New Mexico’s gross receipts tax (GRT) is a noose around the neck of our state’s economy. This was the basic point of a recent column written by Rep. Larry Larrañaga (R) and Sen. George Muñoz (D). The column discussed a bill that died in the 2014 legislative session that would have eliminated the gross receipts tax  from the sale of goods and services to the United States Department of Defense related to directed energy or satellites. In Albuquerque, the tax is charged at 7 percent. The rate varies statewide.

The impetus behind the bill is that New Mexico is pretty much unique in charging tax on business inputs (a few other states charge similar taxes at far lower rates). It is also unique in charging taxes on federal contractors and services provided to the federal government. This is because the GRT is charged as a percentage of total receipts, not a percent of sales.

The GRT is a jobs-killer because it increases costs for business by 7 percent or more above competing states, most of which do not have taxes on business inputs and none as high as New Mexico’s in terms of the rate. That is a huge margin for someone who plans to provide business services on a national basis and can locate their business anywhere. No one wants to pay an additional 7 percent on top of what they’re already paying to Washington and Santa Fe and, quite frankly, a business that must charge extra is not going to be as competitive.

Larrañaga and Muñoz are attempted to target the GRT for one group of contractors dealing with the Labs. It would reduce revenues to the State and Bernalillo county by anywhere from $2 to $10 million annually.  The problem, of course, is that anytime you carve out one industry for special favors, you push that burden onto others. That’s why RGF opposed reducing electricity prices for a few favored businesses….ultimately the cost must be picked up elsewhere. Already, entrepreneurs and new businesses must pay 7 percent or more for attorneys, technology services, accountants, and a wide variety of other non-politically-favored services if they are provided by a New Mexico business. Alternatively, if you are looking to set up one of these businesses, you are strongly incentivized NOT to locate your business in New Mexico lest you have to add that tax to your prices.

New Mexico’s gross receipts tax either needs to be dramatically-reformed with the rates lowered and other taxes on productivity like the state income tax eliminated, or, the GRT must be eliminated entirely and the budget gap (totaling millions of dollars) made up through a combination of new revenues (including economic growth) and spending restraint. Read the Rio Grande Foundation’s detailed analysis of the gross receipts tax and its myriad problems here.

As an adherent to the view held by Mark Twain that “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session,” I am breathing a sigh of relief today with the closing of the 2014 Legislative Session.

The really bad things that could have happened: increased tapping of the permanent fund for pre-K, minimum wage hikes, and return to an elected board of education, fell by the wayside. A budget was passed with bi-partisan support — raising spending by about 4.5 percent — so a special session is unlikely. Since this is the only true obligation of the Legislature in a 30-day session, we can more or less say “Mission Accomplished” in that regard. And the extreme liberals at ProgressNowNM are VERY upset because, despite Democrat majorities in both houses, they didn’t get their way during the session. So, mission doubly accomplished.

Unfortunately, this being the New Mexico Legislature, no serious economic reforms were undertaken, despite the drumbeat of bad economic news relating to our state. So, no “Right to Work,” no tax reform, no regulatory reform, and no serious education reform or school choice. Some common-sense bills that would have at least moved things in the right direction, but died include:

HB 113 which would have stripped worker’s comp benefits from people who injure themselves on the job while drunk or high.

HB 229 which would have toughened penalties for those who try to trade food stamps and EBT cards for cash.

SB 152 which would have provided some needed reforms to New Mexico’s outdated telecom laws.

HB 102, SB 256, SM 47, and SB1 would have either studied or funded studies of efforts to restore some federally-owned lands within New Mexico to the State (see ProgressNow’s crowing over killing one of these supposedly ALEC bills despite the fact that a very similar bill was sponsored by Majority Leader Sanchez, hardly a friend of ALEC and the concept has also been endorsed by Land Commissioner Ray Powell).

One ray of hope involved the Lottery Scholarship fund. One bi-partisan bill, HB 254, provided a reasonable compromise that included some aspects of the Rio Grande Foundation’s reform ideas.

