Today saw the unveiling of Albuquerque’s $7 million stimulus-funded bike bridge over the Rio Grande. Being a West-Sider and something of a bike enthusiast myself (although I have been and remain a critic of the bridge), I decided to ride over to witness the ceremony.

Aside from the cost, one big problem with the bridge is that the trail to it ends in a Wal Mart parking lot:

Of course, if you are riding the trail along the river and get hungry, there is also a Chili’s: Considering that those two establishments are the most likely to gain from the trail, I wonder if they put up any money? I doubt it.

As I said, I rode my bike over, but as the photos below illustrate, plenty of folks drove to the illustrious occasion: Some of them blatantly disregarded “No Parking” signage:

Dignitaries in attendance included Rep. Heinrich who clearly did not ride his bike over, Mayor Berry, Councilors Dan Lewis, O’Malley, and Benton (he did ride his bike), and former Gov. and Stimulus “Czar” Toney Anaya. Most discussed the wonders of the new bridge and the quality of life aspects of it and how wonderful it is for the City. I don’t blame our Councilors for this as it is largely stimulus money that funded the project.

But, one thing did catch my eye and that was some of the run-down mobile homes at the bottom of the bridge like this one:

I have to say that I think that folks like those living in this trailer could have used the $7 million dollars more than the wealthy yuppies who will benefit in some small way from this expensive new bridge (you can get to the Bosque Trail from the Montaño Bridge Bike Trail already). Oh well, such are the economics of our federal government’s failed “stimulus” policies.

With Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry having recently announced the City’s transparency site, ABQ View, transparency in government has taken center-stage. We at the Rio Grande Foundation share concerns about open government and transparency and are pleased to launch NewMexicoSpending.com. The site includes payroll data and vendor transactions from several of New Mexico’s school districts. Unfortunately, some school districts like APS, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces were less than cooperative.

More information on the site can be found here.

Like, the US-based Heritage Foundation does its annual Index of Economic Freedom (Canada ranks higher than the US nowadays), the Canada-based Fraser Institute — a free market think tank based north of the border — ranks economic freedom of the states and provinces of North America.

Not surprisingly, New Mexico performs rather poorly on this index being tied for 47th out of 60 jurisdictions studied (see the chart on page 2). This ranking leaves New Mexico economically freer than only the US states of Montana, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia and most Canadian provinces except for Alberta.

What nearby states perform very well? Not surprisingly, Colorado and Texas rank highly. Utah and Nevada also perform well, but all states in the region significantly outperform our own.

It seems that other Albuquerque leaders are finally speaking out in opposition to the idiotic idea of wasting $400 million tax dollars (or more once cost overruns are factored in) on a convention center expansion. I’ve written about it before here and more recently here, but this week saw hotelier Jim Long call the project “an economic albatross” among other unkind things.

Then there was this excellent opinion piece in today’s paper by former Councilman Pete Dinelli. Dinelli recounted from firsthand experience how proponents over-promise and under-deliver with these projects. They’ve done it in Albuquerque and I didn’t even know taxpayers had a stake in a downtown hotel already. Also, it is interesting that Dinelli points to past “urban renewal” projects as having destroyed downtown’s character, thus putting us in the spot we are in today. No surprise there as this has been a recurring theme across the nation: high-minded politicians and politically-connected businesses guide development to conform to some plan and things flop on a magnificent scale.

I do have one quibble with Dinelli’s proposed solutions. While Albuquerque has great amenities for a city of its size, what truly needs to happen to make downtown Albuquerque a destination is for those office buildings to be filled with workers (private sector ones ideally). That is what fuels everything else when it comes to downtown development. I realize the national economy is down right now, but the fact is that downtown wasn’t destroyed overnight and it won’t be rebuilt overnight. We need economic and regulatory policies that will bring thriving businesses (and their financial and human resources) to Albuquerque. Until then, forget being a national or international destination.

Yesterday, I urged voters to get Congressional candidates on the record in favor of appealing ObamaCare. Well (thanks to the Mullins campaign for this), it turns out that the good folks at the Club for Growth have already been doing this.

