when asked if the University planned to publicize the results, Dr. Amy Townsend-Small, said there were no plans to do so.

“I am really sad to say this, but some of our funders, the groups that had given us funding in the past, were a little disappointed in our results. They feel that fracking is scary and so they were hoping this data could to a reason to ban it,” she said. Those funders include state funding in the form of an $85,714 grant from the Ohio Board or Regents and federal funding from the national Science Foundation.

Rep. Andy Thompson, R-Marrietta, whose district includes the area studied in the report said, “It is unacceptable that taxpayers have funded this important groundwater study and the findings are being kept from the public.”

Does Winthrop Quigley ever get tired of being wrong?

On Sunday, the Albuquerque Journal columnist explored the state’s worsening fiscal picture, and pondered if it was “time to ask if some tax increases are in order.”

Quigley claims that the “Legislature hasn’t been exactly profligate,” citing the fact that it “appropriated only a half-percent more to run the state this fiscal year than it did last year, well under the rate of inflation.” Thus, the “problem is on the revenue side.”

Clever trick. But looking at a single year is inadequate, if not bizarre. A perspective far broader than Quigley’s facile comparison is needed. Fortunately, the Foundation has the data.

The state has spent the 21^st century growing its expenditures as if the Great Recession — and the last few years of falling population in the Land of Enchantment — didn’t happen. Between 2002 and 2014, New Mexico’s spending, per capita and adjusted for inflation, rose by 17.1 percent, from $7,021 to $8,219:

These are all-in figures, as disclosed by the state’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports — not the dishonest “general fund” sum reflexively referred to by clueless politicians and lazy reporters. The expenditures include prisons, roads, schools, debt service, “economic development,” and quasi-government entities.

Quigley couldn’t be bothered to the research, but it’s clear that state government is stubbornly resistant to spending restraint. Faddish (and failed) education expenditures, disastrous corporate-welfare schemes, a refusal to bring employee compensation in line with that of the private sector — again and again, governors and lawmakers have preferred fiscal irresponsibility to limited, affordable government. The bill for such recklessness is now coming due. So look for Quigley and his ideological allies to keep pushing for higher taxes in the Land of Enchantment. But hey, the state with arguably the worst economy in the nation can handle it, right?

Yes, the term is a harsh one, but RGF has long been a critic of New Mexico’s LEDA program. And, how else do you describe giving $325,000 in LEDA funding (on top of another $100,000 in waived fees and other incentives from the City of Santa Fe) to a distillery to expand its operations, thus hiring 14 new employees.

New Mexico obviously needs the jobs, but it will take up to 10 years for the 14 employees (expected to make $45-$50K annually) to pay enough income taxes to the State to pay back the LEDA money alone. These subsidies are an awfully-expensive way to generate a few jobs. Rather than hitching its star to a particular company, New Mexico’s economic policies should be focused on reducing taxes and regulations that hinder the creation of jobs organically throughout our economy.

Just in the area of alcohol, this could include addressing the outrageous price of liquor licenses, reducing high taxes on spirits and beer (although this rate has been lowered for micro-breweries thus spurring a boom in that niche), and reducing onerous regulations and criminal penalties placed upon New Mexico wait-staff and servers when it comes to alcohol.

Unfortunately, New Mexico remains dedicated to taxing and regulating some to the point of being unable to operate while generously subsidizing others.

As noted in a recent article, I recently traveled to Las Cruces to discuss campaign finance issues as part of a “Sunshine Week” panel. See a brief recap from Walt Rubel of the Sun-News.

I knew going in that I would be in the minority in terms of my perspective supporting free speech, but I was pleased that Dr. Daniel Chand whose work includes studying non-profits, joined me in saying that the Citizens United decision was “correct.” Chand, no less “progressive” than the other panelists, also cited the ACLU’s support for the Supreme Court’s decision. I don’t think Senator Tom Udall much cares about this, however.

This position was at odds with the other panelists and a vast majority of the 100 attendees (as polled at the beginning of the evening). Hopefully, I made some inroads on this and other issues.

Obviously, it was a good turnout. Hopefully, next year we’ll discuss transparency government. I’m thinking the Legislature, the state budget, economic development incentives, the lottery scholarship program, or local government transparency might be good topics.

This week’s “#NMspeaksCrisis Town Hall” could have provided a valuable exploration of the most promising ways to fix the Land of Enchantment’s behavioral-health system.

But it didn’t.

