Do you know that the Rio Grande Foundation is on Twitter?

Selfies? Comments about reality-TV stars? Restaurant recommendations?

Not exactly. Every day, Rio Grande Foundation staffers issue tweets on our research, media appearances, and events. We also link to news of note to citizens of the Land of Enchantment and other organizations’ policy analysis that is applicable to New Mexico.

Our Twitter handle is @RioGrandeFndn. We encourage you to follow us — and spread the word!

Rio Grande Foundation Speaker Series Event:
How New Mexico Can Beat Texas. For Real.

Click here for registration form!

Please join the Rio Grande Foundation for our first speaker of 2015, Steve McKee. Steve McKee is the co-founder and president of McKee Wallwork + Company, an integrated marketing firm that specializes in revitalizing stalled, stuck and stale brands.

Have you ever wondered why so many New Mexicans accept the idea that behind states like Colorado, Arizona and (especially) Texas is where we belong? Our economy has lagged behind theirs for so long it's almost as if doing so is some sort of natural law. But branding and business growth expert Steve McKee believes that thinking is incorrect. He'll explain how a number of factors are actually working in New Mexico's favor, and how our state can and will turn the tide — and soon.

A longtime Businessweek.com columnist, he is also the author of When Growth Stalls: How it Happens, Why You're Stuck and What To Do About It, an award-winning business book now published in four languages, and Power Branding: Leveraging the Success of the World's Best Brands.

His firm made the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America its first year of eligibility, has twice won the prestigious Effie Award for marketing effectiveness from the American Marketing Association, and has been recognized by Advertising Age as one of ten top small agencies in the nation.

Steve has been published or quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, Advertising Age, Adweek, Investor's Business Daily and The Los Angeles Times, among others, and he has appeared on CNBC, ESPN2, CNNfn, Bloomberg, and network television affiliates across America.

• Location:  Marriott Pyramid 5151 San Francisco Rd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109
• When:  Wednesday, June 24, 2015, 11:45am to 1:00pm
• Cost:  $30 until Wednesday, June 17, 2015; $40 after the 17th

Click here for registration form!

In today’s Albuquerque Journal, the editorial board notes that “New Mexico charter schools are at the top of the class.” U.S. News and World Report named “three Albuquerque charters at the top of the 12 New Mexico schools that made the list of the 2,500 top high schools in the United States.”

As the Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Jared Meyer wrote in a recent issue of City Journal: “Charter schools offer many of the same benefits as private schools, since they are free from the stranglehold of teachers’ unions. This leaves them able to experiment with and adopt new education methods, including uniforms and stricter discipline, and to attract successful teachers. While teachers’ unions detest charter schools, the public favors charters by a two-to-one margin. Among African-Americans — arguably the biggest beneficiaries of alternative schooling options –support runs greater than three-to-one. Even 38 percent of public school teachers favor charters, while 35 percent are opposed.”

Given charter schools’ success, why not expand choice options in New Mexico? The House of Representatives attempted to do so during the 2015 session. But the legislation failed in the Senate.

Join the Rio Grande Foundation For an Evening of
Discussion and Fellowship at Liberty on the Rocks!

"Liberty on the Rocks" is a no-host happy hour discussion and information-sharing session.

Liberty on the Rocks will be held at Scalo Northern Italian Grill which is located in Nob Hill at 3500 Central Avenue SE in Albuquerque. A private room has been reserved for this event. Liberty on the Rocks will take place on Thursday, May 21st from 6:00 to 7:30PM.

There is no cost for this public event, but attendees are encouraged to have dinner or drinks. Registration is not required but is much appreciated. Click here to register online … it's fast and it's free!

Come celebrate liberty with us!

A recent report by New Mexico’s Legislative Finance Committee has found that teacher pay in our state is too low to keep good teachers. Interestingly, according to the NEA, New Mexico’s per-pupil spending on education is about average (25th according to the chart on p.54), but our teacher salaries are ranked 43rd in the nation (page 18).

What gives? For starters, New Mexico is known for having high capital spending when it comes to our public schools (7th-highest in the nation according to the chart on p. 58). Also, as data compiled by the Friedman Foundation and presented below by the Rio Grande Foundation shows, bureaucracy and administrative staffing levels have grown dramatically in recent years:

Sen. John Arthur-Smith does make a good point in the original Albuquerque Journal article about how teacher pensions may be unsustainable (teacher pay is essentially back-loaded to retirement). This means seniority is valued over competence as young people are scared away from a 20+ year commitment in order to get their “return on investment.” Perhaps Smith would introduce legislation to transfer teachers (on a voluntary or mandatory basis) from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution 401K-style programs?