They have a website set up which displays the names of candidates for Congress that have pledged to vote to repeal ObamaCare. First and foremost, kudos to the Club for Growth for doing this important work. Secondly, I was very pleased to see that all three Republicans running for the House in November have signed on with the Club in support of repeal. This is great news and an indicator that this crop of Republican House candidates is serious about limited government.

Now, how about it Rep. Teague? You voted against ObamaCare twice. Were those just political votes or do you actually oppose the federal health care takeover? If so, how about signing the repeal pledge?

Repeal of ObamaCare won’t happen as long as Obama is President, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be repealed when he’s gone and that opponents shouldn’t actively push repeal while Obama is still in office.

Currently, the legislative vehicle for repeal is H.R. 4972: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is gathering signatures on a discharge petition that would force a vote on his bill, HR 4972.

H.R. 4972 currently offers the most practical solution to repeal Obamacare. At only 40 words, the language is simple:

“Effective as of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, such Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.”

The discharge petition: 170 signatures and counting

As Rep. King notes on his website:

“Efforts to repeal the deeply unpopular Obamacare bill continue to gather momentum. We now have 170 members of the House of Representatives on record calling for full repeal of Obamacare, including Republican Leader Boehner, Republican Whip Cantor and GOP Conference Chairman Pence. I expect these numbers to continue to swell.”

Repealing Obamacare and replacing it with common-sense health reforms that improve health and healthcare delivery, increase access through lowering costs, protect life-saving medical innovations, dramatically reduce healthcare fraud and making effective use of health information technology is the real reform we need.

So, the question is: “Will Tom Mullins, Jon Barela, Steve Pearce, and Rep. Teague who voted against the bill twice in the House, pledge to vote to repeal ObamaCare? Conservatives and other opponents of the federal health care takeover have the most power they are going to have right now. Once candidates turn to Representatives, the pressure will be on from lobbyists to keep the status quo.

If I hear directly from the candidates on this issue, I will post the results here.

Mayor Berry’s Administration has released the city’s new transparency website. This is a great step forward for Albuquerque and Berry deserves praise for getting it done (I know it has been a long push). We have worked with the Mayor’s office and made suggestions and we are pleased to see so many good ideas implemented into the City’s site. But don’t take our word for it, take the word of the transparency experts over at Sunshine Review.

According to the folks at Sunshine Review:

This city website is out-performing most government websites in the US for proactive disclosure of information. In fact, very few local governments have made the effort to be that transparent, and in such detail.
You want it, this site has it. Credit card receipts, lobbying expenditures, campaign contributions, audits, contracts, employee salaries—everything. This website literally achieved not just every mark on Sunshine Review’s transparency checklist, but also nailed all our suggested data as well. Data is even downloadable in different formats.

Again, great job Mr. Mayor. I wish all government entities were as willing to open up to public scrutiny.

Economics, unlike physics or chemistry, is not a “hard” science. In other words, the results are open to a great deal of interpretation. This is largely because economics deals with humans, the long-term actions of which are difficult to re-create in controlled experiments.

Economist Scott Moody who has done a great deal of work for the Rio Grande Foundation on government pensions and other issues, but some research he’s done comparing the economic histories of Maine and New Hampshire shows the power of leaving money in the pockets of ordinary citizens instead of government bureaucrats. New Hampshire lacks both a personal income tax and a sales tax while Maine has adopted both over the years.

These policies have led to higher incomes, greater migration, and fewer job losses during the recession for New Hampshire. I’d love for New Mexico to attempt to compete with Texas by eliminating the personal income tax. That alone would be a boon to the state.

For a sobering, objective look at New Mexico’s real graduation rate and state efforts to mask it, check out the amazing “Diploma’s Count” study for 2010. For example, did you know that APS is one of 25 “dropout epicenters” in the United States?

It is a big district, but not in the top 25 nationally.

