As we have noted time and time again, New Mexico’s Spaceport has never lived up to expectations (it will have been open for 11 years this October). And, while the Legislature has generally accepted the continued failure of the promised manned space tourism industry to “take off,” hearings occasionally shed light on the topic.

In this story KOB Channel 4 cites Spaceport personnel claiming that 65% of the Spaceport’s operating expenses are generated by leases and customers. The same article notes that the “Legislature provided about $2 million in general fund dollar.”

So, in addition to the $250 million taxpayers fronted to build the facility, it continues to cost taxpayers millions more to operate annually. And (news flash) it’s not going to be “self sufficient” anytime soon.

And that brings us to Sen. Joe Cervantes’ wish that taxpayers statewide help pay down construction bonds on the white elephant near Truth or Consequences. A regional gross receipts tax, approved in 2009 is levied in Sierra County, but a vast majority of the funding comes from Doña Ana County. According to the New Mexican, “Half of the estimated $250 million investment in the facility came from the Legislature, and the other half is being covered by the (local) gross receipts tax.”

Cervantes took to Twitter to (aptly) compare funding of the two Bill Richardson-era projects the Spaceport and Rail Runner (both of which the Rio Grande Foundation has long-criticized as wasteful boondoggles).

Are you concerned about what is being taught in Albuquerque Public Schools classrooms? How about local private schools? Do you want more education choice? Or, are you interested in finding out more about the new Mom’s For Liberty chapter which will be engaging in education advocacy throughout Bernalillo County?  Perhaps you’d even want to start a chapter elsewhere?

You are invited to attend an education open house. Details and RSVP information on this free event below.

Or you can RSVP Here

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” (New Mexico voters apparently) The source of this quote is often said to be Albert Einstein, but if newly-released polls for New Mexico Gov. and other statewide offices are to be believed, New Mexico voters seem to think that the party that has dominated New Mexico politics since 1929 (the Democrats) is doing a fabulous job.

New Mexico DOES have a massive $2.5 billion surplus thanks largely to the oil and gas industry which many Democrats love to hate and which they would like to get rid of.  I won’t recount all the myriad ways in which New Mexico badly trails other states in terms of policy-influenced outcomes, but it is not pretty. New Mexico trails nearly every other state on most major economic, COVID, education, and crime policies.

Are New Mexicans simply resigned to failing relative to other states? Do they feel comfortable knowing that 40% of the State budget comes from an industry (oil and gas) that the ruling party both in NM and nationally wishes to destroy?

Do they care that young people are moving out of state to find jobs, better schools, and less crime?

Do they care that Michelle Lujan Grisham unnecessarily locked their children out of school for over a year with nothing to show for it  but massive learning loss?

Do they care that New Mexico ALREADY has a doctor shortage and that a newly-passed medical malpractice law will only worsen the situation.

New Mexico is an extremely unique place for many reasons: great weather, beauty, outdoor activities, and culture, but it also seems to have a uniquely-self destructive bent to its politics. None of this is to say that one or the other political party has all the answers, but that over 90 years of single-party legislative rule is not working.

There is a life-or-death issue facing New Mexicans. It has been widely reported on in the media and is important to New Mexicans from all walks of life. Voters will have a lot to say about it this November. The issue is our shortage of medical professionals.

If you live in rural New Mexico you have likely faced severe challenges in finding specialists for years, but according to one recent report, 32 of New Mexico’s 33 counties (excepting Los Alamos) face a shortage of primary care physicians. This doesn’t even consider the shortage of specialists which is even more pronounced in certain fields.

Reports have reiterated the fact that (as our population ages and our doctors age as well), our State faces an even greater need for doctors in the years ahead.

Like most challenges facing New Mexico, poor public policy is a problem. The most obvious reform needed is for the Legislature to repeal HB 75, which passed in the 2021 session and was signed by Gov. Lujan Grisham. Implementation of the law was subsequently delayed, but if it is it will make New Mexico an even less attractive place for doctors to work than it already is, worsening our shortage of medical professionals.