Obviously a mixed bag 2014 session as is usually the case. Unfortunately, the Democrat-controlled Legislature remains the single greatest stumbling block to economic and educational advances in our State.

Every once in awhile, Congressional Republicans try to cut funding for Public Broadcast Service (PBS)  and National Public Radio (NPR). While I believe that such efforts are justified, to date, supporters of these government-sponsored broadcast networks have managed to keep federal funds flowing. The total, $445 million annually, is small within the scope of the federal budget, but it’s hard to argue that the government should own media outlets or that popular shows like Downton Abbey or Sesame Street wouldn’t survive without federal funding.

So, why am I bringing this up now? Because I received an email detailing “An Evening with Amy Goodman Host and Executive Producer of Democracy Now.”  The email goes on to note that “Proceeds from an “Evening with Amy Goodman” to benefit KNME, KUNM, and KSFR.” These are Albuquerque’s PBS station, NPR station, and Santa Fe’s NPR station respectively.

It is one thing for a donor-funded think tank like the Rio Grande Foundation to host Rush Limbaugh or for New Mexico Voices for Children to host Ms. Goodman, but it is quite another thing for taxpayer-financed “public” stations like these to benefit financially from hosting an appearance by such a hard-line “progressive” (even socialist) ideologue.

The fact that taxpayer dollars are being commingled with funds raised by Amy Goodman should be enough to give even politically-moderate New Mexicans heartburn and make them wish that these television and radio stations eliminated government funds from their budgets.

A very timely report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that “raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2016 would cost the economy 500,000 jobs.” To anyone who knows basic economics, the loss of some jobs due to an artificial price hike would be abundantly obvious. After all, elected officials have used tax hikes to reduce demand for junk food and cigarettes, why would  artificial increases in wage rates not reduce demand?

Also, according to the CBO report, “About 16.5 million Americans would earn more money if the minimum wage is increased. This would boost earnings for low-wage workers by $31 billion,” it projects. Sounds great, but as the CBO states, the additional earnings would not necessarily increase the earnings of low-income workers. In fact, “only 19 percent of this money would go to families that are below the poverty threshold,” according to CBO.

Interestingly enough, New Mexico’s House of Representatives will soon be voting on SJR 13 which will increase the minimum wage to approximately $8.30 an hour and index that rate to inflation. While we don’t know how many jobs it will cost New Mexico, is this really the appropriate time to be reducing job opportunities for our fellow New Mexicans?

Last night in a bi-partisan 8-2 vote, SJR 12 which would have amended New Mexico’s Constitution to raid the Permanent Fund in order to finance an expansion of pre-K programs, was defeated. While it could be resurrected, it appears that the plan is dead for another session. Despite data indicating that such costly programs are ineffective in improving education results, it is safe to say that the pre-K expansion was, perhaps along with a hike in the minimum wage, the centerpiece of the left-wing agenda this year in Santa Fe. And now it is likely dead on an 8-2 vote. Ouch.

There’s no doubt that the senators who voted “no” will face the wrath of the powerful and well-funded leftist interest groups who were positively salivating at the possibility of tapping into the permanent fund honeypot to expand the size of government and their control over our children. So, it’s worth noting that Senators Beffort, Burt, Campos, Cisneros, Munoz, Leville, Neville, and John Arthur Smith voted ‘Yes,’ to table SJR 12 (and are worthy of praise and support for their courageous votes).

While the New Mexico pre-K vote is unlikely to generate the same national headlines, another rejection of leftist ideology: the recent vote by workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee to reject unionizing with the United Autoworkers, has. The impact of this rejection is likely to be particularly important given management support for the unionization effort. Union supporters including President Obama have decried efforts by Republican politicians and conservative leaders in opposition to the unionization push, but the reality is that if workers felt they would have benefited from a union, they could have had one. Instead, the unions were rejected in a move that will only quicken the decline of private sector unions in the United States.

