A while back, the Legislative Finance Committee published what can only be described as a report that is biased against charter schools (the original study link was broken at the time of this writing). Criticisms included performance, expense, and a supposed lack of accountability. We at the Rio Grande Foundation believe that charters, while not a panacea, can be a valuable alternative to traditional public schools. In fact, my own cousin is a charter success story.

So it was with great interest and pleasure that I read liberal lion of the New Mexico SenateJerry Ortiz y Pino’s opinion piece in today’s Albuquerque Journal in which he spells out the specific flaws in the LFC study and explains why charters actually operate at a significant disadvantage relative to their traditional public school brethren.

Ortiz y Pino’s column not only effectively defends charters against the repeated attacks by those who oppose education reform, but shows that left and right can agree that reform is indeed needed.

Ever wonder why most historians think FDR is one of America’s greatest presidents even though he utterly ignored the US Constitution (which is supposedly the law of the land)? Ever wish that presidents were considered “great” if they adhered to the principles of limited government this nation was founded on? I know I have!

Well, for an overview of the presidents — and an effort at putting the first two years of Obama’s presidency in perspective — attend the Rio Grande Foundation’s upcoming luncheon with keynote speaker Ivan Eland, author of “Recarving Rushmore.”

Eland judges presidents not by how much they expand the power of the executive, but by how they preserve your life, liberty, and property. Reservations are $35 and can be made online here.

Tune in to 1550 KIVA between now and the election and you’ll likely hear a minute-long commentary from me about the bond measures on the ballot this fall.

So far I’ve done three commentaries which should be in heavy rotation. Take a listen by clicking here, here, and here.

Funny how things catch up with you. Back in 2005, as Director of Government Affairs for the National Taxpayers Union, I (along with several other conservative leaders including Grover Norquist) signed an open letter outlining our groups’ collective opposition to expanded federal subsidies for local law enforcement.

Well, as the Santa Fe Reporter has found, this federal program has been expanded dramatically (nearly tripled) under President Obama’s so-called “stimulus” program. Funds from the program, as The Reporter notes in a detailed article, were used in part for a mistaken drug raid in Española.

Law enforcement — like nearly all other government programs — are better left to local government. President Obama certainly does not understand this fact and his “stimulus” is a great example.

In today’s Journal, I read with an article by Diane Kerschen, an Associate Superintendent for Elementary Education with APS. There has been a great deal of discussion recently about Reid Nunn’s all-boy class at McCollum Elementary and whether single-sex education works. For the record, I went to an all-boy high school and did not find the single-sex aspect to improve things, but that was only my experience.

This brings me to Kerschen’s assertion that because the all-boy class had only 15 students in it (as opposed to 15), that the smaller class size is what caused the improved results. That is plain silly. The fact is that the connection between class size and educational achievement is not well established.

More importantly, extrapolating data from one class — one in which same-sex teaching was also implemented — defies any standard of statistical analysis. It’s called “sample size.” The fact is that you need to allow many different techniques to be tried in a controlled environment before jumping to such conclusions.

I’d like to see a great deal of experimentation — including smaller (and larger) class sizes (and a whole host of other schooling techniques) — and have relevant data collected and made available for analysis. Unfortunately, this is the very kind of thing that the teachers’ unions have attempted to stop in the past.

One wonders if Diane Denish understands what the term “tax increase” means. She is on record as saying she “didn’t see any scenario in which she would support a tax hike “over the next several years.”

Then, during the most recent debate which was held on Sunday, she stated that she favored “closing a tax ‘loophole’ (combined reporting) that would raise $70 million.” Sounds like a tax increase, right? Denish then went so far as to call the candidates’ disagreement on the issue “the defining moment” of the New Mexico gubernatorial campaign. I’ll agree with her on that one.

What this “defining moment” makes clear is that Denish is either not serious about her pledge not to raise taxes or she simply doesn’t understand the definition of the term “tax increase.” Of course, Denish MAY have some plan in her back pocket to offset the $70 million tax hike that combined reporting represents, that would make her plan a mere tax shift instead of a tax hike, but I have heard no plans to this effect.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the economic situation in Chama, see here and here. The town is very reliant on the tourist train that saw a trestle burned this summer. That is a shame and I am sympathetic to the folks of Chama, but that doesn’t mean I think average New Mexicans should pay the bill to restore train service.

I explain what should be done in a letter that was published in today’s Business Journal.

