It never ceases to amaze me how many “environmental” groups there are in New Mexico and that constantly get their anti-human, anti-modernity messages out in the Albuquerque Journal. As an aside for those who harp on the number of times RGF gets its message in the paper, it would be interesting to compare environmental groups to any other special interest in the amount of coverage they receive.

A piece by a group called “Bold Visions Conservation” is just the latest article straight out of left-field. Thankfully, New Mexico’s oil and gas industry upon which this state is so reliant, decided to respond. So, the head of IPANM, Richard Gilliland, published his own article detailing the many benefits provided by the hated (by a radical few) oil and gas industries.

Gilliland didn’t break any new ground. Those who actually study the industry and the environment carefully are aware that even “environmentalist” radicals benefit from the oil and gas industries on a daily basis in terms of transportation and products with oil and gas as major inputs, not to mention the $1.7 billion paid into NM’s General Fund and additional billions paid into the permanent funds. And, of course, while the self-proclaimed environmentalists want people to believe that the environment is falling apart, by most any reasonable measure the environment is cleaner today than it has been in decades.

When Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took to the floor of the Senate in opposition to ObamaCare, he had lots of air time to fill. This provided an opportunity for him to call attention to some of ObamaCare’s opponents around the nation. This included a quote from Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation. You can find the quote in the Congressional Record, but it is this: “ObamaCare locks in the worst aspects of American health care. Rather than restoring the patient-doctor relationship, it puts the IRS and the Federal Government alongside insurance companies between patients and their doctors.”

Curiously enough, our own dear columnist Winthrop Quigley of the Albuquerque Journal defended ObamaCare in a recent column. Quigley apparently believes that conservatives and free market advocates should be happy about the law because it “rescues the nation’s for-profit health-care financing system.” Notice that Quigley doesn’t say “free market.” Perhaps we’re getting through to him on that front.

Not surprisingly, I disagree with Quigley on his assessment. ObamaCare doesn’t “rescue” our health care system. Rather, by burdening the remnants of what was once a relatively free market system with further regulations, the law is moving us further down the path to a single-payer system. Harry Reid gets this.

As I explain in my quote above, ObamaCare embraces the very worst aspects of our existing system by inserting new parties — mostly government bureaucrats — between doctors and their patients. That is the point of ObamaCare and that is why conservatives at the Club for Growth are opposed to it.

To be sure, the Rio Grande Foundation has NOT proposed this although we are working to return other lands to state control, but with the federal government having shut down today, I think it would be great if the states and not the federal government managed the National Parks. After all, when it comes to average Americans actually being impacted by the shutdown, the one thing that is constantly discussed is the economic problem (and the personal pain) of the National Parks being shut down.

And, while EVERYONE hates having the Parks shuttered, the reality is that their management is a rounding area when it comes to the overall federal budget (1/13th of 1 percent).

The situation reminds me of Obama’s essentially holding air traffic control “hostage” earlier this year as a means of ending the sequester. It also brings to mind the way the private sector businesses near Yellowstone stepped up to plow the roads when Washington decided it couldn’t.

So, perhaps the states would do a better job of managing the parks too? At least they’d have a really strong incentive in the form of tax dollars to keep those parks open regardless of what is happening in DC. Unfortunately, given the political difficulties facing efforts to devolve other federal lands to the states, I don’t see the pros and cons of this even being discussed anytime soon.

While many conservative states and conservatives have followed the “lock em up” approach to criminal justice, we at the Rio Grande Foundation were pleased to participate in and support a new approach to conservative criminal justice from a group called “Right on Crime.” In today’s Albuquerque Journal, RGF co-founder and former NM attorney general Hal Stratton and Jerry Madden, former Corrections Committee Chairman, had an opinion piece detailing ways in which New Mexico might both save taxpayer dollars and make New Mexico a safer place. I testified before the same legislative committee as Rep. Madden and you can see that testimony here.

Notably, New Mexico is a relatively high crime state, so we have much to do:

Readers of the West Side edition of the Albuquerque Journal were treated to an effusive editorial praising the recently-begun development of a Rail Runner-related transit center at Montano and the railroad tracks. While the paper argues that plowing more taxpayer dollars into this project is a good thing, I have another take that I expressed in a letter to the editor:

I would love to believe the hype that “mass transit is where it’s at” and that the new North Valley transit hub will be some kind of boon to the local economy, but history and data say otherwise.