Here are a few details:

The Medical Malpractice Act (HB 75) increased the cap on malpractice lawsuits. That means physicians can be sued for a great deal more for punitive (punishment) damages, up to $4 million. That number rises to $6 million in just a few years. To give a comparison, in doctor-friendly Texas, the cap is limited to $250,000).

Because the cap is so high now, many Insurance Companies won’t cover doctors in private practices that do procedures like colonoscopies or other in-office surgeries. In other words, doctors can’t get malpractice insurance to cover them because they are too risky to insurance companies.

As one prominent Democrat doctor wrote in an article written earlier this year, “Our Governor is aware of the issues, but Democrats are often influenced by the Trial Attorneys because they are big contributors to the Democratic Party and, of course, they stand to gain a whole lot of money from such a large increase in the ‘cap.’

Another self-inflicted misstep that has resulted in a loss of medical professionals is Gov. Lujan Grisham’s vaccine mandate on medical professionals. While specific numbers are hard to come by, it is hard to justify such a mandate given that COVID vaccines have not prevented the spread of COVID. In August 2021 media reports quoted Dr. David Scrase as saying 90% of nurses were vaccinated and roughly 3,000 healthcare workers in New Mexico were unvaccinated.

We don’t know exactly how many medical professionals left New Mexico due to the Gov.’s vaccine mandate, but even a few hundred is far too many. And, the Gov.’s vaccine mandate continues to remain in effect along with her public health orders.

Finally, a simple way to attract more doctors is to stop taxing them. Although often hidden from the public, doctors in New Mexico often must pay gross receipts tax on services provided to Medicaid patients and “fee for service” patients.

Lawmakers recently announced the State has a $2.5 billion surplus headed into the 2023 legislative session. Reform of the gross receipts tax, including repeal of this tax on medical services, is a must that can be done with minimal revenue loss.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates more than 30 percent of New Mexico’s population will be over age 60 by the year 2030, an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2012. All of us need doctors, but as New Mexico ages the need becomes critical. There is no panacea, but these are some of  the worst policy obstacles to attracting medical providers to our State.

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

UPDATED: This piece has been updated to reflect that New Mexico has not formally committed itself to adopting California’s new rule.

Today, August 25, 2022, the California Air Resources Board, voted to eliminate the sale of internal combustion engines in the State of California by 2035. Here’s an article about the policy and confirmation that they indeed have enacted it.

How does this apply to New Mexico? As RGF discussed in National Review and other news outlets a few months ago, Gov. Lujan Grisham (acting through an unelected board) has ordered New Mexico to follow California’s “clean car” rules. That means, what California does, we may do the same if MLG wishes to stick with California.

California’s rule also mandates 35% of new vehicles sold in 2026 be zero-emission with increasing percentages each year. In New Mexico during the first quarter of 2022 “electric vehicles” accounted for just 3.66% of new vehicle sales.

So, IF Michelle Lujan Grisham were to be reelected and thus keep New Mexico in lockstep with California, the number of EV’s sold in New Mexico will have to grow 10X as a percent of ALL vehicles sold in just four years.

The Biden Administration recently issued regulations attacking charter schools. The Rio Grande Foundation submitted comments against this attack, but we and other charter advocates were ignored. Caleb Kruckenberg is an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation. He is suing the Biden Administration over this issue. Paul and Caleb also discuss the use and abuse of administrative law and how it impacts this and other important public policies.

Today President Biden announced a plan to eliminate $10,000 of debt per borrower for those earning less than $125,000 per year, while those who paid for college using Pell Grants are eligible for a $20,000 loan cancellation. Biden also decided to extend the pause on federal student loan repayment to January 2023 and will permit borrowers with undergraduate loans to cap payments at 5% of monthly income.

This plan is awful for a number of reasons, but here are a few:

1) It’s illegal: Congress holds the “power of the purse.” For a party that so often wraps itself in the banner of “democracy,” the modern Democratic Party LOVES unilateral executive action.