I love our friends over at Voices for Children. They have truly never met a tax or spending program that they don’t like and their latest opinion piece in the Albuquerque Journal, they stay true to form.

The author, Fred Harris (apparently a very left-wing former professor at UNM) writes that a “balanced” approach to New Mexico’s budget involves all manner of tax hikes, but not a single area in which spending could be reduced. In the “Voices” world, government is the highest moral use of all of society’s resources. We individuals should just forget about holding onto any of our money, even if government programs like the Rail Runner, film subsidies, and Spaceport fleece average taxpayers for the benefit of wealthy, well-connected people.

There is a lot the left and right can agree on (like questioning the merits of various tax incentives), but if the solution is always more taxes and more spending, there is no common ground and we’ll fight them every step of the way.

During the recent gubernatorial debate, Diane Denish asserted that New Mexico’s graduation rates have improved by 6 percentage points from 2008 to 2009. The problem is that New Mexico doesn’t seem to know what the real statewide graduation rate is. You may remember back in 2009 when the state published the fact that 54% of New Mexico kids were graduating. After a public outcry, that number was quickly revised to 60%.

What is the real rate? Well, we have cited the national “Diplomas Count” study which in 2008 found that New Mexico kids were graduating at 54.1%. So, what does the 2010 version of this study have to say? According to the most recent “Diplomas Count,” New Mexico’s graduation rate is now 54.9%, a less than one-percent improvement (unfortunately, it now costs $4.95 to download New Mexico’s brief). Not exactly a stunning turnaround.

Certainly, the Richardson-Denish Administration has failed to turn around our schools during their 8 years. Isn’t it time we tried real school choice and Florida-style accountability?

There has been a lot of criticism recently about charter schools in New Mexico. This report from the Legislative Finance Committee, in particular, was a shot across the bow for the entire movement. While charter schools are not the “only” reform option (as discussed in this opinion piece), I do agree with new Rio Grande Foundation board member Doug Turner that charter schools are a valuable option for parents and students and that we should not “throw the baby out with the joovy zoom 360 ultralight jogging stroller by himself” by simply capping the number of charter schools in New Mexico.

Instead, we need to make sure that charters that are not doing the job are closed and we’ve got to further expand educational choice and tighten standards by enacting reforms like those seen in Florida.

The Rio Grande Foundation recently published a comparison of government employment in New Mexico cities and counties. While the size of New Mexico’s state and local work forces combine for second-highest in the nation, there is a great variety among cities and counties. Rob Nikolewski of Capitol Report has dug into the numbers with some more analysis here.

Again, we have already done research finding that relative to the private sector, New Mexico’s state and local work forces are the second most bloated in the nation, states do allocate duties differently among state and local governments, so interstate comparisons are difficult.

I’ve written about the “two Americas” being government employees and the rest of us here and here. Now comes word from our own Rep. Heinrich that he rushed back to Washington recently to vote “yeah” on the latest federal bailout (aka stimulus), this one being $26 billion.

Among the beneficiaries of this new federal debt will be mostly government workers and the such, but one story caught my eye, that is that $2.5 million of the stimulus will be used to “Offset the costs of increased insurance premiums for public school teachers, administrators and teacher’s aides.” What a nice, heart-warming story, right?

But what about my health insurance? My Blue Cross rates are going up by 21% this year, but I’m not a government employee, so no bailout for me! Now, don’t interpret this as wanting a bailout… I just want the government to stop expanding at a breakneck pace and for the Obama Administration to stop greasing the palms of its favored constituencies. If Obama wants a real stimulus, he’d pare back government and give the private sector some breathing room in terms of regulations and freeing up limited financial resources. Until then, the economy will be stuck in neutral.

Yesterday afternoon, I participated in one of the series of town halls being held around the state on efforts by the Higher Ed Department on developing an education master plan. We at the Rio Grande Foundation have done a good deal of work on higher education and support the concept of a master plan to ensure that limited resources are used efficiently and that institutes of higher ed exist because they are necessary, not as trophies and patronage tools for local politicians.