Unfortunately, government employee unions which even FDR opposed are the real problem, but unions of all stripes have tended to support the same left-wing policies and politicians.

New Mexico is a funny place sometimes. On one hand, our elected policymakers are more than happy to throw 25 cents on the dollar (if the show were to start filming now, that would be 30 cents on the dollar) through our generous film incentive program at a fictional television show, Breaking Bad, which uses Albuquerque as the setting for a gripping tale of a meth-dealing high school teacher. Everyone — the media, the business community, and the population at large — LOVES the show.

And then there is the reality show COPS which portrays real police dealing with real criminals. Former Mayor Marty Chavez famously kicked the show out of town back in 2004 citing the show’s negative portrayal of the community. The show has been given the go-head from Sheriff Dan Houston to come back to town, but this has two County Commissioners outraged.

I have no idea if COPS will be asking for film subsidies. If that is the case, I’d certainly oppose their presence, but how can people be so positive about a show that portrays Albuquerque as Breaking Bad did while trying to keep COPS out? Maybe these folks — O’Malley and Stebbins — need to spend more time working to clean up problems at the County Jail?

UPDATE: According to the New Mexico Film Office, COPS would likely be eligible for New Mexico’s 25% film subsidy rate.

Income inequality is a popular discussion topic these days. President Obama made it a central talking point in his recent State of the Union address and policy initiatives – most notably minimum wage hikes – have been proposed as means of reducing such inequality. Unfortunately, while inequality has unquestionably grown in recent years, there are few proven solutions and a lot of heated rhetoric.

It is worth noting that growing inequality is not unique to the United States. According to The Economist, inequality around the world has been growing since the mid-1980s in all areas except impoverished sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union. In other words, to an extent, inequality is a sign of economic development and strength. There is truth to Franklin Roosevelt’s observation that “Capitalism is unequally divided riches while socialism is equally divided poverty.”

In other words, people are not equal. Their skills and work ethics differ greatly. In a free society, we will all be more prosperous overall, but some will be much more prosperous than others.

There are a number of reasons why inequality has grown in recent years. Highly skilled people are in great demand, can command higher pay, and due to improved technology, global economic development, and freer trade, can sell their work on a global basis. Think of the ways in which globalization has multiplied the earning ability of athletes like Lebron James and actors such as Tom Cruise who are international superstars. In decades past, the limited size of the markets available to them limited their exposure and earning power.

While the high-skilled and unique have done very well, low-skilled laborers, especially in manufacturing, are increasingly competing against workers around the world, immigrants, and machines. There is no way around this reality. The solution is to spur educational innovation, preferably in the form of school choice, to move more workers into the high-skilled, in demand group.

Another cause of increasing inequality is money printing on the part of the Federal Reserve. A former top official at the Federal Reserve, Andrew Huszar called the Fed’s recent money printing “the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.” Printing money helps big businesses, banks, and investors at the expense of savers, workers, and everyone else. It is time to reign in our nation’s monetary policy.

Speaking of bailouts and subsidies, it is worth considering the myriad ways in which government policies transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes to the very wealthy. New Mexico’s spaceport is one such example as are subsidies that were given to HP, Eclipse, and Schott Solar over the years.

In Washington, farm and housing subsidies skew to the rich as does flood insurance. And, of course, entitlements like Social Security and Medicare hit all workers with regressive taxes for the benefit of Warren Buffett and other wealthy seniors. Both systems are in dire need of reform that will both spur economic growth and allow poor and middle income workers to build their nest eggs and sock away money for future health expenses.

Unfortunately, the left’s solutions for inequality generally involve massively expanding the size of government. Raising the minimum wage is the most notable solution that has been proposed at both the state and federal levels. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that raising the minimum wage positively impacts inequality. In fact, with the unemployment rate for black teenagers at 35.5 percent and the rate for all teenagers at 20.2 percent, raising the minimum wage will have the long-term effect of pushing more working class youth out of the work force in favor of higher-skilled workers or machines.