Sponsored by “Generation Justice,” which trains “teens to approach journalism and broadcasting from a social justice framework,” the event was held at the KiMo Theater in downtown Albuquerque. New Mexico PBS lent a hand, and a plethora of far-left organizations — e.g., the Southwest Organizing Project, New Mexico Voices for Children — were “partners and collaborators.”

The low point of the event was a recorded poem by Hakim Bellamy, the “inaugural Poet Laureate of Albuquerque.” Rest assured, income inequality and “climate change” got mentions.

But the town hall’s main purpose was to bash the Martinez administration’s 2013 decision to suspend Medicaid payments to 15 behavioral-health providers it accused of overbilling errors, and possibly fraud. Time has not been kind to the move. Three years later, no one’s gone to jail, and as the Albuquerque Journal recently reported, “13 of the 15 providers shut down by the Human Services Department in 2013 — many of them since forced out of business — have been exonerated of fraud.”

But rather than focus on where to go from here, the “#NMspeaksCrisis Town Hall” went for political points. Bernalillo County Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins was on hand, as was State Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino and State Rep. Deborah Armstrong. All three are Democrats. Also appearing were staffers from the offices of U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, and U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham — again, all Democrats. Lujan Grisham herself appeared via a video message, and charged that the suspension of Medicaid payments was “the most egregious abuse of power I have seen in my decades of government service.” There was lots of love for the legislation being pushed by Democrats in the congressional delegation to “require consideration of the impact on beneficiary access to care and to enhance due process protections in procedures for suspending payments to Medicaid providers.” The Bernalillo County Commission’s 2015 vote to hike the county’s gross receipts to generate more revenue for behavioral health received thunderous applause.

The “#NMspeaksCrisis Town Hall” was a silly, politicized disgrace, and did a great disservice to the many New Mexicans who suffer from mental problems. Fortunately, some rationality and nonpartisanship is coming to behavioral health in New Mexico. The Rio Grande Foundation has launched an initiative to investigate ways to make the system more efficient and accountable. In the months to come, look for our research, analysis, and suggestions for reforms. We won’t be carrying water for professional politicians, and we won’t be advocating even higher taxes as a “solution.” There are promising policy options — some are making progress in Texas — and the Foundation looks forward to exploring how to tailor them to our state.

Sunshine Week has technically come and gone, but in order to accommodate Spring Break at NMSU, this year’s celebration is being held this Wednesday, March 23rd, at 5:30 p.m. on the 3rd floor of the Zuhl Library.

Panelists include Senator Joseph Cervantes, City Councilor Gill Sorg, Viki Harrison from Common Cause, Dr. Daniel Chand from the NMSU Government Department, and myself. As is typically the case, I expect that my views and those of the Rio Grande Foundation will be in the minority, so I want to share them here and encourage people in Southern New Mexico to turn out for the event.Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. You will find few bigger supporters of government transparency than us at the Rio Grande Foundation. My organization has done significant work on the creation of New Mexico’s Sunshine Portal as well as requesting and posting public information from local governments and school districts online. Lastly, we’ve pushed for video recording of legislative floor proceedings and committee hearings.

Significant progress has been made in each of these areas. There is still plenty to be done to improve government transparency in New Mexico including, but not limited to: placing local public payrolls, vendor, and union contracts, and thorough economic analyses of tax and economic incentives, online.

Unfortunately, the topic of this year’s Sunshine Week panel revolves around “outside” money in local elections. Campaign finance reform and government transparency are two different and largely unrelated issues.

The discussion was spurred by GOAL WestPAC’s efforts in the Las Cruces municipal elections, which involved some tactics that generated controversy. Say what you will about GOAL, as a PAC, their donors’ information is public under the law. That’s how we know that much of the money spent in the campaign came from residents of Southern New Mexico who reside outside of Las Cruces.

So, let’s first dispense with the idea that this spending was somehow lacking in transparency. It was abundantly transparent. If that is not the issue, then what is? Ultimately it would seem that efforts will be undertaken to constrain political involvement based on geographic boundaries.

It would also seem that environmental groups, pro/anti abortion groups, and unions should all be able to engage in municipal legislative efforts and campaigns regardless of where they are headquartered or where their funders live.

Efforts to eliminate or constrain outside involvement in elections are futile and will ultimately prove to be unconstitutional. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, period. There is no geographical loophole. The left should stop attacking the First Amendment when it comes to political speech.

That’s not me speaking, that’s the head of the ACLU. In the wake of the controversial Citizens United opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court, Laura Murphy, director of the organization’s Washington, D.C. office, argued that “’Fixing’ Citizens United Will Break the Constitution.”

