Back in April of 2022 the City of Albuquerque (thankfully) ended its absurd and    ecologically-harmful plastic bag mandate. Now, Democrats in the New Mexico Legislature are pushing legislation (SB 243) that would impose a statewide plastic bag ban. The bill heads to Senate Tax Business and Transportation Committee. 

There is simply no justification for such onerous regulation. Even National Public Radio covered the issue in 2019 asking, “Are plastic bag bans garbage?” As NPR noted (of a bag ban study):

Bag bans did what they were supposed to: People in the cities with the bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 40 million fewer pounds of plastic trash per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. “What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect.

On this week’s conversation Paul talks to Daniel Suhr an attorney with the Liberty Justice Center, a conservative public interest law firm. The firm is best known for representing Mark Janus in the landmark Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court case.

Currently the Liberty Justice Center is representing the Rio Grande Foundation on two important cases. One deals with Albuquerque City Council “donating” your tax dollars to Planned Parenthood. The other lawsuit is against NM’s Secretary of State and rules that limit free speech. 

February 17, 2023 marks one year since New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham eliminated New Mexico’s indoor mask mandate. All reasonable New Mexicans are happy to be done with masks although you still see some wearing them (as is their right).

A recent, definitive study of masks by the Cochrane Library found (as we said long ago) that masks “made little or no difference” on COVID 19.

This is an anniversary worthy of celebration. The bad news? Two bills that would have limited the power of this and future governors in an “emergency” were killed in committee yesterday (with all Democrats in House Judiciary voting to kill them). After three years of COVID New Mexico is one of just a handful of states still in an emergency.

Friday the 17th will mark one year since Gov. Lujan Grisham ended New Mexico’s mask mandate. A new, perhaps the most comprehensive analysis of the issue says mask mandates don’t work.

A bill to reform New Mexico’s GRT has been introduced and Gov. MLG supports it. Find out more about HB 367 here.

Legislation targeting nuclear storage facility passed the NM Senate.

HB 28 which would have indexed New Mexico’s minimum wage to inflation has failed.

RGF has data highlighting the fact that NM’s Legislature has become increasingly partisan in recent years.

WalMart closing San Mateo store. Local activists are concerned about “food desert”. Paul and Wally discuss what is causing this and the fundamental issues at play.

A new report ranks New Mexico a mediocre 31st for remote work. 

Alamogordo Public Schools’ superintendent was recently put on leave for some remarks. Wally and Paul have the story here.

A hidden video recently came out showing Alamogordo’s School Superintendent both blasting his own community and talking about how he and his “team” smuggle Critical Race Theory ideology into the schools. The video was put out by Casey and Micayle Petersen Founders of Freedom Families United. Casey was a  Sandia National Labs Whistle Blower and the couple appeared on Tipping Point NM to discuss their activism.

You can see the video of the Superintendent below:

The current legislative session MAY see long-overdue changes to the State’s gross receipts tax. Reform may or may not happen this session, but it has been introduced and even Gov. MLG supports it.

But New Mexico still needs to embrace further tax reforms including to its personal income tax. Texas is notable for its zero income tax and strong economy. Arizona just dropped its top income tax rate to 2.5%. Even in deep blue Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis has said he wants to eliminate his State’s personal income tax.  Utah is considering income tax cuts and so is Oklahoma.

Despite New Mexico having a historically-large budget surplus, sadly, no serious income tax reductions are being discussed in the Land of Enchantment. Crazier still is the fact that HB 119 which would put NM’s top rate at 6.9% was not dismissed immediately as foolhardy.  During Gov. Bill Richardson’s Administration New Mexico’s income tax was reduced from 8.2% to 4.9%. It was widely seen (by economists) as an economic success. Sadly, Democrats since then have been pushing to increase taxes on personal income.

On this week’s conversation Paul sat down with Hal Stratton. Hal is a former New Mexico legislator and the only Republican Attorney General to serve New Mexico in modern history. He also co-founded the Rio Grande Foundation back in 2000. Paul and Hal discuss the founding of the Foundation and his reasons for helping to create it. Finally, they discuss Hal’s tenure as Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). The CPSC recently made headlines when one of President Biden’s commissioners publicly discussed banning gas stoves.

Legislation, HB 367, has been introduced in the New Mexico Legislature,  that would reduce New Mexico’s GRT rate by an additional 0.25 percent tax (on top of a .25% reduction that is already being implemented) meaning the state’s gross receipts tax rate would drop to 4.625% in July. You can read news reports no the plan here and here.

What’s even more critical is that this proposal would FINALLY address the biggest current problem with New Mexico’s gross receipts tax (pyramiding of taxes especially those on business services).

This is genuinely good news and both Gov. Lujan Grisham AND Rep. Jason Harper (who has been dogged in his determination to address this issue) deserve credit for taking it on.

So far the main opposition comes from revenue-rich local governments like Albuquerque which says it could lose up to $30 million under the proposal. Will the proposed reform have enough momentum to get over the finish line? Would some kind of “hold-harmless” like what was done when Bill Richardson ended the tax on groceries help? We don’t know but we are certainly pleased with this development.