Undoubtedly, inequality is a challenging problem. The good news is that improving the economy for all Americans doesn’t require us to loot people like Bill Gates, Lebron James, and other wealthy people who have made the world a better place through their skills and products.

Rather, policymakers both in Santa Fe and in Washington need to focus on growing the overall size of the economic pie, not finding better ways to redistribute wealth in an economy that is no longer growing.

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

Check out this interesting posting from Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute who is actually relating details of a debate on pre-K between Upjohn Institute economist and government Pre-K advocate Tim Bartik and Russ Whitehurst, an early education expert at the Brookings Institution who is critical of the case for universal government Pre-K.

As explained by Coulson, “Bartik is right that there are two early education programs in particular, High Scope/Perry and Abecedarian, that showed substantial long term benefits. But these were tiny programs operated by the people who had designed them and serving only a few dozen or a few score children.”

But, continues Coulson, “Whitehurst and others focus on the results of large scale federal and state programs, because these are relevant to the present policy debate.” And, concludes Coulson:

To sum up, there is at best no favorable consensus among non-experimental studies of large scale government Pre-K programs, but there is a consensus among the more reliable experimental studies: program effects fade out by the elementary school years, sometimes by the end of kindergarten. That is the evidence that matters when discussing proposals for expanding government Pre-K.

One might expect that this information would be relevant to policymakers as they discuss SJR 12 which would tap New Mexico’s permanent fund to pay for a new pre-K program. With less than a week to go, the Amendment was last in Senate Finance. It still has a long way to go before passage, but funny things can happen in the New Mexico Legislature.

I sat down with Margaret Ortiz at TBN for a discussion of the issues moving through the 2014 legislative session. Things are happening fast at this point at the Roundhouse, but this interview remains relevant as it touches on the big, controversial issues facing legislators:

Issues and Legislation Facing the 2014 Legislation from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation view economic development and growth as the most important issues facing New Mexico. But that doesn’t mean that every idea on bringing jobs and economic growth to the Land of Enchantment makes sense. Take a recent legislative proposal that has generated some attention in the Albuquerque Journal. The idea is to allow utilities like PNM to provide electricity at discounted prices in order to attract businesses to the state. It is being sponsored by Democrat Moe Maestas HB 296 and Republican Stuart Ingle SB 283. Recent articles supporting the proposal include an op-ed from NAIOP and this one.

As outlined in the second article, we agree with the big-government advocacy group AARP which is rare indeed.

Sounds great, right? Businesses save on their electric bills and create more jobs. It might work, but it could also result in cost-shifting from businesses to average New Mexicans. After all, PNM has to make money somehow and they don’t make it from a group of major consumers, they may be forced to pass those costs along to the rest of us. That’s not exactly fair.

More importantly, to the extent that electricity costs are an impediment to businesses locating here (our prices are in the middle of the pack among states), policymakers should remove costly regulations like the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) which unnecessarily raise electricity costs for all New Mexicans. Of course, that would require intestinal fortitude to stand up to the wind and solar lobbies, not to mention AARP which, despite pleas against overt subsidies for business’ electricity costs, tends to support regulations like the RPS which drive the cost of electricity higher for the seniors they purport to represent.

And then there is former Public Regulation Commission member Douglas Howe who bizarrely claimed in a recent article (which I blogged) that electricity prices have no bearing on economic growth.

The Rio Grande Foundation released a report in December of 2013 detailing the benefits given to presidents at New Mexico’s community colleges. This report caught the attention of Katie Kim at Channel 13, KRQE who put together a major investigative report on the issue. Kim’s report aired last night and can be viewed below:

I love people who claim that they want to use the political process to “take politics out of X.” The latest argument in this vein was made in the Albuquerque Journal by some former chairmen of New Mexico’s State Board of Education in support of a Constitutional Amendment, SJR 2, that would strip the Secretary of Education of her power and reinstate an elected board as the primary education policy making body.