A constitutional amendment — specifically an amendment limiting the right to political speech — would fundamentally “break” the Constitution and endanger civil rights and civil liberties for generations. Murphy also noted that, “Individuals have always been allowed to spend their own money on political speech. Further, Citizens United has nothing to do with direct contributions to candidates, which are still totally verboten for corporations and unions and strictly limited for individuals.”

In other words, it is time to stop complaining about money in politics and to recognize that Americans who wish to engage in political speech are expressly protected by the Constitution to do so. If you want to counteract someone with whom you have a strong disagreement, the solution is more speech, not speech constraints or a curtailment of those speech rights.

And, while money is often touted as being the deciding factor in elections, the reality is that money can only get a candidate or issue so far. Jeb Bush easily won the PAC fundraising race and yet it didn’t get him anywhere near the presidency. Meg Whitman, Linda McMahon, and Steve Forbes are just a few of the many other candidates to have won the fundraising battle but to have lost the election.

Government should be transparent. PAC giving is transparent. Efforts to limit political giving based on geography are transparently unconstitutional.

Gessing is the president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, 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.

Think right-to-work laws don’t encourage investment? Ask Mobile Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Bill Sisson, who told The Seattle Times last week that RTW status was “a huge economic-development advantage.”

The Times profiled Airbus’s factory in Alabama, where it is assembling A321s. According to Barry Eccleston, president of the firm’s U.S. operations: “We told all the people we recruited that we were planning to create an environment where employees have a direct relationship with management.”

Translation: Thanks but no thanks, International Association of Machinists.

Meanwhile, in New Mexico, the attempt to make the state an “aviation hub” continues to fizzle. Between the third quarters of 2012 and 2015, employment in the sector actually dropped (average of the three months in each quarter):

With few exceptions, it’s only dead-enders in “organized labor” and taxpayer-funded “higher education” who deny the value of RTW as an economic-development tool. Right to work is no panacea for New Mexico’s many economic woes, but it’s a strong step in the right direction. Ask Airbus.

This op-ed ran in The Santa Fe New Mexican on March 20th.

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of New Mexico’s Legislative Lottery Scholarship Program.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to celebrate.

A well-intentioned attempt to boost access to higher learning in the Land of Enchantment, the program was crafted by a Democratic legislature and Republican governor. But it suffers from a serious, if seldom-discussed, flaw.

Lottery scholarships certainly don’t have a popularity problem. A report by the New Mexico Higher Education Department found that between 2000 and 2014, the number of program recipients doubled. Expenditures, of course, ballooned as well, rising to $66.8 million in the 2014 fiscal year.

By law, the New Mexico Lottery Authority is required to set aside 30 percent of monthly gross revenue for scholarships. But solvency has been an issue for years — in 2014, gamblers supplied just 61 percent of the program’s funding. A slumping economy and a decline in “scratcher” sales sent legislators and the authority scrambling for cost savings and new monies. Eligibility was tightened, and the number of semesters covered for a four-year degree fell from eight to seven. Tobacco-settlement revenue has been transferred to the tuition fund, and special appropriations have been made. In 2014, legislators began to divert a portion of the revenue stream from New Mexico’s excise tax on liquor. In the just-completed session, lawmakers required the lottery authority to devote unclaimed-prize cash to scholarships. (Governor Martinez vetoed the bill.)

A program that once relied on the voluntary contributions of gamblers — no one is forced to play the lottery — is now grabbing dollars any way it can. Lottery scholarships have been allowed to proceed on this unsustainable path because no state-subsidization policy enjoys greater bipartisan support. The bill to use forfeited-prized revenue passed the Senate 35-4 and House of Representatives 66-0. Praise from the program’s administrators is effusive. Bob Frank, the president of the University of New Mexico, called lottery scholarships “critical to helping New Mexico students graduate so they can contribute to our state’s knowledge-based economy.” Dan Salzwedel, chairman of the lottery authority’s board, concurs: “Helping young people acquire more knowledge and greater employment opportunities through a college education enriches all of us.”

Nice rhetoric. Here are the facts. New Mexico has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation — and joblessnesses is typically lowest for the college-educated. The Land of Enchantment is stubbornly hostile to real economic-development policies, such as a right-to-work law, tax simplification/relief, and deregulation. With few jobs available, it’s hardly surprising that the Millennial generation sees no future for itself in the Land of Enchantment.