Privatize Chama’s tourist train

It was only a matter of time. The town of Chama, the economy of which is heavily reliant on the state-owned Cumbres & Toltec train, is in need of a taxpayer bailout because a train trestle fire this summer has limited train traffic to the town.

While it is hard to feel anything but sympathy for Chama residents whose businesses have been impacted, it is silly for taxpayers in one part of the state (or nation) to subsidize tourist attractions in other parts of the state (or nation). Tourist attractions should either be privately run or funded through local taxes.

But this is not the case. Rather, the train is reliant on the taxpayer.

Just this year, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman requested $1 million in federal dollars for the Cumbres & Toltec. This comes on top of annual contributions from the governments of New Mexico and Colorado which jointly own the railroad. This makes no sense in the best of economic times: With core government programs on the chopping block and federal and state taxes on their way up, government needs to stick to the basics.

The Cumbres & Toltec should be privately owned like the similar Durango-Silverton train. Rather than a taxpayer bailout, we should look for ways to make the Cumbres & Toltec — and other tourist attractions — profitable, private enterprises.

Paul J. Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation
Albuquerque

If the Tea Party is the biggest single split among Republicans, the Democrats’ biggest split is between entrenched labor unions and education reformers. This issue is coming to a head in many ways, but one is the departure of Michelle Rhee from the DC Public Schools. Columnist Ruben Navarette had an insightful article on this topic in the Albuquerque Journal today. Rhee is heading off into the sunset because reformist Democrat Mayor Adrian Fenty was beaten by the labor machine candidate William Gray.

Another symbol of this split is, of course, the film “Waiting for Superman” which has now hit Albuquerque and is showing at the Rio 24 off Pan American. The film was directed by David Guggenheim, a self-described “liberal Democrat” and is highly-critical of the unions.

Michelle Rhee is on the market. Maybe we could hire her to turn around APS?

This “receipt” shows where Americans’ federal taxpayer dollars go. While it breaks things into categories that I don’t necessarily agree with that make the situation a bit less clear than it could be, the message is clear: if politicians are going to put our nation on a sound financial footing, we need serious reforms to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and military spending.

Those programs (not including interest on the debt which is also a big chunk) take more than 50% of your taxes. We need incoming Republicans (and Democrats) to pledge specific programs they’d cut and ways they’d move toward solvency. Paul Ryan and Ron Paul (something about the name Paul) are two politicians with serious ideas.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, was flat-out embarrassing when asked what specific programs he’d cut.

According to a new report, Albuquerque is among the metropolitan areas areas in the nation most heavily-populated by government workers. According to the report, The Duke City has 21.58 percent of its workforce employed by the public sector.

This does not include Sandia Labs and other government contractors that are NOT direct employees of a government agency. The findings are no surprise to us at the Rio Grande Foundation. After all, New Mexico as a state is more reliant on federal largess than any other state. We’ve also found that New Mexico has the second most state and local workers (relative to private sector workers) in the nation.

We can only go so far with a government-focused economy. Ultimately, it is up to the next Governor (and Legislature) and Mayor Berry to make New Mexico and Albuquerque attractive to potential businesses. This includes low, flat, and fair taxes and regulations. It also includes improving our dreadful educational performance and public safety.

With the left-wing chattering classes still abuzz over the fire department that let a man’s house burn in Tennessee, I felt that it was important to debunk that this was anything like a “free-market” situation.

While my perspective is laid out in the posting above, I saw an interesting article from John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute over at National Review Online. Berlau adds “fuel to the fire,” so to speak by showing how unionized fire departments have, in the past, allowed fires to burn in order to maximize salary and other concessions. The money quote from Berlau that sums up the issue nicely is as follows:

The answer is federalism. States and local communities should decide what is best for themselves in protecting residents from fire. This could include contracting out to private fire services, allowing insurance companies to create fire brigades for their home-insurance policy holders (my Competitive Enterprise Institute colleague Iain Murray has written on how this worked in the 19th century), or letting homeowner associations contract for fire protection in the same way they often do for services such as garbage collection.

But as with health care, liberals want to take away federalism in fire protection and force all American communities into a one-size-fits-all unionized model. The biggest congressional priority of the IAFF over the past few years has been the so-called Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, which would force unionization and collective bargaining on every one of the nation’s local fire departments.

The Rio Grande Foundation and Citizens in Charge Foundation, a national voter rights group focused on the ballot initiative and referendum process, have released a new poll of New Mexico voters on the issue of giving voters in the state greater ability to directly vote on issues in state elections.