Reasonable people can disagree on the benefits of boards vs. appointees in managing education policy, but it is patently false to say that one is more “political” than the other. In fact, nothing could be more political than an elected body, using tax dollars, to make decisions affecting all of our children’ educations and 45% of the General Fund budget.

In fact, it would appear that, despite claims to the contrary, this is nothing more than a case of “sour grapes” as the move to an appointed secretary was done under Democrat Bill Richardson, but never became political until a reform-minded Gov. and Secretary showed up and tried to change the status quo.

Worse, New Mexico already suffers from having too many boards and commissions, both elected and unelected, that are seemingly accountable to no one. While an elected board is theoretically accountable to the population as a whole, what happens in reality is extremely low turnout elections or races way down the ballot where average citizens either don’t vote or don’t know what is going on and in which interested groups (like the unions) control the outcome.

Certainly, Gov. Martinez is in charge of a lot more than education policy and people will vote for or against her in November for a variety of reasons, but she ran on education reform, she has spent the last four years working to implement those reforms, and if the voters oppose those reforms, they can vote against her in the fall. On this issue, the status quo of an appointed education secretary actually makes sense and is more likely to lead to real reforms to our education system no matter which party holds the Governor’s office.

Much was made of America’s expensive and allegedly poor-performing health care system by the media and supporters of ObamaCare prior to the creation of the new health care law. Interestingly, America’s health care system, while deeply flawed as I’ve pointed out in the past, remains the best in the world if the issue is one of results.

For details, check out this article from Forbes which shows how, once car crashes and shootings are subtracted from the equation (can’t really relate these items to our health care system), the US has the world’s longest life spans.

Of course, America’s health care system is expensive and a lot of that spending is of dubious merit. But even government spending is a tricky measuring stick. As Jonah Goldberg notes, with 2.3 million Americans leaving the work force due to ObamaCare, not all costs associated with ANY health care system readily show up in the data.

Join the Rio Grande Foundation at this Albuquerque luncheon event on Friday, March 14th featuring Stephen Moore, former editorial board member at the Wall Street Journal, now chief economist at Heritage Foundation.

Click here for event registration form.

The Rio Grande Foundation is hosting a luncheon talk with Stephen Moore on Friday, March 14, 2014. Moore will be discussing "A Growth Agenda for New Mexico." 

• When: 12 noon to 1:00pm on Friday, March 14, 2014
   
• Where: Albuquerque’s Marriott Pyramid which is located at Paseo del Norte and I-25
   
• Price: $40 for purchases made through March 7th; $50 for purchase made March 8th or later. Books will be available for purchase and signing at the door.

Moore served as a member of the editorial board and senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal from 2005 through 2013. He splits his time between Washington and New York, focusing on economic issues, including budget, tax and monetary policy.

In January of 2014 he took over as Chief Economist at the Washington, DC-based Heritage Foundation.

Stephen also founded and served as president of the Club for Growth, which raises money for political candidates who favor free-market economic policies. He left that position in 2004, just prior to coming to the Journal.

Over the years, Stephen has served as a senior economist on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, as a budget expert for the Heritage Foundation and as a senior economics fellow at the Cato Institute, where he published dozens of studies on federal and state tax and budget policy. He was a consultant to the National Economic Commission in l987, and research director for President Reagan's Commission on Privatization.

Stephen is the author of five books, including: “Who’s the Fairest of Them All? The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America.” He graduated from the University of Illinois and holds a masters degree in economics from George Mason University.

Click here for event registration form.

That’s the real story behind a recent Albuquerque Journal story detailing the results of a poll done by the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.

While generalized issues like “weak economic growth” were seen as significant problems for businesses, government-created or exacerbated problems like “lack of skilled labor,” “state/federal regulations,” “health care costs,” and “high taxes” were the most important, definitive issues dragging New Mexico down. “Lack of federal funding/budget cuts” was way down the list which is somewhat shocking given New Mexico’s relative reliance on federal dollars.

