By C. T. Carlson
CTCarlson@gmail.com
Some property owners say city zoning decisions are trampling on the property rights of individuals and could cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Several current lawsuits highlight a growing number of city property owners who are forced to consider litigation due to city officials changing zoning uses through revisions, sector planning or other zoning changes.
The most costly City zoning change to taxpayers is the nearly 13-year old lawsuit where in February, the New Mexico Supreme Court reversed a Court of Appeals decision that had set aside an $8.3 million jury verdict in favor of Albuquerque Commons Partnership. This means the high court agreed with a District Court decision that the city was in the wrong and should pay the development company millions for the loss of its property rights.
The property at issue is the site of the former St. Pius High School on Louisiana Boulevard and Interstate 40. Part of the property has since been developed by different owners as the new ABQ Uptown shopping district somewhat similar to a retail site the Partnership proposed in the mid-1990s.
In 1995, the Albuquerque Commons Partnership’s development plan complied with the sector plan in place at the time the property was leased. Within months a new sector plan was approved and the partnership’s site development plan no longer complied.
In the lawsuit the Partnership argued the city down-zoned their property during a sector plan revision. Down-zoning means to alter a property’s usage so that it is more restrictive. According to city briefs, sector plans are a regulatory tool which provides policy and regulatory guidance for development within its boundaries. The plan adoption sets land use, design and development standards to ensure development outcomes that are more predictable for the community and affected stakeholders, and supportive of the community’s goals for the area.
According to the partnership’s attorney Timothy Flynn-O’Brien, the $8.3 million verdict plus interest, fees and other costs, means the city could have to cough up more than $10 million. This, he said, may cause the city to have to seek an increase in taxes specifically for this verdict.
Flynn-O’Brien said one problem driving these costs is that economic viability of sector plan revisions is not a part of the city’s planning process. This can lead to sector plan changes, or other zoning revisions, that adversely affect property values without notice or due process.
“With all the money they spend on the plans they should hire an economist to look the plans over to show whether the plan will actually work,” Flynn-O’Brien said.
Flynn-O’Brien says the city down-zoned the Partnership’s property in particular when it adopted the revised sector plan due to neighborhood pressure.
Sector plan revisions do not require the governing body to give individual notice to property owners when zoning is changed. It only requires a general public notice of the planning process.
Acting City Clerk and Deputy City Attorney Randy Autio said it is always controversial when zoning is revised. He said city planners try to be respectful of private property rights.
Other land use attorneys say these types of cases are happening with increasing frequency. “We see these things time and time again where legislative authority is used to change zoning,” Attorney David Campbell said. “The magnitude of the damages in the partnership case is unique. But it is not unique to have a local government change the rules in the middle of the game.”
Campbell said he alone takes more than a dozen cases a year around the state. Most of the cases follow the same fact pattern where government decision-makers are more beholden to groups of neighbors who vote instead of defending private property rights.
“It appears that neighbors or adjacent property owners get the ear of their governing body representative to cause a change in expectation to take place,” he said.
Another example, Campbell said, is the controversial Vista del Norte property on Osuna on the city’s north side where a developer wanted to bring in a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
“The only thing that the property owner really needed to do was pull a permit as the land already had the correct zoning,” Campbell said. “But the city council heard a great cry from some in the nearby neighborhood that they did not want a Wal-Mart on that piece of property.”
In response the neighborhood City Councilor Debbie O’Malley fired a double-pronged salvo and introduced a law against “big box” retailers, and legislation that the property should be preserved for hot air balloon landings. The effect was to change the zoning conditions so that the property owners could no longer comply with existing zoning and build a Wal-Mart. Whether intended or not, this reduced the value of the land.
The city recently closed on the deal to buy the land for about $5 million for a balloon landing park. The developer will have about five acres of light commercial developable land at the front of the property. The 22-acres were appraised at about $7.1 million at the time.
“The government and city councilors are in a tough position. They are elected by people to serve their district but are not explicitly elected to preserve people’s property rights,” Campbell said. “Politics come in and they start using their legislative authority to change site specific land uses to please what they perceive to be a large block of voters.”
Campbell agreed with Flynn-O’Brien that the city should protect property rights during sector and other plan revisions by conducting an economic analysis before making zone changes and effectively “taking” private property with backdoor down-zoning. But according to the city’s own zoning code, “the cost of land or other economic considerations pertaining to the applicant shall not be the determining factor for a change of zone.”
Attorney Paul Kienzle also handles zoning cases for property owners. He thinks inconsistency is also a problem with the city’s zoning decisions. “In the zoning arena things should be consistent, but it is not consistent from neighborhood to neighborhood or even across streets,” Kienzle said. “It is the taxpayers and developers who end up being hit hard by this inconsistency.”
Whether the inconsistencies are the result of parochial politics is an open question. Kienzle said individuals and the free market are better suited than government to make land use decisions.
“I believe in the free market over government dictation,” he said. “This would resolve a lot of issues.”
In another unsettling and expensive zoning case, some Volcano Cliffs property owners on the city’s West Side have been at odds with the city over zoning and development issues for decades. Two potentially high dollar lawsuits are pending. In one inverse condemnation case, more than a dozen land owners had their undeveloped property outright down-zoned to open space during its sector plan revision. In another case property owners say the city council acted outside of its power when it unilaterally changed the Volcano Heights Sector Plan. Some of the contested changes include “cherry picking” certain pieces of property for open space, according to court documents.
Flynn-O’Brien claims the changes were done outside of the city council’s powers, state and constitutional law. Other legal issues include that it was not under city council purview to change the sector plan which was approved by the city council, but without the approval of the city’s Environmental Planning Commission. The sector plan leaves up to 70-percent of the properties undeveloped. Flynn-O’Brien said that all of this goes above and beyond the city’s private property zoning powers.
“My clients can not sell their land after they were designated for open space,” Flynn-O’Brien said. But the city argues that they may not be liable because the land was not technically “rezoned” as open space but only “targeted” as open space.
Former Albuquerque City Council member and attorney Sam Bregman is one of the three attorneys representing the Volcano Cliffs Property Owners Association. He says the city council did not follow the law in making those zoning decisions but instead dictated what they think should happen with other people’s property without consideration of personal property rights.
“The city council needs to get a clear education from the city’s legal department on private property rights. Otherwise the problem will continue and it will be very expensive for both the taxpayers and the property owners,” Bregman said. Bregman said he gets at least one call a week from city property owners who have potential zoning abuse cases.
“There is a high number of property owners who can not afford or do not understand
the process to defend their rights,” Bregman said.
Volcano Cliffs attorneys claim that the city could end up paying property owners more than $30 million to resolve Volcano Cliffs litigation. City officials dispute that amount.
“It is becoming very expensive for the city to pay lawyers to defend the city’s bad zoning decisions then to have to pay out the judgments,” Bregman said. “I don’t think anyone is against sound reasonable development which we need in order to grow, but not at the expense of personal property rights.”
Carmen Marron, the city’s division manager for planning and urban design, said there are currently ten sector plan revisions being worked on. There are two other zoning studies that are ongoing, and two other Metropolitan Re-Development areas under going planning revisions. Marron said it is usually a city council member who brings forward an idea of revising a sector plan.
City planning spokeswoman Deborah Nason said that the city planning department has spent more than $2.5 million in the last three years on outside planning consultants for sector plan revisions. This amount does not include any monies appropriated by individual city council members for their district sector planning.
Randy Autio said it was hard to gauge what the city spends on city legal staff and contracted attorneys to defend zoning lawsuits. “There are some cases that have been in the system for years,” Autio said. “The 900-pound gorilla case is the Albuquerque Commons case.” Autio said it has cost the city at least $1.8 million so far to defend the Albuquerque Commons Partnership case. And it is not over yet.
“When the city does pay out on the case it will either take the money out of a pre-existing “risk fund” set up to pay for judgments or the city council will take a vote to raise the tax rate,” Autio said.
He said the average annual cost to defend a case is about $150,000.
Earlier this year the city council approved $667,000 in fees and expenses to five outside contracted attorneys to defend a handful of pending city legal issues. According to the city’s current budget the legal department which includes the city clerk’s office has an annual budget of about $5-million, with about 80+plus employees. Autio said there is one full-time and two part-time attorneys who focus on zoning litigation. He said staff attorneys make between $50,000 to $70,000 annually. Head division attorneys make upward of $100,000.
To stay on top of the city’s planning process log on to www.cabq.gov and go to the Planning Department link. For more information on the Volcano Cliffs area log on to www.vcpoa.com.