When all is said and done, New Mexico taxpayers will spend an astonishing $1.3 billion on the train. Despite my organization’s opposition to the project, I have ridden it and cannot recall a single major business that has sprung up to serve the train and its customers. Certainly, no business has generated anywhere near the tax money to pay for even a significant portion of the system. There is no reason to believe that the $7.1 million transit center will be better investment of scarce tax dollars.

And, much like the electric automobile, mass transit has been the “next big thing” for decades. In fact, according to federal data provided by transportation analyst Wendell Cox transit’s market share (of transit and motor vehicles) has fallen since the 1950s. In 1955, transit’s market share was over 10%. Today, transit’s share hovers below 2% nationally and is not growing despite rapid spending growth.

The fact is that unlike a car, no matter how good the system and how wishful the thinking, transit cannot get you to wherever you want to go, when you need to be there especially in spread out Western cities like Albuquerque.

While this may seem like mere pontificating, I have gained some firsthand experience of the problems with transit. A family member has moved here from out of town and is living with us. She has been looking for work in retail and this has led her to jobs at Coronado Center. Let’s just say that the bus schedules to Coronado on a Saturday or Sunday from the West Side do not fit the needs of retail workers.

That’s exactly what is happening according to the Santa Fe Reporter.

It only makes sense. Santa Fe has a beautiful climate and very unique culture, but it also has incredibly onerous government regulations (the toilet mandate being just one) that make it likely that most good jobs are in government, the high minimum wage is another. A relative lack of jobs for young people and entrepreneurs makes things even more difficult. Lastly, folks like Santa Fe Rep. Brian Egolf view activities like mining as below them.

Making a community expensive to live in and not producing large numbers of new jobs is a recipe for population decline, so it should be no surprise that Santa Fe is starting to look more like a retirement community.

I recently sat down with Mike Jaxson of KSVP radio to discuss the findings of an RGF report which details the significant economic benefits that could come to New Mexico if the federal lands located within our state’s boundaries were managed more economically. Listen to the interview here.

There are too many government employees in NM’s Legislature. No, that’s not a statement of the Rio Grande Foundation or some other conservative think tank, it’s from Milan Simonich of the Santa Fe bureau of the Las Cruces Sun-News. The story itself is certainly worth a read and I can’t disagree with the central point of the piece that New Mexico is too reliant on government workers and has too many government workers in the Legislature (this isn’t to say that many of these government workers aren’t excellent legislators).

However, it would be great if New Mexico had more doctors, business owners, and other private sector workers. But which comes first, the chicken or the egg? As Simonich notes, New Mexico’s economy is way too dependent on government, so isn’t it logical that government is heavily-represented in the Legislature? Well, that is true, but New Mexico is also heavily-reliant on oil and gas and there’s not nearly as many of them in the Legislature as there are government employees (I know of only one oil and gas worker offhand).

Simonich alludes to the part-time nature of our Legislature as the source of the problem and I’m not necessarily going to disagree with him. It is certainly worth talking about. Even better would be an outright ban on anyone who receives a check (either directly or indirectly) from the State serving in the Legislature, but in some districts we might have unclaimed seats!

With Sen. Ted Cruz filling up the airways and ObamaCare about to take effect, I suppose it is better late than never for Republicans to introduce a free market health care reform alternative to the present law which expands government control and increases spending. The legislation, known as the “American Health Care Reform Act,” would take the all-important step of leveling the playing field between those who receive insurance from an employer and those purchasing it in the individual market. This is what I’ve often called the “original sin” of American health care.

The Daily Caller has a more detailed analysis of the bill which most certainly moves us in the right direction in US health care unlike ObamaCare, RomneyCare, or Bush’s Medicare Part D expansion.

Broadly-speaking, the Act, HR 3121, follows several of the RGF’s market-friendly ideas that reduce unnecessary government-imposed barriers between Americans and their health care providers.