Solutions? Easy to come up with, but hard to implement: Revamp our education system focusing resources on school choice and vocational education; deregulate the New Mexico economy; end ObmaCare and adopt health reforms based on free market principles, and reduce taxes on productive economic activity both at the state and federal levels.

So, despite all the talk about federal cutbacks hurting New Mexico’s economy, it looks like the real culprit is what government does or does poorly, not the mathematical inevitability of spending cuts in Washington.

Other than Marty McFly’s time-traveling DeLorean, 1985 is the distant past in terms of technology. Yet some of New Mexico’s phone carriers are still regulated under a law passed that year – before the World Wide Web was created and before wireless broadband connectivity became the norm for our multitude of digital devices. Carriers are governed under different sets of rules, leading to an overly-complicated regulatory mix that hampers competition among carriers and discourages private investment in the state’s telecommunications infrastructure.

SB 152, which has been introduced in the 2014 Legislative Session seeks to harmonize the regulatory scheme, holding all carriers to the same standards. It enjoys bipartisan support from Governor Martinez (R) and Democrats such as bill sponsor Sen. Phil Griego and House Business and Industry Chair Rep. Debbie Rodella. The bill would hold all incumbent phone carriers to the same standards and apply the benefits of a 1999 rural incumbent telephone law evenly throughout the state.

The old law made perfect sense when it was passed. Back then, there was only one carrier in New Mexico, and telecom infrastructure meant mile after endless mile of copper wire. Telecom technology and the structure of the state’s telecom industry itself have changed so much since then that they would be unrecognizable, even inconceivable, to the legislature that passed the 1985 law.

There is no longer a monopoly on phone service. Broadband is the new standard in the telecommunications industry. Many phone companies are wireless only. It’s entirely sensible to ask that Santa Fe’s regulations attempt to keep pace with these changes.

Harmonizing the regulatory scheme would level the competitive playing field among carriers, pulling up the level of investment and pushing down prices for consumers. Instead of requiring the diversion of resources toward antiquated systems, it represents a full legislative embrace of 21st century technology. The technological capacity already exists, but its full potential is locked up by outdated legislation. The telecoms that currently operate here are capable of modernizing and expanding infrastructure, but are held up by New Mexico’s regulatory schemes. As economics and plain common sense can tell us, resources that are used for 1980s-level technology are resources not used for modern technology.

The ultimate goal of any regulatory scheme should be serving the interests of consumers. The current scheme discourages competition among carriers and investment in modern infrastructure, leading to consumers being underserved relative to potential by the telecom industry in the state. Smarter, fairer regulation that fully recognizes how different the industry is now would allow New Mexico’s telecoms to correct this situation.
It is not only private individuals but also New Mexico’s businesses that suffer. As more and more jobs come to rely on strong, cutting-edge telecom service, New Mexico risks falling even further behind neighboring states with more savvy and up-to-date regulatory schemes. With the lingering effects of the Great Recession still being felt and with one of the country’s highest levels of reliance on government assistance, our state can ill afford to pass up solid opportunities to enhance its economic attractiveness. High-speed broadband is the future of telecommunications, and like our neighbors—states rapidly gaining new residents, new jobs, and broader tax bases—New Mexico should recognize this fact.

Imagine if the state’s transportation authorities still based their rules on the assumption that horses and trains were how most of us got from place to place. It would be no surprise if states that included automobiles in their plans outperformed us economically. Getting the rules to account for automobiles would be legislative priority #1.

The proposed bill is emphatically not a call for deregulation. No one is asking Santa Fe for any kind of free-for-all. It simply seeks to harmonize the disparate regulatory schemes for New Mexico’s phone carriers in a forward-looking manner. We may not yet have time-traveling DeLoreans or flying skateboards, but we can easily enjoy better use of technologies that already exist.