After failing to gain either legislative or popular support for his ambitious, universal health care plan which would have relied heavily on government mandates, Governor Richardson has introduced a scaled-back health care reform proposal that will be considered in the upcoming special session.
The Governor’s plan would:
• Require all children through the age of 18 to have health care coverage from private or public sources. The bill contains no enforcement mechanism or penalty for parents who don’t secure coverage for their children.
• Appropriate $58 million to expand existing programs to reach an estimated 50,000 children who qualify for publicly funded coverage but don’t receive it. The additional spending would recur annually, Hyde said.
• Establish a new Health Care Benefits Administration to consolidate management of several existing public coverage programs, including state employee and public retiree insurance plans.
• Gradually limit premium increases insurance companies can charge small businesses from 20 percent today to 10 percent per year in five years.
• Require insurers to spend at least 85 percent of premiums on services and guarantee that anyone who needs insurance can get it regardless of health status.
• Establish privacy requirements for patients’ electronic medical records.
While this scaled-back proposal is a significant improvement over the Governor’s original if only because it is scaled back, legislators should still be skeptical as to whether the proposal, if passed, would result in any improvement in New Mexicans’ health care or uninsured rates.
Specifically, requiring that parents obtain health care for children through the age of 18 is bound to be ineffective as there is no enforcement mechanism, but this is actually a good thing. After all, responsible parents want their children to be covered, but not all parents are responsible and many others either can’t afford it or believe that putting food on the table and gas in their car to get to work is more important than health insurance for their children.
Spending $58 million to put more children who already qualify for government health care on government plans is also a poor option. Rather than spending $58 million every year for more welfare, how about giving parents an equivalent tax break to set up Health Savings Accounts for their children?
Regarding efforts to set up a Health Care Benefits Administration, limit premium increases, and set up arbitrary requirements for insurers, these are nothing more than means to further impose government control on the health care sector of New Mexico’s economy. New government agencies and micromanaging the insurance industry are not going to result in significant improvements in either the quality or availability of health care in this state.
The fact is that government policies are largely to blame for the current health care mess. Did you know that New Mexico charges the highest tax on insurance premiums in the nation (4.003%)? How about eliminating New Mexico’s gross receipts tax on deductibles and co-pays which are tax-exempt in almost all other states? This tax which in some places exceeds 8 percent in some areas of the state is applied to this ever-increasing area of health care expenses.
The aforementioned ideas are just a few ways in which the negative impact of current government policies could be mitigated. They would also be far more likely to succeed in expanding health care access to the greatest number of New Mexicans.
While the Governor should be applauded for scaling back his mandate-heavy original proposal, the Governor’s scaled-back proposal still moves us towards an increased government role in health care. Hopefully, legislators will again reject more government reliance and instead consider market-based reforms outlined above in the upcoming 2009 legislative session.