“New data from The University of New Mexico,” The New Mexican reported last year, “shows for the first time that the largest percentage of those leaving the state are educated professionals with a bachelor’s degree.” The paper’s Bruce Krasnow made the inconvenient observation that many Millennials “have gone to a state university tuition-free with a lottery scholarship and then left the state as they saw more opportunity elsewhere.”

How many? We don’t know. In an email interview, Harrison Rommel, the Higher Education Department’s Financial Aid Director, wrote that his agency “has not done any long-term longitudinal studies regarding retention in New Mexico after graduation. This would require data agreements with the Department of Workforce Solutions and/or other agencies, and we are not capable of performing that type of analysis at this time.”

One would think that after 20 years, the lottery scholarship’s overseers would have requested, and funded, a look at “retention in New Mexico after graduation.” Apparently, pleasing voters and rewarding higher-education personnel matter more than performing a cost-benefit review of a subsidy that spends tens of millions of dollars annually.

Sending more of New Mexico’s high-school graduates off to college, while providing insufficient employment opportunities for them after graduation, is profoundly unwise policy. It’s time to provide taxpayers an independent, honest evaluation of the lottery-scholarship program.

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.

Okay, technically Sunshine Week was last week, but it was also Spring Break at NMSU. So, 2016’s Sunshine Week celebration will be held this Wednesday, March 23rd at 5:30 p.m. at Zuhl Library on the New Mexico State University Campus. Aside from Gessing, panelists will include: Sen. Joseph Cervantes, Daniel Chand of the NMSU Government Department, Viki Harrison of Common Cause and City Councilor Gill Sorg.

The primary topic of discussion will be the influence of “outside groups” in the 2015 Las Cruces municipal election. There are some in Las Cruces who would like to see local election laws changed to prohibit “outsiders” from engaging in Las Cruces area municipal elections. I’m not sure how this topic is even tangentially related to shining light on GOVERNMENT, but it is the topic and you can bet that the Rio Grande Foundation will defend the 1st Amendment right of individuals to engage in the political process no matter where they reside.

You can also bet that this will (sadly) be a minority position on the panel.

The event is free and open to the public.

The latest unemployment rate data are out and there is some good news. New Mexico’s rate in January of 2016 dropped to 6.5%, that’s down from 6.8% just in November.

New Mexico’s rate is now 48th-best in the nation beating out Alaska and Mississippi. Sadly, our rate is more than double the rate of neighboring Colorado. Ouch!

In terms of the Albuquerque economy, which is likely to outperform the New Mexico economy as a whole due to its relative insulation from oil and gas prices, the Albuquerque Biz First economic dashboard can be viewed below. Remember, this index is based on previous highs, so in the case of the drop in flights in and out of the Sunport, we are at 71% of where we were more than a decade ago. Obviously, New Mexico’s economy remains anything but healthy with the full impact of lower energy prices still to be fully felt.

Economic-development crisis solved? Maybe that’s what New Mexico’s politicians and bureaucrats are thinking, with the state losing its worst-in-the-nation unemployment rate. Joblessness is now worse in both Alaska and Mississippi.

But as the Foundation has argued many times, unemployment is just one way of gauging a state’s economic health. The Pew Research Center recently updated its analysis of the employment-to-population ratio, “which measures the share of people in their prime working years who have jobs.”

Between 2007 and 2015, New Mexico’s unemployment-to-population ratio plunged from 79.1 percent to 71.9 percent. The Land of Enchantment’s drop was, by far, the largest in the nation.

As even the Albuquerque Journal‘s Winthrop Quigley admitted this week, “the state lost 1,800 jobs in the 12 months that ended in January.” Viewed from the broadest perspective, New Mexico continues to be the most employment-challenged state. Aggressive, immediate implementation of proven economic-development strategies remains as imperative as ever. Is anyone in Santa Fe listening?

Author and scientist Robert Zubrin discusses his book “Merchants of Despair” which connects the modern environmental movement all the way back to the eugenics movement of the early 20th Century. His presentation is available below and his slides are here.

The Foundation is always grateful when we’re allowed to present our research and analysis in the Albuquerque Journal. But sheesh, the paper sure has let some nutty ideas cluster on its editorial page lately.

Today’s kookiness arrives courtesy the “Alcohol Taxes Saves Lives & Money coalition,” which is pushing a “25-cent-per-drink increase in alcohol taxes.” The reason? The state’s unsustainably crushing Medicaid expenditures.