2) It’s expensive: Biden’s plan will cost $298 billion in 2022 and a total of $329 billion by 2031.

3) It’s unfair. While not AS “regressive” as a forgiveness plan lacking income limits, less than 32% of the funding would benefit Americans in the two lowest income quintiles, while 42% would benefit those earning more than $82,400 per year.

4) It’s not fair (part 2). Nearly half of all New Mexicans identify as Hispanic, but according to data from Student Loan Hero, while 20.0% of white families hold student debt only 14.3% of Hispanic families do. Meanwhile, white families owe a median of $23,000 while Hispanic families owe “just” $17,600 .

5) The federal student loan program has contributed greatly to rising college costs. Pouring more tax money into the program will do nothing to change out-of-control college costs in the future.

As November looms and the legislative session follows, policymakers are already working on their “wish lists” for the $2.5 billion in “new money” available (thanks in large part to the booming oil and gas industry). Of course, as data from the website USGovernmentspending.com (below) highlights , in FY 2023 (the current fiscal year), New Mexico State spending consumes a greater percentage of the New Mexico economy than does any other state.

Of course, this is BEFORE what we can only imagine will be another year of massive spending growth for the State.

New Mexico has another very big surplus. What should and shouldn’t be done with the surplus money?

An opinion piece by one “progressive” legislator calls out their Democrat critics calling them ignorant or shills for the rich. We discuss.

NM’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.5% in July and MLG is taking full credit, but New Mexico’s rate remains the highest among US states as it has been for 8 straight months. But, as an RGF opinion piece notes, workforce participation remains an issue and the state must encourage people to work.

PNM hasn’t merged with Avangrid (yet), but their marketing materials seem to have. What’s the deal? Is this even legal?

APS and their union are at an impasse, what does that mean and what are the issues at hand?

There is an issue affecting the health and even lives of tens of thousands of New Mexicans’ on a daily basis. State government policies have a big impact on the issue, but it has been largely ignored in the campaigns to date. The issue is New Mexico’s doctor shortage and the impact of New Mexico’s medical malpractice legislation (HB 75, passed in the 2021 session, but with delayed implementation) which will make New Mexico an even less attractive place for doctors to work than it already is, thus worsening our shortage of medical professionals.

Check out this detailed takedown of the law by an MD writing on a Democratic party website. Here are a few of the highlights:

1) Medical Malpractice Act (HB 75) increased the “cap” on malpractice lawsuits. That means physicians can be sued for a great deal more for punitive (punishment) damages, up to $4 million. That number rises to $6 million in just a few years. To give a comparison, in Texas, the “cap” is limited to $250,000.);

2) Because the “cap” is so high now, many Insurance Companies won’t cover doctors in private practices that do procedures like colonoscopies or other in-office surgeries. In other words, doctors can’t get malpractice insurance to cover them because the risk is too great to the insurance company;

3) Our Governor is well aware of the issues, but Democrats are often influenced by the Trial Attorneys because they are big contributors to the Democratic Party and, of course, they stand to gain a whole lot of money from such a large increase in the “cap”;

4) Because of this law, the physician shortage will get worse if this issue isn’t resolved.

The Legislature desperately needs to address this issue, but at best Lujan Grisham won’t do so before an election for which she needs the Trial Lawyers’ money. At worst, she simply won’t address the issue at all and will let doctors leave New Mexico in droves.

The Albuquerque Teachers Federation is NOT happy. The union has declared an impasse in negotiations with the newly-reconstituted, more parent-driven (as opposed to union-driven) board. According to one union document, “Power was a central theme. Some members of the Board of Education stated we have too much power to make educational decisions for our students. They said we have “taken” their power and it’s the board who should make educational decisions about what and how we teach.”

To be clear, under New Mexico statute, it is clearly state that the School Board “Develop(s) educational policies for the school district.” So, yeah, it IS the Board’s job.