As seen in the map below from NCSL, this is an option that is in place in several other states (and is becoming increasingly-popular):

Kudos to New Mexico In Depth’s Sandra Fish for uncovering an inconvenient truth about lobbying at the Roundhouse.

Fish’s research found that Common Cause of New Mexico “spent the most overall during the [2015] session: $86,462 on an advertising and phone campaign to encourage lawmakers to pass a series of campaign finance and lobbying transparency bills.” The University of New Mexico landed in a distant second place, with $28,311 spent on “various receptions and other entertainment.”

When the deepest-pocketed “special interest” lobbying state lawmakers is pushing to rein in “money in politics” … well, it’s time for a little soul-searching for New Mexico’s McCainiacs.

(Albuquerque, NM) – The health care law known as ObamaCare remains controversial, not just among the population at large, but among legal experts and in the courts. The latest decision relating to the health care law popularly known as “ObamaCare” was heard by the US Supreme Court in March of this year. The decision could impact the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars in Obamacare subsidies as well as taxes and mandates under the law.

A new report from the Rio Grande Foundation, “New Mexico and King v. Burwell What Kind of Exchange Are We? What does that Mean for Citizens and Policymakers” finds that New Mexico’s “hybrid” exchange would likely be impacted by a US Supreme Court finding for the plaintiffs in a decision that is expected to be handed down this summer.

To date, Amy Dowd, the director of the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange, has claimed that “the case isn’t likely to have a bearing on New Mexico because the court is looking at the federal, as opposed to state, exchanges. But, in discussions with health care experts and research on the law, Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation found information to the contrary.

Michael Cannon, a health care policy expert with the Washington-based Cato Institute who has been called the “architect” of King v. Burwell by The New Republic, stated plainly that New Mexico’s “hybrid” exchange would be considered “federal” under the law (with subsidies at risk and businesses and individuals exempted from many of ObamaCare’s costly mandates).

This point of view on New Mexico’s exchange is not limited to conservatives. The Kaiser Family Foundation, which supports the Law, places the state among those where subsidies are “at risk.”

In other words, said study author Paul Gessing, “New Mexico’s political leaders and citizens should be ready for the likelihood that New Mexico’s current ObamaCare exchange may be invalidated by the Court. Such a decision could create temporary chaos as well as opportunities to reform or even abolish the Law in ways that lead to a freer market in American health care.”

Gessing relies on nationally-recognized experts to put together a series of recommendations for New Mexico’s state and federal elected officials to seize the opportunity to free American health care from the straight-jacket of ObamaCare.

The Rail Runner is a growing burden on New Mexico’s budget. In a recent story in the Albuquerque Journal we learned that the state takes in $2.8 million from fares and costs an astonishing $28.4 million annually just to operate. Then there’s the $784 million in debt that must be repaid over the next 20 years. The annual operating costs, by the way, can be saved by simply mothballing the train while the $784 million will come due no matter what thanks to the “unique” way in which Richardson set up the capital outlays to fund this boondoggle. Of course the Legislature is also to blame for going along with this scheme.

It is true, as mass transit advocates claim that transit systems rarely cover their operating costs (perhaps that is an indicator that current transit models don’t work?). However, according to the authorities at Wikipedia, no transit system in the world had a farebox recovery ratio of 10 percent or less (the Rail Runner’s is just less than 10%). It is no surprise, based on this terrible performance, that Coyote Blog called the Rail Runner “The worst American Rail Project Ever” back in 2012.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation have been calling the Rail Runner a boondoggle from the beginning. In fact, we urged Gov. Martinez to shut the train down back in 2011. Perhaps we were ahead of our time, but shutting the train down is no longer a “fringe” viewpoint. Clifford Winston, a transportation expert at the center-left Brookings Institute, recently was quoted by the Albuquerque Journal saying, “In a state like New Mexico with low population density, it’s questionable whether a train is worth the cost…If it is socially undesirable, then cut your losses and no longer incur the cost … and try to recover the capital that you can and walk away.”