While I made some of those points during the discussion, there are a few points that need to be addressed about the town hall format:

1) Approximately 1/3rd of the attendees were from the school at which the town hall was held, in this case SIPI. More than that in terms of the crowd of 25 or so were directly involved in the university system and therefore have a direct financial stake in more higher ed spending;

2) These events draw some eccentric and misinformed people. Attendees ranted about the $787 billion federal “stimulus,” the bank bailouts, tax cuts for the “rich,” and New Mexico’s K-12 system.

State Senator Dede Feldman was in attendance and, for a politician, did a remarkable job of not dominating the discussion. Although Feldman is a pretty liberal sort, she did make some good points including advocating tying reimbursements made by the state to higher education departments to graduation rates. This is a sensible, moderate solution.

While Feldman and most in the room avoided the topic of actually closing some components of our bloated higher education system, I think the way to do this is with our own equivalent of the federal government’s Base Realignment and Closure Commission. This would involve a commission studying which schools and branches are least necessary and then giving the Legislature the chance to vote up or down on the recommendations.

Anyway, perhaps the current Higher Ed Department can come up with a solid plan that the next Governor can implement. Coming up with a plan is simple; implementing it is the difficult part.

A lot has been said about the Bush tax cuts and whether to eliminate them, eliminate parts of them while keeping others, or to keep them. I’m a big fan of tax cuts of any kind and would like to see the cuts made permanent, but I doubt that will happen with Obama in the White House.

Left-wingers claim that these tax cuts caused our current financial and economic situation. Conservatives disagree with this, but haven’t proposed any coherent solutions of their own (with the possible exception of Rep. Paul Ryan).

I have a solution to the real problem – that is the exploding size of the federal government. Since liberals seem so intent on wiping away Bush’s legacy, let’s take the size of the federal government back to Bill Clinton’s last year when the federal government spent a mere $1.9 trillion.

Government didn’t seem too small back when Clinton left office, but federal spending has doubled since then to $3.8 trillion! That is our real economic problem and I’d like to see someone argue how that extra $1.9 trillion in federal spending has made us more secure and economically-prosperous than we were 10 years ago.

The Rio Grande Foundation has done a great deal of work analyzing the size of New Mexico’s state and local government bureaucracies. As a means of further exploring the situation, I decided to have our summer interns do some research to find out which city and county bureaucracies have the most employees per capita.

Check out the city chart ranked from most employees per capita to least:

The county employment chart can be found below:

According to the Albuquerque Journal:

West Mesa High School students could be pocketing $100 for each Advanced Placement exam they pass in math, English and science next spring.

And AP teachers won’t be left out either, collecting $100 in bonuses for each of their students’ passed tests.

This is one innovative, market-based reform that is straight out of the Florida playbook that Dr. Matthew Ladner outlined recently in New Mexico. While it is by no means a silver bullet, it is a step in the right direction towards more incentives for both students and teachers to perform well.

And yes, students should learn for the sake of learning, but sometimes those incentives are more powerful when an additional financial carrot is provided. It’ll be interesting to see how things unfold at West Mesa.

While cap and trade may have breathed its last breath in Washington, proponents are still fighting for a job-killing, energy-cost-increasing, New-Mexico-only carbon cap (Case no. EIB 08-19). There will be a hearing where the public can listen to the technical testimony August 16-20 in Santa Fe. The public comment period will be held at 7:00-8:00 PM Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evening. However, anyone who can be present during the daytime, technical testimony hearing portion (Monday-Friday) is encouraged to attend to make the public opposition clear. It is important that those who oppose the regulation be present. Public comment matters. You do not need to be an “expert” and you do not need to give a speech, but you should be prepared to simply stand up and state “I oppose the NEE green house gas cap petition.” You will have a total of three minutes to speak.