We at the Rio Grande Foundation are still gathering information on this situation, but when it comes to unions, it is indeed ALL ABOUT POWER. Notably, while the APS unions is empowered to negotiate on behalf of ALL district employees, the reality is that less than 50% of eligible APS staff are members of the union. According to data requested from the District, 12,000 APS employees are covered by bargaining agreements but only 5,354 are actually members of the union.

And, if the unions want teachers to have more power over what and how they teach in the classroom, perhaps their work should be measured and (heaven-forbid) their “customers” (families and children) should be empowered to choose the options that work best for them. A captive customer base is certainly not the hallmark of competent, responsible professionals.

How long will this impasse last and what does it mean? It should result in some kind of compromise with a slightly renegotiated agreement. Who controls what is taught in APS classrooms? The APS board is elected by voters while the unions are not. You can watch the APS board meeting after which the “impasse” was declared here. 

The proposed contract can be found here.

New Mexico, fresh off a 15 percent spending increase, has ANOTHER $2.5 billion in “new” money (basically a budget surplus). Who knows what big-spending schemes the Legislature will cook up for the 2023 legislative session? Of course, what happens with that cash depends A LOT on what happens in November.

Here are the top 5 things the Legislature SHOULD do with the money (and a few things to avoid);

1) Address the gross receipts tax and both its “pyramiding” (taxes paid on top of taxes) as well as its taxes on business input services is an ABSOLUTE must. It won’t “cost” much in the grand scheme of things and as analysts told the Legislature recently, it is a big factor holding our state back.

2) AFTER the GRT is reformed, New Mexico should begin phasing down (and out) both personal and corporate income taxes. 9 states currently have NO personal income tax.  The corporate income tax only accounts for $200 million or so annually. It is time to diversify our economy and New Mexico can do so by eliminating the corporate income tax.

3) Pay down pension debt while reforming them AND giving workers freedom to invest their OWN retirement funds. Yes, that’s a lot, but New Mexico’s underfunded pensions are in need of not only more funding, but fundamental transformation. Dumping more tax dollars into them is not a particularly good idea, but paired with needed reforms and increased worker control, this is a worthy approach.

4) Infrastructure: repave our roads and bridges, water projects. While New Mexico roads are ranked okay nationally (despite our dangerous drivers) e all know of certain roads that need to be paved/improved across our State. It is time to get this infrastructure in top shape. Same with water. It is time to make every drop count and explore innovative approaches to improving our future water security.

5) Bring/keep more medical professionals. New Mexico needs more medical professionals. While basic reforms to our new, harmful medical malpractice law are essential, improving Medicaid reimbursement (and ending the GRT on medical services as part of a broader GRT reform) are two ways to make New Mexico a more attractive place for medical providers.

Things we don’t need

1) Another year of massive spending growth. New Mexico’s state spending as a percent of GDP is the highest in the USA in FY 2023 (vastly outpacing its neighbors as seen below). Broad new spending increases are not going to improve our State;

2) Socking the money away: this is only deferred spending growth. New Mexico needs to act prudently with this money to address important policy shortcomings NOW.

MLG extends her health orders again. Scrase claims “success” but with what evidence given New Mexico’s objectively poor COVID performance.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was here in NM recently. While MLG and her political allies call him “extreme,” there are few metrics on which New Mexico outperforms Florida when one considers economy, education, crime, and COVID. 

And, as if we haven’t talked about various rankings enough, New Mexico policymakers were recently presented with a variety of negative metrics.

Sadly, the Democrat legislators quoted in the article seem motivated to ignore NM’s poor rankings.

European energy prices should be a warning to Americans.

No electric car on the road today would qualify or electric vehicle credit in recently-passed federal legislation. 

At Monday’s meeting the City of Albuquerque Council placed a moratorium on proposed homeless encampments but kept the $250,000 in place to fund Planned Parenthood.

