Rarely have their been more compelling differences between the two major political parties in the United States in an election than there were in 2022. While the national GOP seems poised to take the House, it is likely that control of the US Senate will head to a runoff. In New Mexico Democrats held their big majority in the House while MLG held off a strong challenge by Mark Ronchetti and won all of the relevant statewide races.

What happened?

Was it abortion? Was it Trump’s election denials (nationally) and the candidates he backed in certain races? Was it just the fact that the nation is evenly split and New Mexico is a blue state and has been for decades and thus, in what proved to be a non-wave election, Democrats won big (again)?

It seems like all of the above are true.

For starters, it is worth noting that New Mexico is a BLUE state and has been for many years. In a “red wave” election Ronchetti and Republicans had a chance, but 2022 turned out to be a mediocre year nationally for GOP candidates and just the latest tough year here in NM.

What’s next?

We have a 60 day session in January. A new Democrat will take over as Speaker of the House. It is not going to be easy. If the GOP has a solid presidential nominee in 2024 there could be some good changes to the New Mexico Legislature. All of them are up for election then.

In the meantime, the Rio Grande Foundation will both continue and expand upon its efforts to do much needed education of the citizens of New Mexico on economic and education policy issues and what New Mexico needs to do to thrive.

A new report attempts to tally the supposed cost of climate change in New Mexico and around the nation. Here’s the full report and here’s an article about the report. The author recently presented to the Legislature’s Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy Committee.

If readers are hoping for some fancy, detailed, and halfway convincing analysis of various disasters and whether all or part of them were the result of global warming/climate change, you’ll be sadly mistaken.

The report simply claims that “Weather-based disasters and duress have cost New Mexico $5.3 billion in the past 42 years while nationally, extreme weather events caused $150 billion in damage in the past year alone.”

How much of this is driven by “climate change” as opposed to natural deviations in the weather? Who knows? What are the costs and tradeoffs of the “energy transition” our Gov. has planned for us? Again, no information is provided. How about the fact that over the years more people live and build businesses along coastlines and into the mountains, thus making them vulnerable to floods and other disasters.

What is left unsaid is how greater economic prosperity has allowed humans to deal with climate issues, thus preventing deaths.

Candid analysis of the costs and tradeoffs of various environmental policies and what impacts foreign countries and their public policies are having are all worth study, but this isn’t the report for that.

At Rio Grande Foundation we have closely followed Mississippi’s recent education success.  As we noted we discuss in a blog post AND our podcast (to name two) Mississippi largely followed the plan put forth by former Gov. Susana Martinez which was NEVER implemented by New Mexico’s Democrat-controlled Legislature.

We’re not the only New Mexico think tank to find Mississippi intriguing, Think New Mexico’s latest report also takes on New Mexico’s broken K-12 education system and cites positive results in Mississippi as a model to consider. With the horrendous recent NAEP scores in which New Mexico was dead last in all categories, it certainly seems worth considering.

The latest NAEP 4th grade reading scores further highlight the stark contrast between Mississippi’s success and New Mexico’s failure.

Across the country homeless issues are critical. At a recent national conference Paul met Judge Glock, Senior Director of Policy Research at the Austin, TX – based Cicero Institute, a think tank that among other issues focuses on solutions to homelessness. Paul and Judge discuss the challenge we face and real-world solutions for the problem. You don’t want to miss this conversation!

A new report from Greenpeace released this week calls plastic “recycling” a myth and finds that of 51 million tons of plastic waste US households generated in 2021, just 5 percent was recycled.

How does this affect YOU? For starters, Albuquerque’s Solid Waste Department spends considerable resources collecting “recyclables” including plastic. According to the Department the cost of the recycling program rose 900% in two years. That has resulted in higher fees on Albuquerque residents.

With such low recycling rates for plastic it would seem there is little point to the effort. This is especially true since aluminum is worth actual money. Why waste time and effort working to recycle something that is basically un-recyclable when aluminum is easily recycled and can generate 44 cents/lb?

It’s time for the City of Albuquerque to follow price signals by abandoning plastic recycling.

With a week to go before the 2022 election the ABQ Journal released their poll which has MLG up 8. There is another poll from Emerson that finds a much narrower race. The latest Emerson poll puts Herrell in the lead. The Journal has a fairly tight race between Michelle Garcia Holmes and Melanie Stansbury. Interestingly the Journal has Herrell losing. Paul and Wally discuss the challenges of polling and how this election is going to impact the credibility of certain pollsters.

Paul and Wally make their own predictions regarding some top New Mexico and national races.