If you cannot attend, you are still encouraged to voice your opinion via mail, fax, or e-mail. This can be done by sending comments to: Board Administrator, New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board 1190 St. Francis Drive N2153, Santa Fe, NM 87502 FAX: (505) 827-2836/ email: joyce.medina@state.nm.us

The Environmental Improvement Board is stacked with members hand-picked by Governor Richardson who are likely to support the proposal, despite opposition by a broad-based coalition of businesses throughout the state. Additionally, several of the board members have severe conflict of interest issues. Jim Scarantino of New Mexico Watchdog has done a great deal of work on this.

There is an ongoing series of meetings now taking place statewide relating to the state’s plan for higher education. As the Rio Grande Foundation has pointed out in the past, higher education is bloated and inefficient in New Mexico. While it is unlikely that the state’s plan will do much to address this issue, the fact is that the issue needs to be put on the agenda.

The schedule of statewide meetings can be found here. If you want to know more about our research on the higher education issue, check out this recent 30 minute interview on Christian TV station KNAT:

John Edwards was right about one thing when he ran for president several years ago. There are indeed “two Americas.” The two Americas are not specifically rich and poor , but government workers vs. the rest of us.

Now comes word from the USA Today that federal workers earn DOUBLE their private-sector counterparts. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation.”

We at the Rio Grande Foundation have found that New Mexico state and local workers are paid 11.5% more than their private sector counterparts, so we are a long way from the federal disparity, but the fact is that government workers are not living in the same economic reality as the rest of us. This needs to change with some serious downsizing in terms of both numbers of government workers and their pay and pension packages.

Jim Scarantino and I will be stepping in for Janice Arnold-Jones this afternoon. Among our topics for discussion will be Bill Richardson’s legacy, the failure of New Mexico’s “Solar Alley,” a discussion with our capital reporter Rob Nikolewski, and plenty of time for your calls which you can make at: (505) 265-1550.

I am not a believer in wind and solar power as our economic or environmental salvation. That said, the federal government has subsidies in place for wind power and those who wish to build wind farms are looking for wide-open spaces with strong, constant wind, to build their farms. Construction of these farms will generate short-term jobs and the leases for the land on which these projects are built will generate some long-term revenue…sounds like a winner, right?

Well, not in San Miguel County, New Mexico. According to news reports, the citizens of San Miguel County are nearly united in their opposition to this modest form of economic development. It’s not as if San Miguel County doesn’t need the jobs or income boost. According to Census data, the County is far more impoverished and has far lower income levels than the rest of the state of New Mexico (a relatively impoverished state).

Said one local of the proposed project “I don’t want to see turbines out there wrecking everything.” Now, I know environmentalists (and the NIMBY crowd) are pretty weak on property rights, but it would seem to behoove us all if we recognized that the owners of a particular piece of land should be able to do with it as they please as long as their is no direct, negative impact on their neighbors — and I’m sorry, but having a windmill within eyesight is not a “direct, negative impact.

There is no doubt that this NIMBY attitude is harmful to San Miguel County’s economy. Remember how difficult they made Val Kilmer’s efforts to create a few jobs? That said, this is a real problem for the future of wind power. If you can’t get the locals to believe that having a windmill nearby is benign, how are you going to make wind a viable power source?

While not going so far as to say that subsidies to ethanol should be eliminated, Sen. Jeff Bingaman has taken a small step towards energy policy sanity by at least bringing up the possibility of cutting ethanol subsidies. Bingaman is not exactly taking a major political risk here as New Mexico is not a major corn growing state and thus not reliant on ethanol subsidies like Iowa.

In typical Bingaman fashion, even his new-found pro-taxpayer (anti-subsidy) stance is at best mealy-mouthed with Bingaman saying that ethanol is “a mature technology whose market share is protected,” (by Congressional mandate, not economic viability, of course) and that Congress should scrutinize the subsidy and “weigh all factors, including the credit’s very high cost to taxpayers,” (approximately $6 billion annually) before again extending it.

Not exactly bold language from Bingaman, but he is Chair of the Senate’s Energy Committee and thus has a major say on the issue. It would be great to see New Mexico’s senior senator do something positive for taxpayers by eliminating ethanol subsidies. We’ll see if this is just posturing or if Bingaman will fight the special interests.