Citing the “Center [sic] for Disease Control’s Community Advisory Panel,” Peter Debenedittis argues that “raising alcohol taxes is the most effective way to reduce the health harms caused by excessive drinking.”

Maybe not. As the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity’s Jason Stverak noted: “Research by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has found that hardcore alcohol abusers are affected little by increases in price, which have a greater effect on light and moderate drinkers. Additionally, studies show that beer taxes have an insignificant effect on underage drinking.”

Besides, it’s not as if New Mexico’s alcohol taxes aren’t high already. The beer tax is the same as Utah’s, but it’s higher than those in Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado. The Land of Enchantment’s levy on wine is greater than those found in each of its four neighbors that imposes a tax. (Utah controls all sales of wine.) And distilled spirits are taxed at a higher rate here than in Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, and Colorado.

Hiking booze taxes to cover Medicaid’s profligacy is an excellent example of how Big Government perpetuates itself. One unwise public policy (expanding Medicaid) creates a fiscal crisis that makes another round of meddling (higher alcohol taxes) “necessary.” It’s a cycle that never ends — unless an informed and active citizenry sees to it that government is confined to its proper sphere.

The Albuquerque City Council will likely vote on Albuquerque Rapid Transit for the first and only (direct) time this Monday, March 21.

While it appears that a majority of the City Council will blindly follow Mayor Berry and grasp for the “free” $69 million in federal money attached to the project, no matter how much it harms mobility on Central and the cultural uniqueness of Route 66, the best we can hope for (from City Council) is that they will put this proposal on the ballot for the voters to have a final say on.

This project represents nothing less than a transformation of Albuquerque’s most iconic road. There are also high costs for local taxpayers that will be borne into the future both in terms of cost-overruns and operating expenses. We should have a final say as taxpayers on this issue. If you agree, either show up at City Council on Monday, March 21st at 5pm or send Mayor Berry and your Councilor a note telling them that “we the people” need to make the final call on this project.

To his credit, Councilor Dan Lewis has already come out and said he opposes the project, but it is still worth asking him to put it on the ballot as it is doubtful that four other councilors will oppose it outright.

MayorBerry@cabq.gov
BWinter@cabq.gov
ibenton@cabq.gov
dharris@cabq.gov,
patrickdavis@cabq.gov
DGibson@cabq.gov
trudyjones@cabq.gov
danlewis@cabq.gov
kensanchez@cabq.gov
Kpena@cabq.gov

The Rio Grande Foundation has submitted comments on and filed suit against the Obama Administration’s “Clean Power Plan.” The Supreme Court has issued a “stay” to prevent implementation of the plan.

While the Rio Grande Foundation is mostly concerned about the economic impacts of the plan on the State as a whole and the Constitutional overreach it represents, our friends at the Texas Public Policy Foundation have put together a powerful video including interviews with Navajos and their political leaders decrying the potential impact the Clean Power Plan will have on them and their livelihoods. There are two major power plants on Navajo lands, Four Corners Generating Station and Navajo Generating Station, both of which employ hundreds of mostly tribal workers and generate a great deal of tax revenue and economic activity on tribal lands.

Give the Church of Transitology credit. It never lets facts get in the way of dogma.

A good example of faith-based transportation can be found in today’s edition of the Albuquerque Journal. Max Macauley, “a retiree with a journalism background,” recommends that the city scrap its plan for “bus rapid transit.” He wants Albuquerque to follow the example of other cities with “authentic world-class public transit systems,” and build — this isn’t a joke — a monorail.

If Macauley had done even the slightest bit of research on the systems he admires, he would have discovered their many problems. First, the Seattle Center Monorail, built as an attraction for the 1962 World’s Fair, is only a mile long. In 2005, after years of support, voters in the notoriously “progressive” city torpedoed an effort to expand the system. (The price tag had risen to $11 billion.) In 2014, voters annihilated another expansion proposal.

Las Vegas’s monorail began as a short connection between MGM Grand and Bally’s. In 2000, Nevada authorities signed off on tax-free bonds for an extension that backers claimed would provide “significant public benefits.” Ridership never approached estimates. In 2010, the public-private Las Vegas Monorail Company filed for Chapter 11. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2012. Dead-ender supporters are dreaming of an extension to McCarran International Airport, a project that the Las Vegas Review Journal reports “is estimated at $500 million — more than the initial cost of the system when it was built.”

Finally, in 2010, The Florida Times-Union‘s Larry Hannan called Jacksonville’s monorail a “joke for a generation”:

Look up at its silent, almost-empty cars and you can see the failure of downtown as a place to live and work. The dingy stations reflect Jacksonville’s inability to come up with a successful long-term transportation plan.