Paul recently undertook an in depth analysis of the recent NAEP scores to figure out if lockdowns impacted learning. There is certainly some correlation there: (Math analysis & Reading Analysis)

RGF has released a new tool to allow the public to engage with candidates.

There is an environmental success story that has received little attention and environmentalists don’t seem to care about.

According to a new audit Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller has massively padded the City of Albuquerque’s payroll, specifically political or “unclassified” positions.

One of the most frustrating aspects of New Mexico public policy is politicians  and their sycophants who claim success for some government program or another without evidence.

Elizabeth Groginsky, MLG’s Secretary of Early Childhood Education and Care is the latest New Mexico bureaucrat to do this with her new opinion piece in the Albuquerque Journal. The Secretary makes all manner of arguments for “bold investments” in early childhood education. The problem is that New Mexico has been making such “bold” investments for a decade (see chart below).

Rather than relying on a bunch of studies that purport to show this spending has been a success, it would seem that after a decade we’d have some positive REAL academic outcomes from those 0-5 year olds who are now students in New Mexico’s K-12 system (there should be plenty of current 4th graders who went through New Mexico’s pre-K program).

Unfortunately, as we discussed recently, the NAEP scores that just came out (which tested both 4th graders and 8th graders) were disastrous. It’s easy to spend more money on government programs. It’s considerably more difficult to achieve results.

With Election Day just over one week away, the Rio Grande Foundation is as busy as ever. Here are some upcoming media and in-person appearances:

Wednesday, November 2nd, Portales, NM Rotary.

Thursday, November 3rd, Tucumcari Rotary.

If you are in Eastern New Mexico and would like to hear more about the Rio Grande Foundation and its work, please reach out to one of these Rotary clubs at the links above.

Friday, November 4th, 9 – 10am on KKOB radio with Bob Clark. Tune in live or stream the discussion at the link.

Election Day November 8th, 7pm – 11pm on KSFR 101.1FM.  Rather than watching the networks, sit back and listen to Fred Nathan and RGF’s Paul Gessing discuss the election results on the radio in Santa Fe or streaming worldwide!

Statewide bond question 3 on New Mexicans’ ballots will, if adopted, pour $216 million into higher education. RGF was quoted in this article. It is by far the largest statewide bond on the ballot and, if adopted, would mark the sixth consecutive statewide election that voters signed off on tens of millions of dollars for projects at public colleges and universities.

How much is enough? The only way we’ll ever know is if voters say “no.”

Ironically, UNM’s former president Chaouki Abdallah back in 2017 made it clear (even before MLG’s “free” college plan that, “Our higher ed spending is more than most other states; the trouble is we don’t spend it wisely and (we) spread it across so many entities. We do need a plan.”

Abdallah went on to say, “UNM has these spires of excellence, best in the world or top five, but like everything else around this state, the average is bad because you have to make sure everyone is taken care of.”

Even prior to free college, New Mexico was among the biggest-spending states on higher education with little to show for it.

Government at all levels in New Mexico has seen unprecedented money flow in (thanks to both the oil and gas industry’s largesse and federal stimulus and bailout $$). Simultaneously, employers face real challenges filling jobs to perform essential services including right here in Albuquerque where the City’s police department remains woefully understaffed while the City continues to break crime records.  

A new audit of the City of Albuquerque (find the ABQ Journal story here) found that one place that is not struggling to find workers is the bloated city government which has seen an explosion in hiring of “unclassified,” or appointed jobs. Among other things the audit found over half of the jobs it reviewed lacked job descriptions and that some high-level workers have been getting raises without documented justification or changed job responsibilities.

The audit also found that the number of unclassified positions had nearly doubled in the time between FY15 to FY22 going from 314 to 620. During the period, 83 employees moved from classified to unclassified positions, receiving salary increases between 22 and 368 percent!

Of the “unclassified” hires studied in the audit “only 21 percent of positions tested had an application and/or a resume on file related to the position, and only 13 percent had evidence demonstrating verification that the applicant met the minimum requirements.”

The following chart is taken directly from the audit. Clearly, the Keller Administration needs to be held accountable for this by City Council, the media, and the public.

On this week’s interview Paul talks to Timothy Vermeer Senior Policy Analyst with the Center for State Tax Policy of the Tax Foundation, one of the oldest and most credible tax policy think tanks in Washington. Vermeer has spent time in New Mexico talking to the Legislature sharing good tax policies and encouraging legislators to take tax policy seriously as a means of developing New Mexico’s economy. His organization has also just published their 2023 State Business Tax Climate Index.

We discuss what New Mexico should do to reform taxes in terms of gross receipts, income, and corporate taxation to name a few given the State’s strong revenue picture.