As Rob Nikolewski over at New Mexico Watchdog reported recently, Gov. Martinez’s plans to incentivize high-performing teachers has not exactly won high praise from the unions with one union boss calling the plan “disgusting.” Frankly, it seems that whatever Martinez does, even if it is supported by the Legislature as was this proposal, the unions will oppose it. Funny how that works.

Myself, I’m not sure why shifting marginally less effective teachers to teach good students while shifting marginally more effective teachers to poor-performing classes is a good idea, but I haven’t studied that particular issue (I’d rather see an emphasis on recruiting and paying highly-effective teachers and getting rid of the others, but if the unions don’t like this proposal…)

Of course, the unions aren’t the only ones who have it out for Martinez, some “community activists” just can’t make up enough “facts” to make sense.

By way of facts, there is no doubt that having highly-motivated, competent teachers in the classroom makes a difference. Only recently, as the Washington Post reports that Teach for America (a program that specializes in bringing young, highly-educated, and highly-motivated teachers into difficult classrooms) increases student performance significantly.

The business community is atwitter at what they are calling “the largest office deal in recent years.” The purchaser of this office space is none other than Blue Cross, the insurance company and the deal was consummated due to the new health care law commonly known as “ObamaCare.”

Said Scott Whitefield of the transaction, “It’s a great experience when you can connect a top-of-the-line tenant with a top-of-the-line landlord.” “It’s a great opportunity for Albuquerque and shows that there are opportunities in the health care market.” The local NAIOP chapter is holding an event on Monday the 23rd, the title of which is “Healthcare…a catalyst for real estate development in New Mexico.” Sounds like this is a real winner for New Mexico’s economy, right? Not so fast.

For starters, as Dr. Deane Waldman (a health care analyst for the Rio Grande Foundation), bureaucracy is the “greediest of all players in health care.” Note that Blue Cross is not hiring a single doctor or treating a single patient at their new 85,000 sq. ft. office. The considerable number of people hired to work in those offices will be bureaucrats. They may technically work in the private sector, but they are bureaucrats nonetheless.

Also, while record-keeping and proper accounting are essential to the operation of any business, is there anyone who believes that the insurance companies don’t already have enough bureaucrats working for them? The reality is that these workers create nothing and are largely destroyers of economic value. This tendency in health care is not limited to ObamaCare, but has been the trend in US health care for decades as we’ve moved away from the doctor-patient relationship towards a third-party payer system.

So, the reports may indicate a temporary uptick in Albuquerque’s office market, but that is just a classic case of the seen vs. the unseen. We may see this occupied office and be pleased, but we are not seeing the foregone private activity that could have generated real wealth and prosperity had the government not taken those funds.

And, as if this were not all enough waste, we have heard that a local, non-union contractor that had attained the low bid on the Blue Cross project was summarily replaced for unknown but obvious political reasons on the job in favor of a far more costly union contractor. While a private company certainly has the right to hire whoever they may choose, how much of Blue Cross is actually “private?”

In case you missed it, yet another report came out this week stating that the level of methane emissions from fracked natural gas wells is relatively low. The new study states that methane releases are 97% lower than previous estimates. Researcher Jon Entine has an interesting piece on the issue over at Forbes including the controversial stances of two Cornell University researchers.

What is not controversial is that fracking is good for the economy as a new report from Businessweek illustrates. How good?

In 2012, the energy boom supported 2.1 million jobs, added almost $75 billion in federal and state revenues, contributed $283 billion to the gross domestic product and lifted household income by more than $1,200…the competitive advantage for U.S. manufacturers from lower fuel prices will raise industrial production by 3.5 percent by the end of the decade.

Given all of that, it is no surprise that the center of the fracking boom, North Dakota, has seen its economy go gangbusters according to this article from CNN. As the map below shows, North Dakota grew by 13.2% in 2012 while Texas did very well at 4.8%. New Mexico performed poorly at 0.2 percent growth:

As the RGF’s new report shows, federal ownership of so much of New Mexico’s land is one factor holding us back from North Dakota or even Texas-style growth.

(Albuquerque) New Mexico could see both an economic boom and improved management of the federally-controlled Forest Service and BLM lands within its borders. New data providing three different scenarios on the economic potential of New Mexico’s public lands from Dr. Timothy J. Considine, a professor of energy economics at the University of Wyoming, illustrates the vast potential of these lands for oil and gas production.