More than 20 years after it opened, the number of people who ride the Skyway remains low. The Jacksonville Transportation Authority originally promised 100,000 riders per month, but its average last year was less than a third of that.

And it loses money — a lot of money.

The system that was built for $183 million, more than half from the federal government, needs $14 million to operate each year — $1.5 million of that from Washington for maintenance alone.

In 2009, it generated only $431,000 in revenue, less than a 4 percent return. Most public transit systems lose money, but by comparison JTA’s bus system made back more than 20 percent — $6.2 million — of its $30.2 million cost in 2009.

Grassroots activists are working overtime to stop “Albuquerque Rapid Transit,” and the Foundation wishes them well in their campaign against the boondoggle-in-the-making. But believe it or not, Albuquerque could do worse than ART. It could build a monorail.

According to a recent analysis from Key Policy Data, Medicaid is already in the process of putting New Mexico’s budget behind the proverbial “eight ball.” The Albuquerque Journal’s editorial board has also caught on to the problem per their recent editorial. As the Key Policy data report notes:

The report concludes with these not-so-encouraging words:

With long-term weakness in revenue growth, the last thing a state should do is take on responsibility for new spending programs. New Mexico has already rolled the dice with Medicaid Expansion; what matters there is to rein in the costs as best possible. Other states, still not having accepted the program, should cautiously watch – and learn from their mistake.

Indiana is one of America’s most economically-free states. It also embraced “right to work” in 2012.

Illinois is relatively un-free (although not as bad as New Mexico). It is also not “right to work.”

Our friends at the Illinois Policy Institute put together the following chart to illustrate how manufacturing is thriving in Indiana but not in neighboring Illinois. Is this entirely due to Indiana having “right to work?” Maybe not, but it is definitely part of the reason and it certainly hasn’t hurt (perhaps there’s a lesson for New Mexico?):

Kudos to the New Mexico Business Coalition for drumming up support for the reestablishment of the Copper Flat Mine, which promises to “employ approximately 270 full and part time employees with an average annual salary ranging from $35,000 to $60,000 plus benefits.”

The Bureau of Land Management has extended the public-comment period for the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement until April 4th. New Mexicans who support expansion of the Land of Enchantment’s private sector should weight in.

It’s been a horrendous five-year run for copper — the commodity’s price has dropped by about half, and the industry’s layoffs are mounting. Last year, Freeport-McMoRan let more than 200 workers go at its Tyrone mine in Grant County.

In New Mexico’s moribund economy, every job counts. With $55 million already spent on making Copper Flat active again, let’s hope that the project is allowed to move forward.

Can Pentagon funding help a state kick its addiction to Pentagon funding?

New Mexico’s Economic Development Department thinks so. It’s conducting “a series of community meetings” to “bring stakeholders together to share information and encourage participation to keep communities informed and prepared regarding defense contractors and subcontractors, related service and goods providers, and other businesses and organizations that could be affected by federal defense cuts.”

The gatherings represent the kickoff of the “Defense Industry Adjustment Supply Chain Map and Portal Project,” an effort being funded by $1.4 million grant from the DOD’s Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA). According to state economic-development commissar Jon Barela, “New Mexico is proud of our military bases and national labs,” but they face “persistent challenges from the federal government,” requiring subsidies to “better support communities in improving their resilience to federal cutbacks.”

Today’s session, held in Santa Fe, was sparsely attended, and the overwhelming majority of those who showed up were economic-development bureaucrats and other government officials. The audience was subjected to a torrent of corporatist jargon — e.g., “strategic planning,” “targeted assistance,” “web portal connectivity,” “deliverables,” “ecosystems,” “incubators and accelerators,” “areas of vulnerability,” “industry clusters,” “SWOT analysis,” “continuum of development.”

Patricia Knighten, who heads up the department’s Office of Science & Technology, stipulated that the billions of dollars in national-security spending New Mexico annually receives from Washington have not translated into “economic prosperity.” The answer? More planning, of course, in the form of government connecting entrepreneurs to federally funded technology developed in the Land of Enchantment.

The “Photonics Commercialization Pilot Program” is one example. The state has 54 firms in the field, and department literature claims optics and photonics “are cross-cutting, with wide-reaching defense and non-defense applications.”