Local Albuquerque Company ProView Networks, helped Rio Grande Foundation team up with ProView StoryFile technology to allow the public to engage in a virtual environment with candidates and other public figures. The technology allows users to ask questions with the technology selecting the best match. ProView Networks produced the StoryFile conversation in Albuquerque.

The technology offers users the opportunity to sit down with a virtual version of the candidate and ask questions that are relevant to the office they are seeking, about the candidate’s background and their qualifications.

Several candidates were offered the chance to create a Proview “StoryFile” in the waning days of the campaign. Republican Attorney General candidate Jeremy Gay agreed to sit down and answer questions which highlighted everything from the role of the attorney general to his personal philosophy on
important issues in law enforcement and his own biography.

Said Paul Gessing, president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation: “The Rio Grande Foundation’s podcast Tipping Point New Mexico allows me to regularly sit down with some of New Mexico’s most important thought leaders, elected officials, and candidates to discuss the issues facing our State.

Proview/StoryFile is yet another tool that will allow the public an even more intimate way to hear from these people.”

ProView Networks, an Albuquerque, NM based company has partnered with StoryFile, based in Los Angeles, as a production partner. Through this state-of-the art interactive technology, ProView Networks is producing and telling the stories of not only political figures, but prominent people in athletics, entertainment and business as well as preserving historical and family legacies.

To learn and see more, please visit www.proviewnetworks.com and click on StoryFile. For the first time in American politics any voter can sit down with a political candidate to discuss the issues using this exciting technology. You can access it yourself here: 

The environmental movement and their supporters are a funny group. Oftentimes they prefer policies that have objectively negative environmental impacts while ignoring those that would do a great deal to improve environmental outcomes.

An example of the latter is remote or telework. Nationally, the transportation sector contributes 28 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions—the most of any sector—and personal vehicles make up more than half of those emissions. Obviously, not ALL of those are for commuting, but some significant percentage are.

Demographer Wendell Cox has analyzed the latest Census Bureau report called American Community Survey, which reveals a tripling of working from home in 2021, while transit use dropped by more than half from the 2019 pre-pandemic rate.

Cox noted that auto use dropped to the lowest point since before 1970, though it remained the principal means of commuting while Transit commuting dropped to its lowest level in six decades of Census Bureau reporting (2.5%). Today in America 10 times more Americans walk to work or work from home than use mass transit.

New Mexico saw a jump of 10 percentage points in the number of people telecommuting or working remotely as seen below. This means less traffic and less gasoline burnt both sitting in traffic AND commuting.

Yet politicians from the Biden Administration to our own here in New Mexico continue to pump billions of dollars into transit systems like the Rail Runner that no one is riding.

As our previous analysis found, there is strong evidence that states that closed for longer periods of time due to their political leaders’ COVID policies, experienced larger learning loss than states which did not lock down as long.

Again, we’re using Burbio’s school tracking website for time lost in the classroom.

Using 4th grade reading data, the worst performing states saw losses of 8 to  10 points: Delaware, Virginia, Idaho, Maine, Oklahoma, and West Virginia fall into this category. Sadly, DC was among the worst performing jurisdictions, but it was only included in NAEP not Burbio so it has been omitted here.

In terms of time lost in school, DE lost 13th most, Virginia 7th, Idaho 30th, Maine 20th, Oklahoma 31st, and West Virginia 24th . (average lost school time rank  17.5)

In terms of the LEAST BAD performance on NAEP students in a handful of states actually saw an INCREASE in reading scores. Alabama +2, Hawaii +1, Louisiana +2,

In terms of lost time in school, Alabama ranked 33rd, Louisiana 40th while HI ranked 5th. We made the “cut” at zero learning loss, but no states were in that group. Only Alaska had “just” -1 point of learning loss, so we just went with the three states  (average lost school time rank 26).

So, again, Hawaii seems to have uniquely done a good job with virtual learning, but overall, states where students lost more time in classrooms performed worse than those who lost less time.

A new poll from Trafalgar Group puts Mark Ronchetti in the lead against Michelle-Lujan Grisham.

NM “lays an egg” in the latest NAEP education test scores. NM is dead last across all categories (4th grade reading/math & 8th grade reading/math).

MLG and a left wing group are attacking Ronchetti’s tax plans. But their critiques don’t hold water.

New Mexico: the energy state whose federal representatives (minus Herrell) hate energy. Gabe Vasquez would not improve that if he defeated Herrell.

New Mexico’s economy shrank during the first two quarters of 2022. It shrank by more than any of its neighbors in BOTH quarters.