McElroy is a Policy Analyst with 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 proposal in the New Mexico Legislature to raise the gas tax by 5 cents a gallon has been introduced this session. It is not likely to go very far as Gov. Martinez has indicated she won’t sign a tax hike, however, the proposal has picked up support from the Albuquerque Journal and Las Cruces Sun-News to name two papers. To its credit, the Journal does cite the unnecessary burden the Rail Runner’s financing has placed on the transportation budget. Far from being a helpful way to reduce traffic, the RailRunner is an unwise diversion of limited funds.

And, to be sure, there are road needs in New Mexico and even possible arguments for raising the gas tax. One argument is that since the rate is charged as a cents/gallon tax, inflation eats into the tax. Also, as cars become more fuel efficient or even electric, gas tax revenues decline. All of these are fair and could necessitate some changes in how roads are constructed and maintained.

However, before tapping into motorists’ pockets, wouldn’t it make more sense to put an end to unfair labor laws that unnecessarily increase the cost of public works projects as Roxanne Rivera-Wiest of the Associated Builders and Contractors of NM recently wrote? The law in question is New Mexico’s equivalent of the Davis-Bacon laws that increase prices by up to 20 percent. Of course, Davis-Bacon laws jack up the costs on ALL state projects, so New Mexicans could also benefit from 20% more schools and 20% more public buildings for the same price currently being paid. Sounds like a win-win to me, but the majority Party in the Legislature would prefer to bilk taxpayers out of more of their hard-earned money than pay their union friends a market wage (as opposed to an inflated one).

Recently, Rio Grande Foundation helped discourage San Juan County from adopting zoning. We believe that Houston’s model is far superior and it is no accident that in a city (within a state) that lacks overweening government regulations, Houston has one of the strongest economies of any city in the nation.

Compare that to the following zoning horror story from Albuquerque in which an incompetent (or 2 or 3) government bureaucrat who has no skin in the game and faces no real personal cost for some terrible decisions, has put a local man out hundreds of thousands of dollars. As much as I hate as a taxpayer for us to have to cover for this egregious mistake, it would seem to be the least we could do to make this right (Kudos to KRQE 13 for the excellent reporting):

Check out the infographic below. It was created by the folks at New Mexico Tax Research Institute to illustrate the findings of a recent study the organization did on just how important oil and gas are to New Mexico:

As indicated, more than 31 percent of New Mexico tax revenues are the direct or indirect result of oil and gas activities in the state. The full report can be found here.

As poor as New Mexico is and as much as its education system struggles, it is hard to imagine what life would be like in our state without the oil and gas industries. There can be no doubt that New Mexico does need a diverse economy that, while supporting the industry, also goes beyond oil and gas and especially federal government activity. Nonetheless, oil and gas are the foundation of our state economy, are more reliable than Washington, and should be viewed as the tremendous generators of higher living standards that they are by New Mexico’s policymakers.

Antiquated telecommunication regulations are holding New Mexico back. According to the 2013 Mercatus Center report “Freedom in the 50 States,” New Mexico suffers under some of the heaviest regulatory burdens of any state. The Rio Grande Foundation has spent a great deal of time researching and exposing many of these burdensome regulations, which can undoubtedly improve the economic climate in New Mexico at no cost to the taxpayer.

New Mexico’s broadband regulations are a classic case of overregulation that should be addressed for the good of our rural economy. Greater competition inevitably leads to lower prices and greater choice for consumers. Antiquated land line phone service providers remain regulated by a 1985 law that dates before implementation of the internet and smart-phone technology. This outdated regulatory scheme has hindered investment in rural broadband resources throughout our state. Having high-speed Internet access throughout the isolated communities of New Mexico will remain integral, if not a necessity, to spurring the rural economic growth everyone desires, while simultaneously increasing statewide effective educational opportunities.

During the current legislative session, a bi-partisan bill has been introduced that will modernize and improve these regulations in a positive and productive manner to encourage greater private sector broadband investments. A 30-day legislative session is brief, but this modest regulatory improvement of New Mexico’s stale broadband regulations can be one commonsense reform that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on.