It would seem to me that our policymakers must make the tough but obvious choice to shut the train down now and to use the funds saved either to improve New Mexico’s roads or to pay down some of the debt on the train.

Oh, and lest you think that the Rail Runner is “catching on,” ridership is on a slow, steady decline.

Last night’s “listening session” on the Valles Caldera National Preserve offered solid evidence of the problems inherent with collective “ownership.”

Held at the Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum — another will occur tonight in Jemez Springs, with the final session in Los Alamos on Wednesday — the meeting took input from New Mexicans who use and do business on the nearly 90,000-acre property, which will shift from being managed by a nonprofit trust to the National Park Service on October 1.

When the event’s facilitator (no word on what taxpayers were billed for her time) asked for participants to name their concerns, the list included horse trails, cross-country skiing, hunting/fishing access, wildlife-watching, camping, elk grazing, cow pastures, management of natural and cultural resources, riparian restoration, multi-use roads, overnight accommodations, building a visitor center, and access for the mobility-impaired.

In the evening’s greatest understatement, Charles Strickfaden, Valles Caldera acting superintendent admitted, “Obviously, some of these comments counter each other.”

The highlight of the event — one that brought hearty chuckles — was when a woman suggested her desire for the “reintroduction of wolves.” In response, a man quickly shouted, “Predator control!”

Government ownership of land means endless squabbling — conflicts between ranchers’ livestock and indigenous creatures, hunting/fishing and “wilderness” preservation, human access and protection of sites said to have cultural/historical/spiritual significance. It’s a lot like the children’s game Hungry Hungry Hippos, with every interest group grabbing as much as they can.

Valles Caldera is an amazing place. But after last night’s gathering, it’s more clear than ever that when “everyone” owns a property, conflicts are unavoidable. Wouldn’t a property-rights-centered approach be better?

Some New Mexicans have convinced themselves that the challenges facing the state’s highways require a higher gasoline tax. They’re wrong, and here’s why.

First, the true condition of New Mexico’s roads contrasts with the oft-heard claims that they are “crumbling” and “in disrepair.” In the Reason Foundation’s latest national analysis, the overall performance and cost-effectiveness of New Mexico’s highways ranked seventh. States graded worse included our neighbors Texas (11th), Arizona (19th), Oklahoma (22nd), Utah (29th), and Colorado (33rd).

New Mexico scored its best marks in maintenance disbursements per mile (1st), capital-bridge disbursements per mile (6th) and rural arterial pavement condition (6th).

Still there’s no denying that the revenue needed to build and maintain highways is stagnant. Autos are becoming more efficient, and Millennials do not drive as much as previous generations. Between the 2009 and 2014 fiscal years, New Mexico’s road fund rose from $371.1 million to $380.6 million. Adjusted for inflation, the increase became a small decline.

That’s why pressure is mounting for action. Lawmakers and the governor, the argument goes, must hike the gasoline tax. “They are going to have to do something to raise revenue,” Greg Rowangould, a University of New Mexico professor of civil engineering told the Albuquerque Journal in a May 2 article. “They don’t have an option of doing nothing.”

Really? Isn’t spending existing revenue more efficiently an option? In the 2015 session, Sen. Carroll H. Leavell, R-Jal, drafted a bill to gradually transfer 100 percent of the receipts from the motor-vehicle excise tax — currently applied to general expenditures — to the road fund. Legislative analysts predicted that by the 2019 fiscal year, the switch would yield an additional $156 million for highways.

Another boost could come from halting the siphoning off of gasoline-tax revenue. Currently, a portion is devoted to the state’s aviation and general funds, as well as the coffers of counties and municipalities.

And putting the expensive and underused Rail Runner out of its misery would free up tens of millions of dollars annually.

Also on the spending side, the purchasing power of transportation projects would be enhanced by the repeal of New Mexico’s prevailing-wage law. The mandate is anti-competition, and thus, profoundly anti-taxpayer.

According to Roxanne Rivera-Wiest, the president of Associated Builders and Contractors of New Mexico, prevailing-wage rates are “determined by the director of the Labor Relations Division of the Department of Workforce Solutions, at the same wage rates and fringe benefit rates used in collective bargaining agreements as supported by the unions.”

But the vast majority of the construction industry in the Land of Enchantment is not unionized. Thus, highway projects in the state are unnecessarily expensive.