Notes Rio Grande Foundation president Paul J. Gessing, author of the brief, The Economic Possibilities of Unlocking Energy Resources on New Mexico’s Federal Lands, “Opening portions of New Mexico’s federal lands to resource development is not and should not be an open invitation to pillage the land.

“Rather,” argues Gessing, “oil and gas can be accessed in an environmentally-sensitive manner while some of those revenues could be used in prevent forest fires, improve wildlife habitat, and allow the public to access and recreate on those lands in ways that are not currently possible.”

In fact, the Rio Grande Foundation’s analysis indicates that BLM and Forest Service lands would be better managed by state officials here in New Mexico as opposed to federal bureaucrats from Washington, DC. Bi-partisan legislation, HB 292, to formally request the return of these lands from Washington was introduced during the 2013 legislative session. Similar legislation has passed in Utah and other Western states.

For an idea of the significance of this added economic activity relative to New Mexico’s economy, the number of jobs created could be as much as 7.8 percent higher and New Mexico’s gross state product would rise by a whopping 10 percent.

Considine’s paper upon which this research is based is available here.

Check out the following from our friends at the Tax Foundation:

Increasingly, the “defined benefit” model of retirement plan (where the employee is paid a lifetime annuity, based on years of service and final salary) is being replaced by the “defined contribution” model of retirement plan (where the employee owns and controls an investment account). One of many reasons for this shift is the tendency of DB plans to be underfunded (promises to pay exceeding available assets), which is structurally impossible for a DC plan. One estimate of private sector DB plan underfunding is over $300 billion.

State and local public employees, for the most part, have DB retirement plans. Much discussion has occurred in recent years to estimate how underfunded they are: the estimates start at $1.3 trillion and go up from there. The difficulty is that calculating the amount depends on your estimate of future rate of return. Most plans themselves project they will earn 7 to 8 percent on their investments, and critics say that is too optimistic.

The organization State Budget Solutions this month produced one such estimate, using a 3.2 percent rate of return (the 15-year Treasury bond yield rate). This calculates to public employee pension plans having only 39 percent of the assets they need to cover their promised payments—a $4.1 trillion gap. A map of their state-by-state funding ratio estimates is below.

Moody’s and the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) have sought to change reporting requirements to make it harder for public employee pension funds to increase liabilities without funding them. Further, many states are considering reforms to bring assets and benefits more in line with each other, and a few have implemented them.

As the map below indicates, New Mexico’s pension funds are 33% funded. That is not as woefully bad as Illinois and Connecticut, but it is among the bottom ten ratios among the states.

I’ll be speaking on an ObamaCare panel discussion tonight (9/17/13). The panel is sponsored by the Santa Fe Republican Party and will be held at the Santa Fe Women’s Club. The event is 6pm to 7:30 and the Club is located at 1616 Old Pecos Trail.

In other ObamaCare-related news, we made the front page of the Albuquerque Journal today thanks to their economics columnist Winthrop Quigley. The mention came only as we were the conduit by which he received a report from the Manhattan Institute which produced a report saying that New Mexicans would see the largest increase in insurance prices under ObamaCare. See my posting here.

Quigley, of course, was not impressed by the report. He says that it compares “apples to anvils” because insurance plans under ObamaCare will cover so much more stuff (like child birth) than currently-available individual health plans. He’s right, but I don’t think it invalidates the report. Myself, I don’t know of the Institute’s report will prove to be accurate, but a price tag is a price tag and lots of people aren’t going to be interested in all the bells and whistles forced upon them under ObamaCare. In fact, many healthy people (like me) would rather have an inexpensive insurance policy available in case I get hit by a bus but that gives me control over day-to-day health care costs.

Plans like these are called health savings accounts and they are both proven to reduce health care spending by up to 25% (bending the cost curve) and are under attack from the health care law.

Conservatives in Rio Rancho are attempting to heal some wounds in the wake of the failed ballot measure last month. While my organization endorsed the tax cut proposal, there were honorable people with reasonable views on both sides of the issue.
And, while tax policy is an important component of economic development policy, Rio Rancho’s city council should look beyond taxes (at least in the immediate future) to consider ways to improve governance in the city while also making it a more attractive place to do business.