Read the full story here.

To say the least, we at the Rio Grande Foundation are not big fans of government permits. Often, these permits come in the form of business permits or licensing in order to perform a particular job (like cutting hair). Usually, it is our friends on the right, conservatives and business owners that oppose onerous and unnecessary permitting. We agree with them.

But now, the City of Albuquerque is claiming that a man who has been feeding the homeless needs a permit to do so. In fact, they plan on re-file charges against him. This may be an instance where our friends on the left jump on the anti-permit bandwagon.

After all, it would seem that someone is sacrificing enough to go to the trouble to feed the homeless. Are they going to also go to the trouble and expense of obtaining a permit? What if I give a sandwich to a homeless guy downtown, am I violating this law?

The fact is that receiving a piece of paper from the government and paying certain government fees (actually taxes) does not make the food served, haircuts given, or other services rendered any safer or better. Usually, as Milton Friedman pointed out, licensing and government permits simply serve to reduce the supply of a particular service and increase its cost. It would seem that particularly in today’s economy, the City would try to encourage people to engage in economic or charitable activities, not discourage them.

Surprise, surprise, as the Albuquerque Journal reports, Rail Runner ridership is down yet again. According to the article, the decrease was 11.2 percent decrease compared with the same period in 2009. That is a pretty major drop and it continues a trend.

Ridership had been dropping as reported by Kate Nash back in May in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

With the state as much as $400 million in the red heading into the next legislative session, it would seem that the conversation over whether taxpayers can or should continue to pay close to $20 million annually for the train. Some like-minded people are circulating a petition along these lines. The tracks have been laid and the trains are running, but the system is not sustainable. Regardless of who the next governor is, saving $20 million annually by stopping the train must be a consideration.

Timothy Sandefur, one of the leading pro-freedom lawyers in the nation, recently spoke at a Rio Grande Foundation event in Albuquerque. The subject of Sandefur's talk was his new book "The Right to Earn a Living" which studies the myriad legal cases throughout American history that impact Americans abilities to work, unmolested by government bureaucrats. Apologies in advance for the video quality, but the sound quality is excellent.

Today on New Mexico Politics, I wrote further about the success of Gov. Richardson’s tax cuts and compared their economic impact — as best I could — with those of President Bush.

While I believe that Bush’s cuts had a positive impact, the measurable impact of Richardson’s cuts is greater, largely because we can actually compare their impact on New Mexico with policies enacted in other state. That is just one of many arguments for federalism — that is, the Founders view as embodied in the Constitution that a vast majority of policies should be driven at the state and local level, not in Washington.

Recently, I blogged about what I believe to be a politically-motivated, taxpayer-financed letter I received from Congressman Martin Heinrich. The issue was ObamaCare, an issue that I had repeatedly contacted the “Representative” about (albeit to no avail).

I just got another “franked” letter from Heinrich’s office, this one on the topic of Social Security COLA’s, an intensely-political issue in the weeks before an election (one that is a liability for Democrats in the upcoming election). I never contacted Rep. Heinrich about this issue as I am nowhere near eligible for Social Security.

Why would Heinrich want to reach out to contact me to explain that he has sponsored legislation, HR 5987, which would provide a $250 payment to seniors if there is no COLA in 2011? Simply put, he needs every vote he can get in a tight race with Republican Jon Barela. The legislation Heinrich has co-sponsored is a thinly-disguised ploy to buy the votes of seniors and the letter — again, mailed at taxpayer expense — is an even more thinly-disguised effort to make sure seniors are aware of it before Election Day.

I wonder what other taxpayer-funded campaign mailings I’ll be receiving in the next few weeks?

Things have been quite busy here at RGF. This includes several recent radio appearances.

I was on Bob Clark’s show for an hour discussing tax cuts and a variety of other subjects relating to listener calls;

Also, KUNM had a series of interviews with myself and other politicos and policy watchers relating to Governor Richardson’s legacy. I discussed Richardson’s lack of action on education reform here;

His scandals here;

and, his record on tax cuts and spending here;

According to a multi-pronged study of electoral competitiveness of all 6,125 districts, as a rule in 2010, the fierce competition that marks the country’s federal and gubernatorial elections has not manifested at the level of 2010’s state legislative elections. New Mexico is one of the states with the fewest competitive races.