A report by Ohio’s Legislative Service Commission found “overall savings of 10.7 percent” when the Buckeye State exempted school construction from its prevailing-wage requirement. The New York Times recently reported that limited rollbacks have been enacted in West Virginia and Nevada, and campaigns for full repeals “have been offered in more than a dozen states, including Michigan and Missouri, as well as Wisconsin.”

A final way to avoid a gasoline-tax hike is to invite the private sector to contribute.

R. Richard Geddes, of Cornell University, noted that for-profit entities “were widely used in the 19th century to build and operate toll bridges and roads, and the vast majority of U.S. railroads were constructed with private money.”

Peter Samuel, the publisher of the newsletter Toll Roads, believes that by “allowing takeovers, consolidations, and spin-offs of highway assets, the markets would ensure that highways are managed for the best return on capital — the dynamic that gives us our food, our fuels, our housing, our electric power, and all the rest of what goes into our standard of living.”

Imposing higher taxes on a state where employment, incomes, and home values have yet to recover from the Great Recession isn’t sound policy. There are indeed innovative, proven, and cost-free options to upgrade and expand New Mexico’s roads.

The ABQ Free Press has been around for a year now. I can’t imagine too many conservatives and libertarians would decide to pick it up since the paper tends to be a steady diet of left-wing columnists with a weekly appearance by none other than Robert Reich, the former extreme liberal Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton.

If you do desire some “free” reading material, the paper has recently started carrying a discussion/debate series involving Rio Grande Foundation president Paul Gessing and failed Democrat gubernatorial candidate (and my sometimes debate opponent) Alan Webber. Webber is a smart guy and a capable debater so it should be an interesting read and you won’t find it anywhere but the Free Press.

The first installment ran in the May 6th edition and appears on page 10 (click here for the full edition). We actually agree to a great extent that regulators should encourage rather than discourage ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber although Webber wants to apply the same terms to utilities. Interestingly, this pro-Uber/Lyft stance puts Webber cross-ways with the most powerful Democrat in New Mexico and his lobbyist brother who killed reasonable regulations during the 2015 session.

The Tax Foundation reports that revenue from the federal tobacco tax is declining.

The same can be said of New Mexico’s levy on coffin nails. Here, in millions of dollars, are the sums the tax generated recently, and are predicted to yield in the future:

2011: 88.2

2012: 85.4

2013: 86.1

2014 (unaudited): 78.5

2015 (estimated): 79.0

2016 (estimated): 78.1

With a cigarette tax higher than the national average, and above the rates of Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado, it’s likely that evasion is a major contributor to New Mexico’s declining revenue. According to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Land of Enchantment is a top “inbound smuggling state”  — 46.1 percent of the smokes consumed here are contraband.

We talk a lot about government economic policies at this site. This is more of a personal plea: “Don’t give to panhandlers!” Kudos to the City of Albuquerque for finally taking action to address the issue. You can’t get off of a highway in this town without someone with a sign asking for money. That’s not the real problem.

Rather, my issue with panhandling is that it doesn’t really help the people who are out doing it because it violates the old proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” One panhandler detailed on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal this morning is a perfectly-healthy 38 year old man who makes up to $30/hour tax-free from begging. I don’t know what his personal issues are, but he should be able to work. At $30/hour (or something like it), what incentive does he have to work? If he doensn’t work, how will he get skills and become a productive member of society? If he does have real issues that prevent him from working (mental health, say) he certainly isn’t getting help on a street corner.

And here’s where the government policies come in. According to the Cato Institute, in New Mexico government welfare payments already exceed the minimum wage (as seen in the chart below). So, in our personal lives and the government policies we advocate for, it only makes sense that we emphasize what Arthur Brooks calls “earned success,” as opposed to the quick freebie.

Albuquerque Economic Development, a “private” organization, is receiving $80,000 from city taxpayers to hire CBRE Consulting’s John Rocca. The Southern Californian will be charged with finding “50 qualified companies interested in expansion or relocation,” and arranging “for AED to be in one-on-one meetings with those firms,” president and CEO Gary Tonjes told Albuquerque Business First.

It’s more of the same — government picking winners and losers, rather than lowering the tax burden, enacting regulatory relief, passing a right-to-work law, and promoting a more capable workforce through school choice.

Elsewhere, doubts about states’ giveaways to businesses are growing. Oklahoma’s governor recently signed legislation “to sort out effective incentives from ineffective ones.” While not an elimination of corporate welfare, it’s an acknowledgement that oversight is long overdue.