Several months ago I wrote on this site about dog health care vs. human health care. John Goodman, one of the nation’s free market health care analysts has picked up on that theme on his NCPA health blog. Check out his posting here.
As Goodman points out:
Why does the market for pet care seem to work so much better than the market for human care? Not that I pay a great deal of attention to such things, but I believe it’s fair to say that:
* No one is saying the market for pet care is “broken” or in “crisis.”
* No one is saying that the market cannot work for pet care.
* No one is calling for mandatory pet health insurance.
* No one is calling for single-payer health insurance for pets.

Massachusetts developed a bad reputation as “Taxachusetts” back in the 1980s. This November, voters in that state will have be voting to completely eliminate that state’s 5.3% income and wage tax, as well as the state capital gains tax, which reaches as high as 12%. The ballot initiative would replace the $12.5 billion in taxes with . . . nothing.
As the Wall Street Journal points out:

The referendum may seem the longest of long shots in a state represented by some of Congress’s biggest spenders. But the same initiative was on the ballot in 2002, and though the political establishment roared with laughter through Election Day, the measure got 45% of the vote. This time pro-tax forces such as the Massachusetts Teachers Association are planning to spend millions of dollars warning of Armageddon.

As I discussed in our recent policy paper, New Mexicans would be wise to consider following Massachusetts by seriously considering elimination of the personal income tax. It would be great if New Mexico had the initiative process which has allowed citizens of Massachusetts to put this issue on the ballot, but we don’t. That said, it is my understanding that legislation will be introduced in the Special Session (which begins next week) to phase New Mexico’s personal income tax out.

The conventional wisdom is that projects like the RailRunner and Mayor Marty’s proposed trolley are inherently “green” because they get people out of their cars. While this is usually the case if a bus or train is full and automobiles contain only one passenger, this is not how the equation usually works.
In fact, Brad Templeton does an excellent analysis of various transit systems and compares them with automobiles of different sizes and occupancies and finds that construction of new transit systems and even the use of buses is not necessarily green, especially when compared with small cars and cars containing multiple passengers.
As he points out:

A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars, sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light or heavy) holds 22. If that seems low, remember that every packed train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down the track.

After all, how often do you see empty or out of service buses driving around town? The Rail Runner certainly isn’t always full.
Templeton isn’t the only one who is skeptical of the relative “green-ness” of transit. Randal O’Toole over at the Cato Institute argues in a recent research paper that rail transit doesn’t save energy or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Before we embark on massive new transit projects, we should carefully analyze whether or not these projects are really good for the environment.

“Universal,” government-mandated health care may not become law in New Mexico during the upcoming special session, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen in the near future. Check out this video which illustrates in stark detail how health care might work if we put government in charge.

If you follow what happens in New Mexico politics, you are probably aware that Governor Richardson has called a special session which is set to begin in about a week. Although the session was called, at least in theory, to work on health care, the Governor has proposed a tax rebate package (which also contains some new spending) in order to return some of the State’s excess oil and gas tax revenue to taxpayers.
While we at the Rio Grande Foundation support any effort to return money to taxpayers, as I point out in this opinion piece from the Las Cruces Sun-News, there should be no new permanent spending in the special session, in part due to the volatility of oil and gas revenues. On the flip side, legislators should study ways to stimulate New Mexico’s economy and ensure the State’s long-term success, such as by permanently reducing income tax rates.

In case you missed it, France recently decided to abandon its absurd experiment with a mandatory 35-hour work week. The 35-hour week was introduced by the then Socialist government in France 10 years ago as a way to combat unemployment.
According to a story from CBS News, despite being widespread popularity:

The original 35-hour workweek — introduced on a voluntary basis in 1998 and made compulsory two years later — has failed to create the promised millions of jobs.
A parliamentary committee chaired by conservative deputy Herve Novelli last year claimed the shorter workweek had cost the state upward of euro10 billion (US$13 billion) a year. It also disputed a labor ministry report that it had created 350,000 jobs in its first five years. Novelli welcomed Tuesday’s vote, saying the 35-hour law had brought a “salary stagnation that is now difficult to emerge from.”

Despite the 35-hour work week, France’s unemployment rate has remained stubbornly higher than the US and most other nations.
Certainly, New Mexico has not embarked upon such an unwise experiment, but what is the difference between mandating wage rates and limiting the number of hours worked? Kudos to France!

Albuquerque — The Rio Grande Foundation and Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy will be hosting a series of free screenings of the British documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” statewide August 20-August 22. A discussion of the film and the relative impact of human-caused global warming with prominent climatologist Bob Balling will follow each event.
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has met its match. Despite its flamboyant title, The Great Global Warming Swindle is based on sound science and interviews with real climate scientists. An Inconvenient Truth, on the other hand, is mostly an emotional presentation from a single politician. Come see what the media isn’t telling you about global warming.
Each event (except Santa Fe) will be held in a “happy hour” type timeframe with refreshments from 5:00-5:30, showings at 5:30 and Robert Balling’s presentations at 6:30. In Santa Fe the event is also cosponsored by the Center/Right Coalition. Join us for lunch – snacks and soft drinks will be available (or bring a “brown bag” – no messy food please). The movie will start at 11:00AM and Robert Balling’s presentation will start at noon. In all locations, come for the whole program, or just the part that fits your schedule.
Artesia – August 20: Artesia Country Club, 2703 W Richey Ave, Artesia, NM 88210, (575) 746-2055;
Farmington – August 21: Totah Theater, 315 W. Main Street, Farmington, NM 87401;
Santa Fe – August 22: State Land Office, Morgan Hall (Parking available in the public parking space at the P.E.R.A. building across the street from the Roundhouse. No Parking at the Land Office.) 310 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501;
Albuquerque – August 22: State Bar of New Mexico, 5121 Masthead NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109.
Bob Balling is a professor in the climatology program in the school of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University. Prior to accepting a position in Arizona, Balling was a faculty member in the climatology program at the University of Nebraska.
Over the past 20 years, he has been involved in a variety of interrelated climatological issues. He has published more than 125 articles in professional, scientific literature, received more than $3,000,000 in research grants, presented lectures throughout the United States and in more than a dozen foreign countries, and appeared in a number of scientific documentaries and news features.
Balling has written three books on climate change: The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions Versus Climate Reality, Interactions of Desertification and Climate, and The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air About Global Warming. Balling will elaborate on the movie’s message and take questions from the audience.
The Rio Grande Foundation is a non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization that promotes prosperity for New Mexico on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.
CARE is a non-partisan, tax-exempt organization devoted to educating the public about the need to guarantee our access to the affordable energy that drives our nation forward.

While the Albuquerque Journal often does a poor job of covering oil and gas/energy issues, a gem appeared in today’s paper. Two scientists from the Los Alamos Education Group debunked windmills (favored solutions of Al Gore and T. Boone Pickens) as a primary source of energy.
As the scientists point out:

In 2006, the Energy Information Agency published the total national electrical demand at 580,000 megawatts; about 50 percent comes from coal, 20 percent from natural gas and 20 percent from nuclear power. Natural gas provides a little over 100,000 megawatts.
Windmills are proposed to provide the power now obtained from natural gas. If each windmill generates three megawatts, over 33,000 windmills would be required to replace natural gas or nuclear power, when the wind is blowing at the correct velocity.
Because the operating record for getting electricity from windmills is only a third of the time, three times as many would be needed, still with no assurance of constant, adequate supply.
Additionally, modification of the electric grid system would be necessary to collect and distribute windmill energy. At two acres per windmill, the footprint would be enormous and the electrical energy would replace only the natural gas-generated power.

The scientists propose nuclear power as the most logical solution for our electricity generation needs. While I have no reason to disagree with this as a proposed solution, it would be great to allow market forces to work in order to see what the best option might be.

A recent article from the Heartland Institute’s Health Care News discusses a proposal by Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri (R) that would result in the state agreeing to a five-year federal spending cap on Medicaid in exchange for more autonomy over its Medicaid programs. The proposal is expected to save taxpayers $67 million.
Most states, like New Mexico, prefer to invest in creative ways to raid the federal treasury to fund their out-of-control Medicaid programs. Rhode Island is wisely attempting to take responsibility for managing a limited budget in the interests of their own citizens.
While it looks like Governor Richardson’s health care plan will not progress in its entirety during the upcoming special session, his plan relies on a massive new Medicaid spending both nationally and by New Mexico. It would be nice if Richardson (or New Mexico’s next governor) would take a close look at what Rhode Island is trying to do instead. After all, we can’t live at others’ expense forever.

The upcoming election is being fought over a number of issues: Iraq, health care, taxes, and an array of social and cultural issues like age and race as well. One of the subtexts of the election that is not being discussed is so-called “card check” legislation that would give labor unions an ace in the hole when it comes to organizing.
Card check is an effort by the unions to replace secret ballot elections with simple “card checks” by union bosses as a tool for organizing. Certainly, those who so often espouse the greatness of “democracy” would be expected to support the most democratic method of decision-making possible when it comes to forcing the employees of a particular business to join a union. Unfortunately, when self-interest is concerned and expanded membership is concerned, democracy flies out the window.
I’m glad that presidential and congressional elections are private and anonymous. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to vote with union thugs looking over my shoulder and neither should those who work for Wal Mart or any other business.
Unfortunately, New Mexico’s House of Representatives is trying to push Congress in this economically-harmful, anti-democratic direction. It passed a “House Memorial” in 2008 urging Congress to pass the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” which would impose Card Check.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation took the position earlier a few weeks ago on this blog that the Belgian company InBev should have the right to purchase Anheuser-Busch. Unfortunately, the purchase of InBev was not simply an example of the free market at work. Instead, the takeover was at least partially the result of America’s high corporate taxes.
As Stephen Moore and Tyler Grimm pointed out recently in the Wall Street Journal:

According to the Tax Foundation, Belgium ‘s corporate tax rate is 33%, but the effective tax rate can be half the nominal rate thanks to adjustments for something the OECD calls a “notional allowance for corporate equity.” Bottom line: InBev was paying around 20% of its profits in corporate taxes, compared to Anheuser-Busch’s rate of 38.4%.
Things have gotten pretty bad when U.S. companies relocate to Europe to cut their tax payments. But a research analysis by Morgan Stanley finds the combined company’s corporate tax bill will be lower than in the U.S. and that the tax differential indeed figured into the economics of the sale…
New data from the OECD for 2008 indicate that the international average for corporate tax rates fell by another percentage point last year, meaning the U.S. is pricing itself out of the market as a corporate headquarters. ” America ‘s 35% corporate tax rate is not just bad economics, it’s downright unpatriotic,” says tax expert Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute.

High taxes have an impact not only when American companies leave for lower taxes, but when New Mexico businesses move out of state or to other nations for lower taxes. This is a real issue and we need to address it both in Santa Fe and Washington.

You may not be aware that today would be the 96th birthday of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman. Israel Teitelbaum of SchoolChoiceVoter.com has an excellent article on Friedman’s legacy of free choice and individual liberty as it applies to education.
The Rio Grande Foundation is taking part in the celebration of Friedman’s legacy by hosting a school choice event in Albuquerque this evening. Seats are still available!
Happy Birthday and thank you Dr. Friedman!

Too many elected officials seem to get into politics simply to tell the rest of us what to do. One of the most prominent examples of this tendency is Albuquerque City Councilor Isaac Benton. Benton, in an op-ed published in the Albuquerque Journal, argued in favor of the City’s new green building codes and ripped the national industry group that is currently suing to prohibit the City from implementing the code.
While the industry group is suing on the basis of federal preemption of local law, the idea that governments rather than individual actors in the marketplace should determine how homes are built and what utilities they should use is ridiculous. After all, as we have seen recently with the rush to more fuel efficient cars, consumers will naturally purchase appliances that provide the greatest efficiency for the money.
Hopefully, Benton and those pushing costly green building codes on Albuquerque will suffer a legal setback in this case, but the probability of the nanny-statists and those who would control our every decision giving up is small.

Recently at the Rio Grande Foundation, we have been working harder than ever to get our message out in the community and around the state. A particular emphasis of our work is to reach out to those in areas, like Deming, that are often forgotten by denizens of Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Deming to speak to the Deming Rotary Club and talk to a reporter with the Deming Headlight You can read the interview here.
If your group needs a speaker, please contact us at 505-264-6090 or email info@riograndefoundation.org.

T. Boone Pickens is a smart man. He’s made billions of dollars in the oil and gas industry and should be applauded for engaging in economically-productive behavior that has benefited all of us. Unfortunately, now Pickens is looking to make money in a less honorable way — by putting his hands in taxpayer pockets.
Pickens was on Capitol Hill recently to discuss his new energy plan which he says would result in the United States producing 22 percent of its electrical energy needs using wind-powered electricity. More information on the Pickens plan is available here.
During the year 2003 alone, federal energy subsidies ranged from $37 billion to $64 billion, according to a study prepared for the National Commission on Energy Policy. Wind energy accounted for less than 1% of the total.
Thankfully, our friends at the Cato Institute are fighting back against Pickens’ self-serving subsidy “plan.” In a recent column, Jerry Taylor showed how Pickens’ plan benefits him at the expense of taxpayers and consumers. More information on the flaws and subsidies associated with wind power can be found here.

If you missed today’s episode of “Eye on New Mexico,” I discussed the proposed arena/convention center expansion with UNM professor Kate Krause this morning. Video of the show is available here. Considering that she was supposed to be a supporter of the project, Krause certainly comes off as sharing my healthy skepticism of the proposed project.

I’ve recently blogged about Al Gore and his out-of-control energy usage — all while he tells the rest of us to eliminate our carbon footprints. At his recent speech, some folks from the free market advocacy group Americans for Prosperity talked to Gore supporters and questioned them for their own energy usage. Check the video out here.
The fact is that Gore and the environmental radicals go far beyond traditional environmentalism. They want to control our lives and force us to abandon our cars, flying, heating, air conditioning, and technology. Climate change can be dealt with in the marketplace.

In case you haven’t heard, Governor Richardson has called for a special legislative session to begin on August 15. While the session was originally to be exclusively on the topic of health care, he has since broadened his agenda to include other issues including an economic stimulus known as the CARE Package.
It is certainly a good sign that the Governor seems to be backing off of imposing “universal” health care, but New Mexicans must be aware of the very real pitfalls associated with massive government intervention in the health care sector of our economy. Check out this informative website with interviews and discussion of some of the problems associated with government health care.

As previously mentioned on this blog, the Rio Grande Foundation and Educate New Mexico are hosting a free showing of the new film “Flunked” on July 31 in Albuquerque. Following the showing, Ben Chavis, the former administrator of the American Indian Charter School in Oakland, CA, will be presenting his ideas on education reform. Chavis is a star of the film.
The NPR show “Day to Day” did an excellent story on Chavis’s success a few years back. Check out the 5-minute audio clip here.
I hope you’ll consider attending this exciting event.

Although taxpayer activists managed to beat back previous efforts by the Mayor and many on City Council to put a $28 million a mile streetcar down Central, bad ideas never die. The Albuquerque streetcar is one that has recently resurfaced via a consultants report outlining how the project should, in their minds, move forward. View their presentation here.
Jim Scarantino over at The Alibi, wrote an excellent article on the streetcar in which he questions ridership assumptions and whether it makes sense to spend $28 million a mile for what would be at best marginal gains in ridership.
Thankfully, Scarantino is by no means the only voice of opposition to this crazy proposal. The excellent blog Eye on Albuquerque questioned the project’s merits in a recent posting. Mario burgos also has an interesting analysis.
Even the Albuquerque Journal questioned the project’s merits in a recent editorial. Hopefully our illustrious representatives on Council and Mayor Marty will abandon this project once and for all due to the widespread and well-reasoned opposition.

Today’s Albuquerque Journal front page included a silly headline “Oil, Gas Drilling Practices Questioned” that attempted to lead the casual reader to assume that oil and gas drillers are doing something wrong by choosing not to drill on certain leased federal lands. While the article goes on to explain that permitting and the lack of any known oil and gas in some of the leased areas are just two of the many reasons that 68 million acres of federal lands are leased but not currently producing oil and gas.
The Journal is not alone in promoting ignorance of oil and gas. Indeed, there is widespread misunderstanding of oil and gas issues. For example, did you know that now that the President has rescinded the executive order prohibiting oil and gas drilling on the outer continental shelf, Congress must act before the election to keep the ban intact? The following is from the Institute for Energy Research.

American oil and gas leasing has been prohibited on most of the OCS since the 1982. The U.S. is now the only developed nation in the World that restricts access to its offshore energy resources.
The Congressional Moratorium comes in the form of an annual appropriations rider in Congress. It must be renewed annually by a vote in the Congress, which has enacted OCS leasing moratoria every year since 1981.
**Unless Congress approves a new rider – and the President signs into law a bill that includes the rider – the Congressional ban will expire on September 30, the end of the federal FY2008 fiscal year.**

To see if you are knowledgeable on this and other oil and gas issues, take this quiz from the American Petroleum Institute. I scored 70%.

The anti-modernity, anti-drilling environmentalists seem to have latched onto two basic strategies in opposing more domestic drilling and innovative energy exploration at home. First is to blame speculators for all of our problems. The other is that additional drilling won’t bring oil and gas prices down and therefore won’t solve our problems. Laura Sanchez makes the latter argument in the Alibi.
Not surprisingly, we at the Rio Grande Foundation disagree strongly that drilling won’t improve our situation. In a letter to the editor I make the following arguments:

Although I disagree with her ultimate point (opposition to drilling), Laura Sanchez makes some good points in her article. Indeed, the days of $1 and perhaps even $2 gas may be over in the United States. As she points out, no amount of drilling, whether here in New Mexico, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or offshore is going to return us to the “good old days” of cheap gas.
Freer markets in China and India have raised living standards for literally billions of people. While we should celebrate this, it is also true that China adds 1,000 new cars to its roads every day.
Oil is a finite resource. Energy independence is a pipe dream, but if we don’t drill here our economy (most particularly, the poor and low-income for whom filling the tank is a larger portion of their family budget) will suffer and prices will continue to spiral upward. Economic progressives should be especially sensitive to this fact.
We also must realize two additional facts: 1) Every source of energy, including politically correct solar and wind, has its drawbacks; 2) Prices will create efficiency and spur innovation.
Energy policy, like most factors in a multitrillion-dollar economy, makes a difference on the margins and over time as adjustments are made. High prices will spur conservation; we should not stand in the way of efforts to increase supply as well.