Does it matter if races are uncompetitive? The map provides little guidance. New Hampshire is certainly an economically-successful state, but Michigan (another state with relatively competitive races) is not. Could this competitiveness be a reaction to the economic climate?

Of course Texas and Delaware are both relatively uncompetitive electorally, but they perform well (check out page 2) on indices of economic freedom. Of course, New Mexico does not perform quite so well.

Do you care about electoral competitiveness? If so, the simple answer is redistricting reform that promotes competitive races. A few years ago, California and Ohio voters rejected reform proposals, but they might still be a good starting place.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation remain decidedly “above the fray” when it comes to the upcoming election. We’ll work hard to promote liberty and limited government no matter who is elected to office, just as we’ve done for the last 5 years.

That said, sometimes things get so silly that a response is in order. One outright lie by the Democratic Party of New Mexico which has sent a series of mailers out against Tim Lewis who is running for the Legislature. The postcards which can be found here, here, here, and here make the absurd claim that because Lewis is supportive of many of the Tea Party’s goals and that because some in the Tea Party support a federal tax reform plan known as the FairTax, that Lewis supports a 30% sales tax rate.

The mailer is downright silly (and completely inaccurate) on several counts:

1) Lewis is running for the Legislature, not Congress. The FairTax applies only to federal taxes so this plan doesn’t even apply to him (or anyone else running for state or local office);
2) Far from simply being a tax hike, the FairTax, if adopted, would replace ALL federal taxes including payroll taxes. This is hardly a tax hike;
3) The Tea Party has no single position in support of or against the FairTax so arguing that any candidate’s support for the Tea Party indicates support for the FairTax is ridiculous;

While I think the FairTax has merit, many on the right do not. Regardless of one’s stance on the issue, it is clear that some people are willing to say whatever it takes to get elected.

I had a place at the table for last week’s “In Focus” program on Channel 5 KNME. Topics included Obama’s visit to Albuquerque, the race for governor, the closing of the GE plant in the South Valley, and more.

Check it out:

Watch the full episode. See more New Mexico In Focus.

Recently, in Tennessee, a man’s house caught fire. The man lives in a rural area of the county where, if you want your house protected against fire, you pay a $75 fee annually. The guy didn’t pay the fee and the firemen let the house burn. The full story can be found here.

Sounds awful, right? It certainly is and we at the Rio Grande Foundation have never come out opposed to publicly-financed fire departments as our friends on the left seem to imply. Local governments can and should experiment with policy solutions and if the local folks want to pay for the fire department using an “insurance” model, that is their right. As an aside, I believe the fire department in Tennessee that watched this house burn was still a government fire department!

What should have happened or would have happened in a privatized world? I would think that in order to win a new customer, gain positive publicity for their company (remember, they’re competing in a free market), and do something good for someone in need, that a private fire department would have put the fire out and then billed the guy later.

Private fire departments can succeed. We at RGF don’t fight that battle because at $75 a year, if government was limited to fire, roads, ambulance, and police, I’d be a happy camper. Leave it to the lefties to make this stuff up.

I have written Rep. Heinrich in the past on a variety of issues. While one of these issues was the health care bill that Heinrich voted for twice and that is now deeply unpopular, I’ve written to him and received responses from him on a variety of issues.

Recently, I received this unsolicited letter from Heinrich’s office. I was surprised to receive it because it had been some time since the health care vote and any correspondence with the Congressman on the issue. But, we are getting close to Election Day, and this mail (known ad “franked” mail) is taxpayer-financed. The letter simply defends ObamaCare and is clearly meant to assist with Heinrich’s re-election campaign. While it is technically legal according to my former colleagues at the National Taxpayers Union, that doesn’t make it right or fair.

This year may see a record number of incumbents go down to defeat, but franking is one of the advantages of incumbency that most certainly tilts the playing field in favor of those already in office.

State income taxes are big news these days. First, we published of our study on Governor Richardson’s successful income tax cuts. Today, the Wall Street Journal had an excellent piece by Art Laffer which shows how personal incomes slow economic growth in those states that have adopted them.

As Laffer writes:

Each and every state that introduced an income tax saw its share of total U.S. output decline. Some of the states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio, have become fiscal basket cases. Even West Virginia, which was poor to begin with, got relatively poorer after adopting a state income tax.

Richardson’s cuts, as we’ve shown, stimulated growth. Our next Governor should seriously consider eliminating New Mexico’s personal income tax, especially once the economic outlook brightens and needed cuts and reforms are made that will further increase the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of New Mexico government.