The meeting’s highlight was an overview of the anti-donation-clause-avoiding “New Mexico Catalyst Fund.” Backed by $10 million from the State Investment Council, $5 million from the federal State Small Business Credit Initiative, and $5 million from private sources, it “will be deployed via local funds across the state” and focus “on seed- and early-stage investments.” Knighten admitted that it “was not an easy sell to the U.S. Treasury,” which was justifiably wary about investments in the risky tech sector. Supported by Governor Martinez — who, unfortunately, is reliably susceptible to dodgy economic-development schemes — the fund will be managed by Santa Fe-based Sun Mountain Capital.

There’s no question that New Mexico must diversify its economy away from federal spending on missiles, space systems, nuclear bombs, sensors, lasers, and the like. Washington is broke, and the days of a seemingly endless stream of DOD (and DOE, and NASA) revenue making its way to the state are over.

But New Mexico’s economic-development brain trust has demonstrated a frightening predilection to pursue disastrously unsuccessful policies. The “Encanto” supercomputer, “green” energy, the spaceport, “transit-oriented development” — there’s no shortage of examples. If the state’s community of defense contractors is to transition to business models more reliant on the marketplace, the change isn’t likely to come from additional OEA grants and more busy work for bureaucrats. It will result from pro-investment, pro-entrepreneur, pro-consumer public policies. And the time to act is now.

The aftermath of the 2016 Legislative session is still being discussed and parsed, but the liberal New Mexico Voices for Children think tank is already clamoring for the next expansion of New Mexico government. The issue this time is paid sick leave. Naturally Voices, which views every societal “nail” in need of a government “hammer,” has a government-driven solution.

New Mexico private sector workers are, according to a new report, offered sick leave at a lower rate than similar workers in any other state. To be honest, we at the Rio Grande Foundation share the concerns expressed by Voices on this. We’d like to see more workers paid better and offered employee benefits.

The difference lies in our proposed solutions to the problem.

We view the issue through the lens of recent news reports that an astonishing 10,000 people applied for 290 job openings at the new Cheesecake Factory in Albuquerque. Obviously, there is an over-supply of relatively low-skilled labor in both Albuquerque and New Mexico as a whole. This is a market reality driven by New Mexico’s historical over-reliance on federal dollars and extractive industries.

Voices wants to simply impose a new regulation demanding that businesses offer workers no less than one week of paid sick leave (their report does not differentiate between full and part-time workers). Their own data claim that this will cost New Mexico businesses $240 million annually.

What they don’t seem to understand is that businesses — especially mom-and-pop restaurants and other small businesses — aren’t just going to take this $240 million out of their bottom-lines. Often, they don’t have profits to speak of. So they will lay off the very workers that this proposal is supposed to help. And if part-time workers are included in the proposal, that means part-time workers just starting out in the work force will be the hardest hit.

The real problem with Voices’ proposal is not its unintended consequences, but rather its the lack of vision inherent in it and so many other similar proposals — like the misnamed “Fair Workweek Act” — which was proposed in the Albuquerque City Council in 2015.

Voices sees the economy as a fixed pie. If you take away from labor, you give more to capital, and vice-versa. We at the Rio Grande Foundation see innovation and productivity as beneficial to everyone.

What Albuquerque and the state of New Mexico desperately need is not more government regulation: it’s more and better jobs of all kinds. It is no surprise that New Hampshire, the most economically-free state in the nation (lacking both a sales and an income tax) has the most generous sick leave policies according to the Voices report.

Unfortunately, when businesses or entrepreneurs look at our state they see onerous and often arbitrary regulations, they see a gross receipts tax that makes doing business here more costly than other states. They see a workforce and school system that are not up to preparing workers for the modern economy and they see high crime rates. Lastly, they see a population — especially in the Rio Grande corridor — that tends to be both suspicious of outsiders and highly sensitive to land use and economic development proposals.

These problems are not unique to New Mexico, but New Mexico is unique in possessing all of them in spades. Addressing some or all of these issues in ways that make New Mexico more attractive to business would grow our economy and make it more likely that workers receive competitive wages and benefits.

For many years, New Mexico has enacted policies that make our state less attractive than many of our neighbors for private sector development. Another new regulation isn’t going to change that. Instead, it is time to move in the opposite direction towards economic freedom and competitiveness. This will make jobs more plentiful leading to higher pay and more competitive benefits for New Mexico workers.

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.”

New Mexicans shouldn’t feel too bad about the early box office for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. At just $8 million, it’s unlikely to recoup its $35 million budget, at least not while the film is in theaters.