As for film-production freebies, many states — including Michigan, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Massachusetts — are rethinking handouts to Hollywood. Don’t look for New Mexico to join the club.

New Mexico’s job market is finally showing signs of life in the wake of the “Great Recession” as new federal data presented here by the Rio Grande Foundation show:

Obviously, New Mexico’s job situation remains far worse than it is in any of our neighboring states, but at least there is a pulse. Unfortunately, not much was done during the recent legislative session to set the stage for continued job and economic growth, so perhaps it was inevitable that New Mexico would see some job growth after years of the State economy being flat on its back.

As the chart below clearly shows, workforce participation in New Mexico lags the national average badly (by nearly 10 percentage points). And, while the national rate has declined in the wake of the “Great Recession,” New Mexico’s has quite literally collapsed with only slight improvement having taken place since 2011.

Obviously, there are some systemic issues with New Mexico’s economy and the New Mexico Senate in particular blocked any and all significant reforms.

The Pew Charitable Trusts has looked at the health of the nation’s metro areas, in terms of “jobless rates, housing permits averaged over three years to 2015, 2013 gross domestic product and the number of incoming residents in 2014.”

Of the 377 regions Pew ranked, here’s how New Mexico fared:

Santa Fe: 180th

Albuquerque: 204th

Farmington: 240th

Las Cruces: 275th

Not much to be proud of, is it?

In a story published yesterday, the ride-sharing company Lyft is leaving New Mexico citing “mounting legal pressure from local (New Mexico) regulators.” From the looks of Facebook comments that I found it was a mysterious “DWI lobby” that caused onerous regulations to be passed by the PRC thus forcing Lyft out of New Mexico.

In reality, the situation seems quite a bit simpler. A better set of regulations for ride-share services was introduced by Rep. Monica Youngblood during the 2015 legislative session. This bill, HB 272, passed overwhelmingly 56-8. Unfortunately, the bill, as with so many others, got killed in the Senate without so much as a floor vote.

Notably, Raymond Sanchez, the former Speaker of New Mexico’s House and current Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez’s brother is the lead lobbyist for the taxi industry which HATES ride-sharing.

In the wake of the Senate’s failure to pass a reasonable bill, the PRC stepped in with some onerous regulations and now Lyft is gone.

So, there you have it: a microcosm of why New Mexico remains poor and doesn’t create as many jobs and as much economic prosperity as its neighbors. Michael Sanchez is by no means the only liberal politician that likely scared the ride-share companies (AG Balderas’ calls for drug testing were likely another factor). The PRC can also be faulted for passing onerous regulations. But, when blame is assigned for Lyft (and possibly Uber) leaving New Mexico, Majority Leader Sanchez and his near-dictatorial control over the Senate’s calendar must be near the top of the list of reasons.

Another month, another victory for job creation in right-to-work (RTW) states.

The Rio Grande 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.”

April had a somewhat surprising result — non-RTW states posted their best performance of the year, and nabbed 29.4 percent of projected job creation:

As has been the case since January 1, in April, Kentucky claimed a disproportionate share of non-RTW employment. But it should be noted that the Bluegrass State is moving in a RTW direction — compulsory unionism may be repealed at the state level, and a dozen counties have passed RTW ordinances.

April saw a number of non-RTW-to-RTW shifts, including Adecco Group North America moving its headquarters from New York to Florida, California-based Kaiser Permanente establishing an IT campus in Georgia, and T&B Tube Company relocating an Illinois facility to Indiana.

Nationally, the total number of jobs projected so far this year is 59,455 — with 81.2 percent slated for RTW states.

How long will it take for New Mexico’s elected officials to recognize that RTW is a powerful economic-development tool?

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 by elected officials and economic-development bureaucracies.

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

* Intrastate relocations were not counted, interstate relocations were.

There is nothing inherently good about housing price increases. In fact, federal policies from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve have manipulated the American housing market for years. There are also zoning and other local government regulations at play especially on the West Coast.

However, to at least some extent, rising housing prices are caused by housing demand. Housing demand is mostly caused by economic growth. Interestingly, during 2014, New Mexico’s housing market saw the second-lowest appreciation of housing prices during 2014 as shown in the chart below (check the data below the map for all of 2014 while the map is just the final quarter of last year):

Is New Mexico’s weak economy helping to prevent a second housing boom or will New Mexicans be unable to move to other states because they can’t get a decent price for their current home? Slow growth in housing values relative to other states is definitely another sign that our State’s economy remained weak in 2014.