New Mexico among states losing young, wealthy residents.

Paul always votes against bonds. He explains why and why a former UNM President seems to agree with him about Statewide Bond 3.

There’s no sugarcoating it, the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores released earlier this week were awful. But, New Mexico was not alone in seeing big drops. COVID seems to have caused drops across the board. The question is whether those scores were affected by students being locked out of classrooms and to what extent.

There is far too much data in NAEP to correlate everyone on all four tests, but I think 4th grade reading and math are a good place to start. We’ll tackle 4th grade reading tomorrow.

We’re using Burbio’s school tracking website for time lost in the classroom.

Using 4th grade math data, there are 5 states  that saw double-digit losses: Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia. Sadly, DC was included in NAEP but not Burbio.

In terms of time lost in school, DE lost 13th most, Maryland 3rd, New Mexico 6th, New York 18th, and Virginia 7th. (average lost school time rank  9.4) meaning these states lost among the most time in the nation.
In terms of the LEAST loss performance on NAEP students in Wisconsin and Iowa lost one point each. Hawaii, South Dakota, and Nebraska lost two points. No state measured lost Zero.

In terms of lost time in school, WI and IA ranked 15th and 34th while HI ranked 5th, SD 46th, and Nebraska 44th.  (average lost school time rank 28.8).

While these data highlight the fact that there is indeed a correlation between lost classroom time and a drop in NAEP test scores, it would be interesting to see how Hawaii managed to do so well with 4 grade math in remote learning despite losing a great deal of class time.

The following opinion piece appeared in the Las Cruces Sun-News on Sunday, October 23, 2022.

There are numerous important issues on New Mexicans’ ballots as early voting kicks off on October 22^nd. Amendment 2 has not received the same attention as Amendment 1 which relates to pre-K and early childhood spending, but voters will be asked to vote on this important issue also.

Amendment 2 would, if adopted, further weaken New Mexico’s “anti-donation clause” by allowing the Legislature to “appropriate state funds for infrastructure that provides services primarily for residential use—such as internet, electric, natural gas, water, and wastewater.”

The anti-donation clause goes back to New Mexico’s founding. At that time and throughout the decades leading up to it railroads were among the dominant economic interests in the nation. Before adoption of anti-donation clauses government bonds were often given to railroads. These often failed, leaving states and municipalities in debt while enriching the railroad “robber barons” of the day.

Those days are behind us, but special interest groups are always finding new ways to fleece taxpayers of more of their hard-earned money.

While infrastructure includes the aforementioned “infrastructure” items, as with all constitutional amendments the Legislature will finalize the text of the law if it passes muster with voters. Allowing taxpayer funding for private gain could create problems, especially leading to what most New Mexicans would call corruption.

In 2005, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported that a state senator slipped $50,000 into that year’s Christmas Tree (capital outlay) Bill to pave a private road in Pecos where his friend, a registered lobbyist, happened to live. San Miguel County and the Village of Pecos did not request the appropriation and protested that using public dollars to pave a private road is illegal.

That kind of shady deal won’t be illegal anymore if Amendment 2 passes. Rather, because the Legislature and people of the State will have expressed support for it, this kind of activity could spread rapidly throughout New Mexico government.

Rather than further weakening New Mexico’s anti-donation clause, we’d like to see it strengthened and restored. Over the years the effectiveness of the clause has been undermined by bipartisan advocates of corporate welfare. Specifically, the Legislature allowed local governments to “provide land, buildings or infrastructure for facilities to support new or expanding businesses.”

While the theory behind “corporate welfare,” that is, giving businesses special benefits to get them to come to New Mexico may seem like a good way to bring businesses to the State, the economists of all political stripes agree that such efforts ultimately harm taxpayers, lead to corruption of government officials, and are inefficient and thus prone to failure.

New Mexico has a long history of failed “corporate welfare” efforts. Remember Eclipse Aviation which received $100 million of your tax dollars under Bill Richardson only to go bust? Spaceport America was built for the express benefit of billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, received $250 million in taxpayer subsidies. The facility has been open for 11 years now and has yet to launch a single paid space tourism flight.

When given the chance voters often oppose corporate welfare. Last November Albuquerque voters rightly saw the proposed New Mexico United stadium as nothing short of corporate welfare and overwhelmingly rejected taxpayer financing for it at the ballot box. Now, the team is moving toward building its own stadium, likely with private financing.