I urge all New Mexicans to support SB 152.

Tom Mullins
Board Member, Rio Grande Foundation
Candidate foro US Congress, 3rd District

The latest government report is about to come out and according to insiders familiar with it’s contents, the Keystone XL pipeline WILL NOT significantly impact carbon emissions or man-caused climate change. This is something that we and others (like the Obama-supportive AFL-CIO, for example) have been saying all along, leading even Bill Clinton to endorse the pipeline. Obama now has every excuse to go ahead and give the pipeline the go-ahead.

But, the radical anti-energy activist community is vehemently opposed to the pipeline and they have had Obama’s ear to this point. Interestingly, the President did tout his “all of the above” energy strategy in his State of the Union talk, so perhaps he was setting up Keystone approval? After all, I’m sure he had access to the results of this report in advance of his speech.

It would be great to have this pipeline built and safely transporting needed energy from our friendly neighbors in Canada with thousands of well-paying (union!) jobs being created at the same time. Will Obama stand up to the radical, professional environmental movement? It’s now or never.

I interned for a Congressman in Washington, DC in the late 1990s (Daniel Patrick Moynihan to be exact, yes, he was a Democrat). I used that unpaid internship to find my first paid job in Washington on the Senate Finance Committee on which Moynihan was Ranking Member. I and literally thousands of other policy wonks and even politicians can credit an unpaid internship in Congress with getting them started in their careers in politics and policy. To this day, one of the most notable things if you walk around the Congressional office buildings is the striking number of young people roaming those halls.

New Mexico’s Congressional delegation also relies heavily on unpaid interns as reported by Rob Nikolewski. This flies in the face of the efforts of liberal activists who are campaigning to eliminate such unpaid internships. More importantly, the reliance on unpaid internships illustrates the apparent hypocrisy of the four Democrats from New Mexico (and just about any Democrat in Washington) who supports efforts to raise the minimum wage to $10/hour while they directly benefit from unpaid interns. Under current laws, if you want to pay someone $5 an hour, that’s illegal, but if you don’t pay them at all and call it an “internship,” it’s okay. Ya gotta love Washington!

I benefited from my unpaid internship despite having to work part-time jobs to make it work. I learned that I loved public policy, but had no interest in working on the Hill long-term. Shouldn’t other young people, not just those working in Congress, have the ability to work for a bargain-basement wage that they and their prospective bosses agree to in order to gain valuable work experience? It would seem that 4 of New Mexico’s 5 members of Congress would say “no.”

Check out this story from Business Insider. It details North Carolina’s experience with falling unemployment in the wake of the elimination of extended unemployment benefits last summer and free market tax reforms that “reduced or eliminated dozens of special tax breaks and exclusions while replacing North Carolina’s multi-rate personal income tax, with a top rate of 7.75 percent, with a flat-rate tax of 5.75 percent. The corporate tax rate drops from 6.9 percent to as low as 3 percent, if the state meets revenue growth targets.”

In other words, ambitious, free-market reforms are working in North Carolina as they tend to in states that retain or embrace free market reforms (even New Mexico has benefited from tax cuts in the past).

Check out the incredible falling unemployment rate chart from Business Insider relating to North Carolina below:

State of the Union speeches are normally applause-filled snooze-fests. Lots of vague and expensive promises with little bearing on the actual policy situation. This year could be different. In implementing his health care plan, President Obama has bent the rule of law to the breaking point with no fewer than 19 unilateral changes to the Law. Now, according to recent news reports, he is threatening even more unilateral action.

The last thing America needs is for the Obama Administration to completely discard the Constitution by circumventing Congress to enact new regulations and wealth redistribution schemes. The Rio Grande Foundation, along with dozens of other state policy research institutes, has signed a letter to this effect that can be found here.

It is of dire importance that the presidency be restrained (no matter which party holds the White House).