Starring Margot Robbie and Tina Fey, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was shot in the Land of Enchantment, where taxpayers are compelled to subsidize Hollywood to the tune of tens of millions of dollars each year. During the post-Super Bowl broadcast of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the following exchange took place:

COLBERT: Where was it actually shot? ‘Cause it really looks like it’s in Afghanistan.

FEY: Thank goodness, we shot it in New Mexico, here in the United States of America.

COLBERT: That took a lot of courage, for you guys to go to New Mexico.

FEY: I was so worried about a Breaking Bad scenario happening.

ROBBIE: Lotta missing teeth.

It’s not the first time that entertainers have insulted New Mexico. As the Albuquerque Journal reported in 2010, during an E! interview, Mary McCormack, of In Plain Sight, “appeared to cringe when mentioning Albuquerque, and agreed with host Chelsea Handler when she said the city is ‘boring.’” The following month, the Journal noted that “Jessica Alba … said that we have bad food and that the highlight of her time here was hanging out at Walmart. Tommy Lee Jones chimed in, saying Albuquerque is simply too loud and inhospitable.”

So New Mexico’s taxpayers provide revenue for tourism promotion, while at the same time subsidizing actors who insult the state. Nice going, economic-development “visionaries.”

We don’t often agree with Sen. Michael Sanchez, but his article in Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal makes some good (if obvious) points about New Mexico’s struggling economy. You can read the article for yourself, but it is no secret that New Mexico is struggling. Naturally, Sanchez blames Gov. Susana Martinez for everything and (somewhat ironically) points to Texas and Colorado as states that are “doing well economically.”

That last point is especially interesting as Texas and Colorado have followed very different economic development routes from that of New Mexico. These policies were not the work of Gov. Martinez, rather they have been in place for decades. Decades during which Democrats controlled New Mexico’s levers of power.

So, as you can see below, New Mexico is heavily-reliant on government (compared to any state, including Texas and Colorado).

And, Texas lacks an income tax (on both personal and corporate income), is “right to work (a policy Sanchez abhors),” has aggressive tort reform laws on the books, and is generally a very free market place to do business (unlike New Mexico).

Colorado, (like New Mexico), does NOT have a “right to work” law, but they have the “gold standard” of taxpayer protections in their State Constitution. All tax hikes must be voted on by the people (at every level of government). And, if the government collects taxes above and beyond the combined rates of inflation and population growth, taxpayers receive a refund. It’s called the “Taxpayers Bill of Rights” and we’d love for Sen. Sanchez to endorse this for New Mexico but we’re not holding our breath.

Yes, Colorado has legalized pot and we’d support that for New Mexico, but in the overall scheme of a state budget, tax revenues from legalizing pot are small as even proponents of legalization acknowledge.

Lastly, Sanchez touts the Democrats’ “Economic Opportunity Plan.” Unfortunately, this hodgepodge of big-government proposals would do further harm to New Mexico’s economy rather than helping it. Sanchez and the Democrats love to blame Gov. Martinez for New Mexico’s economic woes, but our state’s problems preceded Martinez into office and, when she has put forth reforms like “Right to Work,” Sanchez has led the opposition to reforms that would make New Mexico’s economy look more like its successful neighbors (including Texas and Colorado).

In a blog post last week, the American Petroleum Institute’s Mark Green noted:

Energy isn’t just used to keep machines running or factory lights shining. It also provides the heat necessary to shape metal and the building blocks to create chemicals, refined fuels, plastics and fertilizers. Energy is the lifeblood of what we make, and affordable domestic energy is now providing an important leg up for domestic manufacturers. Thanks to the U.S. shale revolution, this newly affordable and abundant energy is making U.S. manufacturers increasingly competitive, or even more competitive, than overseas rivals. The shale revolution has reshaped the playing field and has made the U.S. the place to be for energy-intensive manufacturing.

All true. Green cited a 2014 PwC study that estimated that “continued shale gas development in the U.S. could generate 930,000 new manufacturing jobs by 2030 and 1.41 million by 2040.”

New Mexico is a leading producer of natural gas, and the price of the fuel for industry was halved between 2008 and 2015:

So manufacturing jobs boomed in the Land of Enchantment during that period, right?

Not exactly.

Here’s annual manufacturing employment in New Mexico (average of all months, seasonally adjusted, in thousands), as determined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Corporate welfare isn’t boosting manufacturing jobs here. Neither is huge subsidies to government schools. And neither is cheap natural gas.

Maybe it’s time to consider tax simplification/relief, deregulation, school choice, and a right-to-work law?