New Mexico’s Democratic Party, always liberal especially considering their incredibly long grip on power, has moved even further to the left in recent years. The 2022 election is in some ways a test of whether “moderate” Democrats in New Mexico are willing to continue down the “progressive” path no matter how far to the left they go. By our estimation (due in part to the governing obstacle presented by Gov. Susana Martinez), the government of New Mexico moved dramatically to the left starting in 2019 with the Lujan Grisham Administration.

Progressive Angeilica Rubio, one of those aforementioned “progressives,” took an interesting approach to defending “progressive” governance in the Albuquerque Journal recently. She cites some supposed accomplishments in the form of new government mandates and benefits: establishing statewide earned sick leave, raising the minimum wage, increasing the Working Families Tax Credit, increasing teacher salaries, and making our communities, land, water and air safer.

What she fails to mention is New Mexico’s failing education system, failing our kids, failing economy, and the fact that New Mexico is losing its young people to other states. Finally, to the extent New Mexico HAS expanded its social benefits, it has done so in part due to the largesse of an industry that she and the “progressives” would like to eliminate (oil and gas).

Finally, New Mexico has been controlled by Democrats (especially in the Legislature) for most of the last 100 years with the GOP having never had governing control since 1930. Voters need to ask progressives to answer for the failures of decades of Democrat policies before they send New Mexico even further to the left politically.

In what can only be called a big change of heart at Albuquerque’s City Council, a 6-3 majority changed directions and instituted a one year moratorium on “safe spaces” for the so-called homeless at Monday’s meeting. While the “safe spaces” concept has potential, it cannot be the only approach taken by the City of Albuquerque to address the issue. Enforcement of rules against camping in public parks, panhandling, and crime issues MUST be undertaken as part of any effort to create “safe spaces.”

Unfortunately and somewhat shockingly, the City Council failed to redirect $250,000 the Council “donated” to Planned Parenthood recently. The funds would have been redirected to Barrett House shelter, which aids women and children experiencing homelessness. Instead, Council kept the $250,000 in place while also handing an additional $100,000 to Barrett House and $100,000 to a community energy efficiency project.

City officials claim the City’s “contract” with Planned Parenthood covers only certain health care services, such as breast exams, cancer screening and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. The Planned Parenthood funding and additional funding was supported by a 5-4 majority that included Trudy Jones.

The ABQ Journal (presumably) capped off its series of reports on New Mexico’s poor workforce participation rate with an excellent editorial and appropriate cartoon by Trever.

Unlike the articles by the various reporters who relied on comments from politicians, the editorial board provided much more robust discussion of reforming welfare programs, improved vocational education, and broadly incentivizing work.

We welcome the Journal’s coverage of the issue and hope that New Mexico’s elected officials will do something productive to address the issue.

Surprising absolutely no one, Gov. Lujan Grisham has (yet again) extended her public health order relating to COVID 19 for another few weeks, this time until August 26.

There are some changes in the latest order to limit the amount of reporting necessary by businesses and other entities, but the fact remains that Lujan Grisham shows no signs of abandoning her “emergency” powers.

An interesting quote from David Scrase as the Gov.’s COVID advisor attempts to justify what can only be described as a failed response to COVID by the Lujan Grisham Administration, “Over the past eight months we have excelled in implementing the tools to minimize the spread of COVID-19 such as: vaccines, boosters, home testing and oral treatments that have helped reduce hospitalizations and deaths.”

Sadly, New Mexico ranks 6th highest in deaths per capita due to COVID and New Mexico was ranked 3rd-worst among US states by the definitive study of state COVID responses:

Recently, a group of New Mexico legislators heard numerous negative comments regarding the State’s business climate from national organizations like Tax Foundation and the Council on State Taxation.

As Dan Boyd at the Albuquerque Journal noted, New Mexico achieves poor marks in several categories relating to business taxation. Here are a few choice quotes, “I think we have to take a lot of those so-called rankings with a grain of salt,” Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos. Furthermore, Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos, said factors like a state’s population and average income levels should be factored into tax rankings, but frequently are not.