Natural gas prices have been down for some time but oil has rebounded somewhat in recent weeks. Here’s a recent interview I did on the issue and how the prices of these important commodities impact New Mexico.

Earlier today, Albuquerque Economic Development held “Connect to Success,” a workshop to educate attendees about “available business resources.”

AED, “a private, nonprofit organization whose mission is to recruit business and industry, help local companies grow and generate quality job opportunities,” should be commended for its desire to improve the region’s economy. Unfortunately, if its roster of speakers is any indication, the organization isn’t aware of the most effective tools to boost entrepreneurship and create jobs.

Nearly the entire seminar was devoted to programs and tax credits offered by taxpayer-funded bureaucracies. AED officials Bob Walton and Dennis Houston raved about the state’s Job Training Incentive Program. Ronald Burke, of the New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership, touted his group’s “strategic partnerships,” and detailed all the ways factories could obtain subsidized help. Genaro Montoya of Sandia National Laboratories described the way his employer and Los Alamos National Laboratory, via a state program, offer services to small employers. (He assured the audience that the initiative “is not in business to compete with the private sector.”) The Workforce Connection of Central New Mexico‘s Jerilynn Sans described her agency’s subsidies for worker training. John Brooks, of the New Mexico Finance Authority, instructed attendees to tell the state’s congressional delegation that NMFA needs “more money.” And Lenny Bean, of the Procurement Technical Assistance Program, whined that sequestration was “a virus” that had spread from D.C. to the Roundhouse, in the form of a failed capital-outlay bill.

Deregulation? Broad, deep tax reform/relief? Right to work? A repeal of the state’s “renewable portfolio standard? School choice? None were mentioned during the workshop.

New Mexico’s economic-development strategy isn’t working. Labor participation is low, job growth is weak, and the population is falling.

It’s time for something different.

Recently, I wrote an article for the Liberty Foundation’s national publication which I have posted below the chart relating to the cost of New Mexico’s Renewable Portfolio Standard. James Taylor of the free market Heartland Institute also visited Albuquerque recently and spoke about the high cost of government energy regulations. The presentation was covered by Rob Nikolewski of Watchdog.

Electricity production has become a hotly contested political issue. This is largely the result of powerful environmental pressure groups turning man-made global warming, or more recently “climate change,” into hot-button political topics.

The controversy began to manifest itself at the state level in the late 1990s when Nevada and Texas first adopted “Renewable Policy Standards” (RPSs). These laws require electricity supply companies to produce a specified fraction of their electricity from sources deemed “renewable,” such as wind, solar, and biofuels.

During the early 2000s, the adoption of RPSs spread to a number of other states. One of these was New Mexico, which initially adopted such standards in 2004. Today, according to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency (DSIRE), 29 states have legally mandated standards and 9 states have voluntary goals.

Not all RPSs are created equal. In fact, they tend to evolve somewhat dramatically over time. New Mexico’s RPS took its current form in 2007 when the Legislature and Gov. Bill Richardson amended the original RPS requirement that utilities get 10 percent of their electricity needs by 2011 from renewables. Under the 2007 law, utilities must use renewables to obtain 15 percent of their electricity by 2015. That requirement will grow to 20 percent by 2020 absent further legislatively enacted changes.

Also in 2007, New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission (PRC) issued an order and rules requiring that Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) meet the 20 percent by 2020 target through a “fully diversified renewable energy portfolio.”

This regulation micromanages how utilities meet the legislature’s standard, requiring at least:
• 30 percent of the RPS requirement be met using wind energy,
• 20 percent from solar power,
• 5 percent from other renewable energy technologies, and
• 1.5 percent from “distributed generation” renewable energy technologies for years 2011 through 2014, rising to 3% in 2015.

Renewables mandates drive up electricity prices, which is why they are mandates. If the renewable technologies required were cost effective, utilities would adopt them on their own. The combination, in 2007, of the legislature increasing the overall RPS and the new regulation further micromanaging utilities sparked a rise in New Mexico electricity prices.