One of the most important ways to do this is by having a more efficient government with improved cost-effectiveness.
In Indianapolis, former Mayor Stephen Goldsmith had an informal test called the “Yellow Pages Test.” The basic idea behind the test was that if more than one private sector provider for a given service can be found in the phone book, the private sector provider, not government, should be given the job or at least allowed to compete for it on an even playing field with government workers.
According to local government efficiency expert Leonard Gilroy, who visited New Mexico to share policy ideas with elected officials in Rio Rancho and other cities, some of the best government services to consider using private providers include:

• Accounting, financial and legal services;
• Planning, building and permitting services;
• Building/facilities financing, operations and maintenance;
• Park operations and maintenance;
• Animal shelter operations and management; and
• Major public infrastructure assets (roads, water/wastewater systems, airports and so forth).

This list is not meant to be limiting. For example, Rio Rancho already uses a private company for trash collection. Albuquerque, on the other hand, uses more expensive city employees and only recently embraced a public-private partnership to handle and dramatically expand its recycling program.

Turning over the management of city parks and buildings may sound like a drastic step and it can be politically challenging, but it doesn’t have to result in large numbers of unemployed city workers. In fact, city workers can and have been asked to compete against private providers for contracts.

Setting specific, clearly-defined contractual goals is just good business and having competition to determine the provider is a great way to ensure that all sides are treated fairly and that expectations are met. This is called “competitive sourcing” and is in use in dozens of cities nationwide.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has done this with his city’s curbside recycling program while Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa privatized management of one of the city’s major animal shelters and is in talks to do the same with the Los Angeles Zoo.
If these big-city liberals are willing and able to leverage the private sector to make government more efficient, surely conservatives in Rio Rancho can embrace the concept.

Making government more efficient and cost-effective will save taxpayers money and will make Rio Rancho a more attractive destination for businesses and productive workers.

Cutting the cost of government services will allow for future tax cuts as well.

Policies that streamline government and free resources up for the private sector are at the core of what conservatives and free market advocates are about.

To heal the acrimony in Rio Rancho, I hope that free market conservatives will embrace such an agenda.

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

The City of Albuquerque has dramatically-expanded and improved its recycling program by coordinating with a private company to process the materials taken in under the program. This is a model that could and should be followed by state and local governments throughout New Mexico.

As I wrote in an article for the Rio Rancho Observer, the efficiency allowed by private sector businesses can bring significant benefits to government services (this will be even more important with the departure of 400 Intel workers and their tax dollars).

In August, the Rio Grande Foundation hosted Len Gilroy of Reason Foundation for discussions of public private partnerships and how the private sector can be leveraged to improve government efficiency. He sat down with Diane Kinderwater for in interview on “Issues and Answers.” You can see that interview below:

Len Gilroy of Reason Foundation discusses the potential for public private partnerships and privatization in New Mexico from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

The Albuquerque Journal has been running its regular series of polls on several local questions of interest. From the perspective of advocates for limited government, the polling was quite heartening. Local voters strongly opposed “union time,” a practice under which taxpayers pay the salaries of government workers who perform tasks on behalf of their labor unions (the poll indicated opposition by 59% while support was only 25%).

Another question related to Project Labor Agreements which are essentially requirements that government construction projects use union labor and pay union wage rates as opposed to finding labor on the open market (known as project labor agreements). This was opposed 51% to 38% by respondents.

These results and the related stories are interesting for a number of reasons:

1) Mayor Berry supports taxpayers and opposes the unions on both issues while his opponents support the unions. It is no surprise then, that Mayor Berry received 63% support in the recent Journal poll and maintained a significant lead over his opposition.

2) Pollster Brian Sanderoff clearly has some “axes to grind” when it comes to these results and his attempts to guide their interpretation. Sanderoff seems to dismiss the labor issues saying that “voters will make up their minds on higher-altitude issues.” I can’t imagine someone saying the same thing if the leading candidates supported the unions and the outlier was more supportive of City taxpayers.

3) The unions are certainly out in force for Dinelli, especially the fire fighters. 3-4 houses have yard signs indicating “IAFF for Dinelli” in my liberal West-Side neighborhood.