These comments reflect nothing more than a case of denial. There are two kinds of data: anecdotes and hard data and if New Mexico was one of the fastest growing, most economically successful states (independent of the oil and gas industry), that would be one thing, but very few people believe that New Mexico has a thriving, diversified economy that could survive a major hit to the oil and gas industry on which it relies.

And it’s not JUST economic policy on which New Mexico fails, our policymakers are also failing our kids as the recent “Kids Count” report highlights. These people have no plan to improve New Mexico so they simply deny that a problem exists.

With GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis coming to Southeast NM over the weekend in support of Mark Ronchetti’s campaign to unseat Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, some current and former Democrat politicos in New Mexico have attempted to throw “shade” at DeSantis.

Mark likes to pretend to be a moderate, but then there’s this. pic.twitter.com/9mcHcjxZIG

— Matthew McQueen (@mcqueenfornm) August 9, 2022

Rep. Liz Thomson also had these “kind” words to say about DeSantis regarding his more open COVID policies.

But whatever you think of DeSantis, it is hard to find ANY significant policy area where Democrat-dominated New Mexico performs better than DeSantis’ state of Florida (which has been much more politically-competitive but overall more conservative).

Despite Rep. Thomson’s statement above, Florida has performed better on COVID;

On the recently-released “Kids Count” report (by a left wing think tank), Florida ranked 35th while New Mexico came in dead-last.

According to Wallethub, New Mexico spends the 28th most on K-12 while our results are 51st while Florida spends 44th most but performs 14th-best.

RGF put the following together awhile back on a variety of data points which all point towards Florida.

If you can find a legitimate measure of governance in which New Mexico outperforms Florida, please email it to us: info@riograndefoundation.org

The problems faced in many European countries that have abandoned traditional energy sources has been exposed due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. European nations will either adopt better policies or continue to suffer. And by suffer it isn’t just prices, in Germany they are rationing hot water now and telling people to prepare for home heating to be limited this winter.

It is not widely known by Americans that the UK banned “fracking” in 2019. The UK actually has decent prospects for oil and gas, but the anti-fracking policy makes it impossible to get them. What does this mean in practice? It means massive increases in utility bills in the UK which also means that businesses and energy-intensive industries will be unable to compete.

If US and New Mexico policymakers from Joe Biden to Martin Heinrich and Michelle Lujan Grisham have their way, we’ll be energy poor like Europe soon.

Gov. Lujan Grisham has announced a new $123 million grant program to expand broadband access in New Mexico. The effort, financed in part through legislation passed in the Legislature in the 2021 special session  will award grants to cover up to 75 percent of total project costs for network expansion in unserved and underserved areas of the state. See graphic below:

Interestingly, one of the prime beneficiaries of this spending is Sceye with operations in New Mexico which is supposed to launch dirigibles to provide broadband service to areas lacking traditional broadband. Sceye’s general council is none other than Rep. Dayan Hochman-Vigil. Of course Hochman-Vigil was present in the Legislature to vote on HB 2 in the affirmative.

On this week’s interview Paul sits down with Republican Attorney General candidate Jeremy Gay. Paul and Jeremy discuss the role of Attorney General in New Mexico. What can he do to fight out-of-control crime? What are some limits of the office? What is the role of the AG in the economy? Will Jeremy allow billionaires like Michael Bloomberg pay the salaries of employees in the AG’s office as current AG Hector Balderas has done? Gessing and Gay discuss this and numerous other issues.

Whatever you may think of the PNM/Avangrid merger that had been rejected by all five members of New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission, the folks at Seeking Alpha seem to be on-target in their view that the merger is a “likely to close.”

Based on conversations and marketing materials like that below, it appears that once Gov.  Lujan Grisham names the new Commission to their seats on January 1 (under New Mexico’s new constitutional amendment), they will approve the merger.  After all, you don’t get the kind of branded marketing materials like for this upcoming balloon glow in Corrales without some level of confidence that the merger is indeed happening.