The rapid increase in New Mexico electricity prices was both predicted and is likely to accelerate in the years ahead. According to a 2011 report by the Rio Grande Foundation and the American Tradition Institute, “Over the period of 2011 to 2020 these laws (New Mexico’s RPS) will cost New Mexicans an additional $2.3 billion over conventional power.” That price shock was predicted to be most pronounced in 2020 as the RPS is reaches the 20 percent level. According to the report, “consumers will pay $619 million more for power in 2020.”

PNM’s request includes the cost of new pollution controls and elimination of two units (half of total capacity) at its coal-fueled San Juan Generating Station near Farmington. This has nonetheless generated a great deal of controversy among environmental groups who want the facility completely and immediately shut down.

Camila Feibelman, executive director of the Sierra Club’s Rio Grande Chapter, told the PRC in recent testimony, “We agree with shutting down two units at the plant, but we’re concerned that PNM’s plan will still lock us into continued use of coal for another 30 years.”

Needless to say, the political battles over electricity at the state level are heated and they are just getting started. No matter what happens with the Obama Administration’s proposed federal “Clean Air” regulations, New Mexico and other states that have aggressive RPSs in place will continue to see electricity prices rise as the “low-hanging fruit” of relatively cheap and easy renewable generation is achieved and more costly, less economical renewable projects are embarked upon in order to fulfill those standards.

In other words, for rate payers in New Mexico and elsewhere, the pain from the state’s RPS will only get worse in the years ahead.

Governor Martinez is charging 243 state employees with taking “administrative leave” to vote on Election Day … and not voting.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, the accused “could face disciplinary action ranging from a reprimand and repaying the state to more serious sanctions, such as suspension.”

Kudos to the New Mexico State Personnel Office auditor who conducted the investigation. Government employees, all but free from the pressures of competition and customer scrutiny, need better oversight. Last week, KRQE revealed that a “Children, Youth and Families Department worker is under investigation after she was caught on camera speeding down a highway in a state car with two young kids in the backseat.”

Earlier this month, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that New Jersey tracks hundreds of its employees, “gathering data from their cellphones about when they clock in, where they are at any given moment, what route they take to get there, how fast they drive, and whether they make unauthorized stops.” Field Force Manager, an application introduced by Verizon Wireless in 2006, is also used by municipalities in the Garden State.

Liberals generally don’t care for Wal Mart. In fact, egged on by the left-wing Green “Chamber of Commerce,” the Las Cruces City Council recently rejected a proposal to rezone some land for a Wal-Mart.

According to an editorial from the Las Cruces Sun-News, the City Council denied the re-zoning even though the change had been approved 6-0 by the Planning and Zoning Commission, and even though the nature of that part of town is clearly changing from farmland to growing neighborhoods in need of retail services.

So, Las Cruces is now too good for Wal Mart. Of course, Albuquerque’s City Council made a similar anti-Wal-Mart decision a few years back, so perhaps it is just a generally anti-business attitude that permeates this state and makes us poor? Nah, couldn’t be.

Elsewhere, however, labor unions are positively IN LOVE with Wal Mart. A to the story, the unions are asking the National Labor Relations Board to force Wal-Mart to reinstate employees at five stores, accusing the retailer of closing the locations to retaliate against workers for attempts to organize for better pay and benefits.

Wal-Mart Stores had announced that it was temporarily closing five stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Florida and California to fix plumbing issues.

Another story about the closed Wal Marts made it seem like the city of Pico Rivera, CA, would wither away if their now-closed Wal Mart doesn’t reopen. According to the LA Times, the Mayor Gregory Salcido said:

“It’s a severe blow to our community, certainly, with the local economy, the homes and families, in terms of those people that were counting on those paychecks.”

With 530 workers, the Wal-Mart store is the city’s second-biggest employer, topped only by the El Rancho Unified School District. Pico Rivera’s nearly 64,000 residents have a median household income of almost $57,000, about average for the county.

Salcido estimated that Pico Rivera receives about $1.4 million a year in tax revenue from the retailer, potentially 10% of the city’s sales tax revenue. City officials, he said, are trying to figure out how to deal with the lost revenue if the store remains closed for at least six months, as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has announced.

Of course, the unions aren’t benevolently attempting to reopen the store to help the town of Pico Rivera. They believe that Wal Mart fired the workers for attempting to unionize.

Perhaps this would be an appropriate place to note that Wal Mart is indeed good for workers.