4) I love union rhetoric. Rather than a poll question asking voters about their support for PLAs, labor boss Joel Villarreal, apparently with a straight face, said that the poll should have asked voters if the “support fair wages and safety on the job.” I looked and found no serious studies of safety on PLA jobs on either side, but it is true that unions increase the wages on and prices of jobs that use PLAs. One California study, not done by a free market think tank, but an in-house government think tank, found that PLAs increase school construction costs by 15%.

This is 15% number is a consistent finding. No data were available as to why paying the 8 percent of New Mexico construction workers who are unionized based on an arbitrary union wage scale is more “fair” than the going market rate for such work.

New Mexico’s economy continues to be buffeted by bad news;

400 Intel workers being “redeployed” out of our state; and

While not as devastating, a local supermarket closing its doors.

I found this opinion article in the Albuquerque Journal to be quite interesting. While the article focused primarily on green chiles and happy memories of our state, the fact is that the individual moved to Nebraska (a Right to Work state) to find work.

While it is easy to get down about the bad news and some would love to lay the problem at the feet of Gov. Martinez (while ignoring the Legislature’s primary role in making economic policy), there is no doubt that New Mexico can and must do better.

The time for half-measures is over. We need a right to work law, pro-growth tax reform, and serious education reforms including school choice.

The latest edition of New Mexico “Pro-Con” is now online and the issue on the table is federal lands within New Mexico. Click here to read the arguments.

Online education is supposed to be an innovative and, ultimately, less expensive way to learn. However, that is not always the case in the real world, especially as traditional providers enter the playing field, often lacking the incentive to keep costs low. US News and World Reports has produced a new report detailing the ten most expensive online bachelors degrees in the nation.

Unfortunately, New Mexico State University made the list with the 6th most-costly online degree in the nation, costing an astonishing $50,816 according to the magazine. Interestingly enough that is more than double the cost of an undergraduate degree from the institution for an in-state student (Based on this spreadsheet which is provided on the School’s website, a four-year degree for a student taking classes on campus in Las Cruces should cost about $18,600).

This doesn’t add up. Clearly, the field of online learning is a new one and there are resources needed to adapt to the new educational style, but fewer buildings and even fewer instructors should be necessary for online classes. And, of course, at the K-12 level, there are two entirely digital charter schools now up and running that, despite the (controversial) involvement of for-profit companies, are costing parents and students no more than their traditional counterparts.

What gives? It’s hard to say why an online diploma would be so much more expensive than a traditional one. I’d be interested in feedback from folks at NMSU and anyone who is interested in the situation.

HT: Pat Leonard

I was interviewed recently by Fred Martino of KRWG in Las Cruces on a variety of topics, most of which are listed in the title of this posting above. Click this link to listen to the program.

Prior to taking the helm of the Rio Grande Foundation, I did a fair amount of work in airline taxation and regulation. A recent article in Barron’s, a national financial and investing publication, caught my attention and drew a response. See that response which was published in the September 2, 2013 issue.

Thomas Donlan is on-target in critiquing the (mis) use of anti-trust by the Obama Administration in the US Airways/American Airlines merger, but he only scratches the surface in terms of the heavy burden the federal government places on airlines and their customers.

For starters, the current rules in the U.S. state that airlines must be majority-owned by Americans (50 percent plus one) and that Americans must own 75 percent of the voting shares in the company, hinder competition and reduce the ability of airlines to access capital in the international marketplace.

The TSA’s stranglehold on airport screening also must be ended. The use of private contractors should be expanded beyond a few pilot programs immediately. According to the GAO, if the nation’s top 35 airports switched to private contractors, taxpayers would save $1 billion over five years.

The FAA made news earlier this year when the Obama Administration used the sequestration budget “cuts” as an excuse to force Americans to face increased delays due to air traffic control. There is absolutely no reason for the federal government to manage air traffic control. This too should be privatized as has been done in Canada and dozens of nations around the globe to great effect in terms of both costs and improved technology.

A week ago in the Albuquerque Business Journal, a letter writer slammed me and the Rio Grande Foundation for using “selective statistics” in a letter to the editor:

I felt the need to respond to this with my own letter in defense of free markets and limited government both in the US and around the world: