I have ridden the Rail Runner before, if for no other reason than to know what I am talking about when I criticize it. That said, I had my nieces (3 and 4 years old) in town this week and “Uncle Paul” had the pleasure of taking them on the train during the afternoon rush hour from downtown ABQ north to the 550/Sandoval County stop.
While the train’s two cars were never filled to capacity, the train did pick up significant numbers of riders heading to the south. Of course, with a day pass costing just $3, most of the costs of riding the rails are borne by taxpayers, not riders. It would be interesting to see what would happen if maybe 25% of the train’s operating costs (rather than the current 10%) were borne by riders as opposed to the rest of us.
The fact is that the Rail Runner in its current form is not going away. The best we can do is to stop the train before Phase II to Santa Fe is complete. Running through all those miles of barren Indian Country to a city of 70,000 or so people will drain transportation funds that could otherwise be used to improve the Paseo/I-25 interchange or alleviate the myriad maintenance problems facing this state. And that doesn’t even account for the millions of annual operating costs that will only increase over time.

Recently, I criticized Rep. Heather Wilson’s support for a massive tax hike to expand SCHIP. What I didn’t mention was that retiring New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici supported the same plan to expand the program by raising taxes, despite President Bush’s veto. Domenici argues his case here.
While Domenici is certainly more conservative than Wilson, this is not the first time he has been “off the reservation,” especially on health care. In fact, it is particularly ironic that Domenici supported SCHIP expansion at the same time as he has finally succeeded in pushing his mental health parity legislation through the Senate.
For someone who claims not to support government-run health care, he sure likes to dabble in ways that are bound to make insurance and health care in general more expensive, thus forcing more and more Americans onto the government dole that he claims to abhor.

I was out of the office for a few days getting married in Algodones and have not been blogging for obvious reasons.
I was quoted in a recent story in the Santa Fe New Mexican that I think illustrates some of the problems in health care reporting specifically and economic reporting in general — reporters focus only on the benefits of a proposed program and not on the drawbacks, nor do they question why people have the problems they do.
While I am quoted on behalf of the Rio Grande Foundation as a critic of the massive expansion of New Mexico’s involvement in health care decisions, the author fails to discuss the personal decisions that allowed a 23 year old woman to become so obese that she can’t work and requires oxygen at night. Why taxpayers must foot the bill for her health care is another question that goes unanswered.

On Monday, Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing appeared on KKOB radio host Bob Clark’s radio show to discuss New Mexico’s outrageous laws, the Foundation’s work, and the post-Domenici political environment in New Mexico. Audio of the appearance is available here (after a few introductory commercials).

Yesterday, the Rio Grande Foundation announced the results of our outrageous law contest. We got a lot of great coverage out of the contest including this story (click and drag New Mexico Strange Law box) that appeared on the October 16 10 o’clock news.

With the news that Doña Ana County is delaying its implementation of a gross receipts tax increase to fund the Spaceport, one might wonder if that project, like the Rail Runner extension to Santa Fe, is in trouble. We can only hope.
The problems are twofold: First and foremost, as discussed in the Las Cruces Sun article above, other counties are not jumping on board the project by passing their own tax hikes as quickly as Doña Ana did. Also, as with the Rail Runner, Spaceport management is asking for more money than originally estimated.
With all of the Foundation’s complaining about the Rail Runner and Spaceport, one might mistakenly believe that we have something against “economic development.” That actually couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather, we believe that individuals, not governments, drive economic development and will allocate resources far more efficiently than governments do. Both the Rail Runner and Spaceport seem to be bearing this out.

It is no surprise that the Albuquerque Tribune, the city’s left-leaning newspaper, slammed President Bush for vetoing SCHIP expansion. What is interesting is one of the arguments the paper uses in its rebuke:

It’s a truly stunning action, when you consider that the federal debt has nearly doubled during Bush’s deficit-spending tenure, which has been everything but fiscally responsible, let alone conservative. Now, when it comes to America’s children, the federal government cannot afford to insure them against illness or death.
The president essentially decided last week that it was more important to stave off further government intervention in the nation’s failing private health care system than to provide for the vital health care of 4 million more of America’s children.

Obviously, we at the Rio Grande Foundation have a different perspective on the matter as do most free market health care analysts. That said, Bush’s veto would have been far less of a political target if he’d maintained a consistent, fiscally-conservative stance throughout his presidency. Better late than never as far as we’re concerned, but it is politically-difficult for the President.

It wasn’t the most prominent story in this morning’s newspaper, in fact, if you didn’t read the Business Outlook section closely, you probably missed it. The story is that the taxpayer-financed Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho is losing money. (subscription required) Of course, I just noticed that the Tribune reported this story a week ago…
Anyway, while backers expected the arena to earn $1.6 million in its first year, the arena actually lost $47 million. Poor attendance at minor league hockey games and the “newness of the arena” were blamed, but new facilities usually result in more fans and profits, not less, so I don’t see the situation turning around anytime soon.
it is no surprise to anyone who follows public financing of arenas or railroads and streetcars that the cost estimates and profits are low-balled early to get the public to commit and then the costs are jacked up once it is too late to turn back. We’re seeing it right now with the Rail Runner. Thankfully, it looks like Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez will be too distracted (subscription required) with other activities to spend his time wasting taxpayer money on arenas and streetcars.

Unfortunately, New Mexico doesn’t have the initiative process which would allow voters to place laws and constitutional amendments on the ballot. In Oklahoma, however, they do have this process in place, but the political establishment jealously guards its power from the people. After all, there is no bigger threat to those who control the process than an informed and energized citizenry.
My friend Paul Jacob and some others who believe in limited government and were trying to put an amendment on the ballot in 2006 to limit taxes and spending in the state have run afoul of the state’s attorney general who is carrying out a vindictive campaign against them. Read Jacob’s account of the absurd efforts to stop citizen-activists.

As I reported here previously, New Mexico Representative Heather Wilson has been one of the ringleaders in the House in support of the massive Senate SCHIP expansion. She is now actively working to overturn Bush’s veto.
This issue went from important to urgent with the news that Pete Domenici would retire and Wilson would be running for his Senate seat. As I point out in National Review Online, SCHIP is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Wilson’s liberal record, but we need her to see the Senate race as a reason to move to the right, not the left on SCHIP and other tax and spending issues.

For those who attended and would like to listen to it again or for those who missed John Fund’s talk in Albuquerque on the 27th of September, the Rio Grande Foundation has made a recording of the event available online.
A direct link to the audio can be found here. Photos are also available.

By now, most readers of this blog have heard that Senator Pete Domenici is not running for re-election in 2008. This is big news not just in New Mexico, but nationwide, since this makes it increasingly certain that Democrats will retain control of the US Senate. That said, what does Domenici’s retirement mean? Well, Heather Wilson has already jumped in to the race, but that was almost a certainty as she was going to be redistricted out of her seat soon anyway.
It is also quite possible that Reps. Steve Pearce or Tom Udall may jump into the race as well. My hunch is that Wilson has the best chance of winning a statewide race among these three because she is the “not too hot, not too cold candidate.” (Pearce may be too conservative for the north and Udall may be too liberal for the south)
Of course, some are saying that Richardson will jump into the race which means he’d have to be considered the front-runner. Personally, I’d like to see former-governor Gary Johnson jump into the race….

Increasing federal control over education policy as occurred under No Child Left Behind was never a good idea. For one thing, it gives lobbyists a central location enabling them to force states to purchase their products. In this instance, our own Sen. Jeff Bingaman is taking a lead role. Tim Carney writes about it in a recent Washington Examiner article:

In August, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., together with Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., introduced the Achievement Through Technology and Innovation Act, or ATTAIN for short. The bill’s various provisions all aim to direct federal funding to local schools under NCLB. A House version of ATTAIN was introduced in May.
One significant aspect of NCLB for struggling schools has been $100,000 federal grants that they could more or less spend as they please. Many schools spent the money on computers or software licenses, but many others invested in a couple more teachers. ATTAIN would remove some of that leeway and require schools to spend certain portions of their federal money on computers, software and training teachers to use the technology.

It would be great if Bingaman and others would exert some self-control and not micromanage the states’ efforts to allocate resources under NCLB, but money comes with strings. This is just the latest justification for ending the law later this year.

Henry Morgan (subscription required) of Alamogordo is my hero. Why? Because he’s sticking it to the man by letting customers smoke in his restaurant. As any smoker and most non-smokers know, New Mexico is now “smoke free” just about anywhere indoors. So, while I personally may not like smoking and under normal circumstances might avoid Morgan’s restaurant because it allows smoking, that choice is, at least under law, already made for me by our friends in Santa Fe.
Of course, while advocates of fascism…er…I mean controlling all of our actions say that restaurants are not impacted by smoke free laws, the economic reality is not so pretty. More details on the economics of smoking bans can be found in this recent blog.

Our spiritual friend in Arizona, Coyote Blog, takes a look at the Rail Runner following this article about it in the AZ Republic, which brushes off the RGF as an ‘anti-tax foundation.’
Give it a read.

Is how we pay for health care important? A few weeks ago I skewered the Albuquerque Journal’s health care columnist for arguing that how we pay for health care is irrelevant.
Needless to say, as an advocate of free markets and someone who is versed in economics, I had to respond to such a statement. This is my response (subscription required) which appeared in Thursday’s paper. Basically, my argument is this:

Even avowed socialists like Michael Moore understand (to a point) that how we pay doctors is important. Insurance companies are taken to task in Moore’s movie “Sicko” for denying patients necessary care. What Moore and other advocates for government-run health care fail to see is that replacing insurance companies with government bureaucrats will only make the current situation worse.
After all, someone has to control costs and that means making decisions about who receives treatment and who doesn’t. Even in countries where the tolerance for high taxes is much higher than it is here, governments have imposed waiting periods and other mechanisms to deny care, thus keeping a lid on costs to taxpayers. (Of course, Michael Moore conveniently left these stories out of his movie.)
There are really only three cost-control options: individuals, insurance companies or the government. It only makes sense that individuals, particularly if they are armed with adequate information by their doctors, can obtain the best care for themselves for the lowest cost. After all, in a world of scarce resources where trade-offs are inevitable, wouldn’t you rather decide how those trade-offs are made instead of having someone else decide for you?
That is the thinking behind Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Rather than giving insurance companies or the government the final call over my health care needs, as the proud owner of an HSA, I am building money in a savings account and can use that money on the care I need. This includes “alternative” forms of medicine that are not always covered by traditional insurance policies.
HSAs or, better still, simply giving individuals the tax advantages that are now given to employers to pay for health care, will improve the quality of our health care while saving money at the same time. Any scheme that purports to “reform” health care without empowering patients must rely on someone else to contain costs and will only worsen the problems we now face.
How we pay doctors drives the incentives in the health care system. Restoring the relationship between doctors and their patients can only be done by returning patients to the rightful role of owning their own health care.

No, this particular sad day for taxpayers is not due to the fact that tax hikes for the Rail Runner (subscription required) may be on the way…we’ll save discussion of that for another day. This is genuine sadness brought on by the premature passing of one of the greatest taxpayer advocates in the entire nation. I had the privilege of working at the Washington, DC-based National Taxpayers Union for more than six years and during that time John Berthoud was my boss. He was also one of the greatest, most principled advocates for taxpayers one could conceive of and he is now dead at the age of 47.
Most New Mexicans never had the chance to meet John and none had the chance to work with him and grow to respect and befriend him as I did, but I can assure you all that his voice on behalf of taxpayers will be sorely missed.

This is the net result of the ongoing war on politically-incorrect foods and fat people. Senior centers are now turning down donations of baked goods. Now, while I certainly don’t want our seniors to turn into overweight couch potatoes, it would seem that they should probably be consulted on the matter rather than having “nanny-statists” make decisions for them. Unfortunately, the very organization that supposedly advocates for seniors’ rights is one of the very groups pushing us towards socialized health care that will give the control-freaks more power over our dietary decisions.

It may not be the “be all, end all,” health care solution, but given federal constraints placed upon the states, there is only so much that can be done without Congressional action. That said, one of the more interesting state-level approaches to health care reform comes from Missouri where the state is now allowing small business owners to contribute pre-tax health care dollars to their employees’ individually selected policies.
Rather than “universal coverage,” New Mexico and other states might want to consider following Missouri’s example by helping to find ways to give individuals greater control over their own health care needs.

News today is that the United Auto Workers have struck General Motors. While this may not be immediately relevant to New Mexico, the reasons for the strike should be relevant to any non-government union worker. The union says the strike is not about wages or benefits, but “job security” and I believe them.
The problem is that job security for unionized workers in plants run by GM, Ford, and Chrysler will force the so-called Big Three to continue shifting production out of the US in order to avoid combative and inflexible unions. That is not to say that US workers are not the best in the world or that the Japanese car companies that have set up shop here are under-paying their workers. They are not.
The problem is that unions and their convoluted work rules are simply not flexible enough to adjust to today’s economy. Without that flexibility and with unions limited to preserving existing jobs, union membership is dropping and fast. In fact, the only workplaces that are bureaucratic and resistant to change enough to sustain growing union populations are governments…kind of expains why governments work (or fail to work) the way they do.

Heather Wilson strikes again. She has supported President Bush without fail on an unpopular Iraq War, but when it comes to fiscal issues, she is the first one to spend more money or expand government even more than Bush who has admittedly done a poor job of restraining government.
Now, it turns out that where President Bush is trying to restrain spending and stop a massive tax hike, it is New Mexico’s Heather Wilson who is leading the charge for more spending. The program is SCHIP, a program that, if expanded, is a big, incremental step towards nationalized health care. David Hogberg and I discussed this and some of the many reasons expansion should be opposed a few weeks ago in the American Spectator.
No matter how “tough” Wilson’s Congressional seat may be, voting for tax hikes and a massive expansion of government is inexcusable. Wilson is a prime example of a “big-government Republican.”

RailRunner rides that same old line.
It’s good! It’s good! You’ll see, in time.
Ne’er mind the costs, we’re going to town!
What? How many more die till we shut it down?
Bill’s ok. He’s at his station.
“Let’s just have an investigation”
Our schools are crumbling. That’s ok!
We’ll hold classes, anyway!
Learn to drive!
Avoid Railrunner! Stay alive!
Engineers wasted. Families too.
What’s all the fuss? All the ado?
Ne’er mind the costs, we’re going to town.
What? How many more die till we shut it down?
We’ll spend more, make it safer!
Money from oil and gas and oh, the taxpayer!
We can afford it. Yes we can!
What’s the matter with you, man?
Education be damned! RailRunner is mighty!
Ne’er mind those kids, we know they’re flighty.
We’re doing things right. They’ll ride the rails.
One day it will all be just a tale.
RailRunner, RailRunner we long for more.
And, Sister SpacePort is at the fore.
Legislators of sense not common.
Let’s say a prayer. Amen.
— Vic Bruno

With all of the focus on the newest edition of “Hillarycare,” the media have largely ignored the latest mandate working its way through Congress. Unfortunately, our own Pete Domenici is riding shotgun with Ted Kennedy on this one and you just know that is not a good thing. The issue is the so-called Mental Health Parity Act and, if the House goes along with the Senate’s plan, it would likely add between five and ten percent to the cost of a health insurance policy.
At a time when “universal coverage” is high on the political agenda, it would seem that policymakers would be working to make insurance less, not more, costly. Unfortunately, that will not be the case if the Mental Health Parity Act is adopted.

Impact fees… to advocates they are a means of “generating revenue for funding or recouping the costs of capital improvements or facility expansions necessitated by and attributable to the new development .” To detractors, they are just another way for government to reach into taxpayers’ pockets. From the Foundation’s perspective, it would be nice if an actual marketplace for roads, schools, and other services now provided by the government existed because people would actually pay for what they use, not what government bureaucrats tell them they’ve used.
Regardless of their merits, however, according to a new Harvard study outlined here, there is no doubt that impact fees have a negative impact on housing affordability.
Among the study’s findings:
Each $1,000 increase in the cost of a new median-priced home forces 217,000 prospective buyers out of the marketplace;
Every $819 rise in fees paid at the beginning of the construction process–such as an increase in the price of a construction permit, a tap fee, a proffer or an impact fee–adds an additional $1,000 to the final price of the home;
Developers pay an average of $3,114 more than it cost for basic infrastructure and services for a typical 2,077-square-foot house.
Although there was talk about a year and a half ago from Mayor Chavez that he’d consider re-aligning user fees to make Albuquerque more competitive, nothing seemed to come of it. With the national housing market in the tank and Albuquerque bound to be impacted sooner or later, perhaps now is the time to evaluate the situation?