New Mexico’s anti-donation clause is an important protection for New Mexico taxpayers against the unholy alliance of powerful special interests and big government. Government already has plenty of tools available to generate economic development including adopting better tax and regulatory policies for all. Amendment 2 would take New Mexico in the wrong direction.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility

On this week’s conversation Paul interviews Ben Lieberman of Competitive Enterprise Institute. Ben and Paul discuss federal and state efforts to micromanage how your homes are heated with new regulations from the Biden Administration pushing to make natural gas less preferable relative to electric heat pumps and other electrical options.

Paul and Ben also discuss the latest on CAFE standards on automobiles and what’s next for all manner of government environmental regulations. 

The news cycle moves quickly nowadays and the debate over whether the two consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage experienced by the US in the first two quarters of 2022 qualified as a “recession” or not seems like a distant memory at this point.

Here is a post made in July about Q1 2022 showing New Mexico’s economy shrinking even more than most states .

What did Q2 look like for New Mexico (the second quarter of national shrinkage)? Yet again, New Mexico’s economy shrank once again. Notably, in BOTH quarters New Mexico’s economy shrank the fastest among its neighbors. This, despite an ongoing and unprecedented boom in New Mexico’s Permian Basin.

Notably, Texas’ economy GREW in Q2. Also, in BOTH quarters, New Mexico DRAMATICALLY underperformed the nation economy with an economy that shrank much faster than the US as a whole.

In an attempt to call gubernatorial candidate Mark Ronchetti’s tax cut plan into question Voices for Children and their “action” arm have released an “analysis” of Ronchetti’s plan that simply fails to hold up under basic scrutiny.

You can read an article about the analysis here and their actual analysis here. The gist of it is as follows. Voices notes that New Mexico’s general fund budget is $8.4 billion and that Ronchetti’s plan will reduce revenues by $2 billion annually. They claim this is a problem that will result in spending cuts and the like.

But all you need to do is to consider some basic information to see that Voices is just wrong. Here is the basic budget lowdown. The LFC estimates New Mexico will bring in “$10.9 billion in revenue for the coming fiscal year.” That’s more than double the $5.4 billion in revenue the state took in just over a decade ago” meaning the budget has grown tremendously.

So, if Ronchetti’s plan were to kick in, New Mexico’s expected revenues for FY 2024 (the coming fiscal year, we are CURRENTLY in FY 2023) would be “only” $8.9 billion instead of $10.9 billion. That’s STILL a healthy increase from where spending is today. It also represents a static approach meaning that NO positive financial impact is contemplated from New Mexicans having all of those additional tax dollars in their pockets.

There are numerous other changes that COULD be made to either reduce spending OR improve New Mexico’s economy and thus generate more money. ALSO, Ronchetti’s rebate plan is contingent on oil and gas revenues, so if THEY go down, so do the rebates and the cost of his plan.

With an election looming and ALL three members of New Mexico’s House delegation up for reelection (not to mention Gov. and the Legislature), it is worth reminding voters just how reliant the State is on energy production.

New Mexico is #2 in the nation in oil production;

New Mexico is among the top 10 natural gas producing states;

About 40% of the State budget is derived from oil and natural gas.

One might think that New Mexico would elect political leaders that are broadly supportive of the Industry, but you would be wrong. As RGF’s president has argued in the past, voters in this “relatively poor, but oil-rich Western state elect(s) politicians that are so directly at odds with its economic best interest.”

A recently-published report from the pro-energy American Energy Alliance only reiterates with the following results on its report card. And Gabe Vasquez, running against pro-energy Rep. Yvette Herrell in a hotly-contested race would only shift the balance even further away from rational energy policy having  “argued in favor of opposing fracking, the Green New Deal and the “extremely toxic fossil fuel industry” according to CNN.

No matter where you live in New Mexico (and around the nation) you will be asked to vote on a large number of bonds this election. Statewide we have three bonds on the ballot (senior facilities, libraries, and higher education). In Bernalillo County there are an additional five bonds.

You will be told that voting “yes” won’t raise your taxes (usually property tax). What is left unsaid is that rejecting even ONE bond would result in LOWER taxes.

Sadly, at least in “blue” Bernalillo County, but seemingly in blue New Mexico as well, bonds almost never fail. So, a failed bond or two every few years would ensure that politicians know voters are paying attention and won’t just blindly support whatever they serve up. If I had to pick one to kill statewide it would be Bond 3 for higher education. Locally, I’d look closely at transportation and public housing.

According to a new report from Smart Asset, New Mexico is among the states losing 35 year olds who earn $100,000 or more. Neighboring states including Colorado, Texas, Arizona, and Utah were among the most popular for those “rich” young professionals while Oklahoma was a net loser as well. Seven of the nine zero income tax states (Alaska and Wyoming being the exceptions) saw net additions of young people.

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