Which counties are New Mexico’s economic drivers? A new study from the Arrowhead Center at NMSU has the details.

School Choice managed to pass out of a committee last week: SB 113 by Sen. Ortiz y Pino would create a system of tax credits for school choice and it moved out of its first committee. Here are where things stand now that the session has been going on for 3 weeks as of Tuesday.

The ABQ Journal took a look at New Mexico’s medical provider shortage. 

New Mexico now produces more oil than the nation of Mexico. 

Legislative consultants are again pushing the narrative that New Mexico faces a “budgetary abyss” if something bad happens to the oil/gas industry. They may be correct, but NM faces plenty of problems already and has tended to waste the oil and gas money available to it already. Here is an op-ed written by the consultants.

The Rio Grande Foundation tracks and rates legislation in New Mexico and has done so since 2014 (find our Freedom Index archive here). Bills are given scores as bad as -8 and as good as +8 and when those bills move to the floor for votes, the points with a “yes” or “no” vote are attributed to all of the legislators in both parties.

Currently just a few floor votes have been tallied, but that number is starting to grow along with the numbers associated with each legislator. We strongly encourage citizens and anyone interested in what is happening in New Mexico to check out our Freedom Index and use it.

A side benefit of our software provider BillTrack50 is some interesting “data nuggets.” For example, the chart below shows whether bills enacted by the Legislature and Gov. were sponsored by Democrats, Republicans, or both parties. Understanding that a Republican, Susana Martinez was Gov. from 2010 through 2018, Democrats remained quite influential in passing bills throughout that time.

Since Lujan-Grisham and the Democrats took over all three branches of New Mexico government in 2019, the number of GOP-sponsored bills passing began to shrink dramatically. Just one GOP-sponsored bill passed in 2022.

You can find out more interesting nuggets for yourself here.

Considering New Mexico’s usual location at the top of the bad lists and bottom of the good ones New Mexico’s 31st ranking on a new National Taxpayers Union Foundation report which ranks the US states on their attractiveness as places to work remotely. You can find the full report here.

Since the COVID 19 Pandemic remote work has become an increasingly popular option including right here in New Mexico.

The authors had the following to say about New Mexico’s status as a work-from-home location:

While the states that come out best are those with no income tax, there are lots of other things that states can do to make their policy environments friendlier to remote workers.

The state manages to salvage an average rank by virtue of its 16-day withholding threshold. Though this is half the gold standard of 31 days, a 16-day threshold is a not-insubstantial protection. New Mexico could improve its rank further by reaching reciprocity agreements with high-traffic neighbors and instituting a filing threshold to benefit individual mobile employees.

To improve, New Mexico should consider adopting a defined-day filing threshold and raising its existing withholding threshold to greater than 30 days, as well as entering into reciprocity agreements with neighboring states.

Of course, with the massive surplus New Mexico policymakers have available to them, they could and should consider reducing income taxes. You can click through on the interactive map below.

!function(e,i,n,s){var t=”InfogramEmbeds”,d=e.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];if(window[t]&&window[t].initialized)window[t].process&&window[t].process();else if(!e.getElementById(n)){var o=e.createElement(“script”);o.async=1,o.id=n,o.src=”https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js”,d.parentNode.insertBefore(o,d)}}(document,0,”infogram-async”);

In Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal two stories highlighted the self-inflicted policy issue that are pushing doctors out of New Mexico. You can see the articles for yourself here and here along with a telling chart below.

The stories echoed RGF’s solutions which include addressing the medical malpractice bill passed a few years ago, reducing Medicaid dependency, and eliminating GRT taxation of medical services (as we pointed out in a new report).

One of the challenging aspects of policies like the medical malpractice bill (HB 75 in 2021) is that it was a “compromise.” Trial attorneys and Democrats were pushing even worse legislation on the issue, so final passage of the bill attracted support from numerous GOP senators (you can find out who at the link).

New Mexico’s problems (like nearly all of them) are driven by bad public policy. But until voters hold the politicians accountable for their bad policies, we will continue to get more of them.

We have already expressed our reservations about the New Mexico Legislature’s “favorite” consultant PFM and their recommendations. But, in yet another recent Albuquerque Journal article we (and the Legislature) are told again that if New Mexico’s oil and gas industry “go bust” the State will face dire budgetary and economic conditions.

New Mexico is indeed over-reliant on oil and gas, but as I point out below, that’s not the State’s biggest issue. Rio Grande Foundation is at the forefront of researching and advocating for policies that would diversify our economy, here are a few points PFM is missing.

1). See the chart below, oil and gas in New Mexico is being driven by new discoveries. Prices could go down for a sustained period of time and that would be a challenge, but oil and gas are not “going away” anytime soon. Stop the fearmongering.

2). With serious social and economic issues New Mexico policymakers should be considering ways to improve conditions right away. Unfortunately, the big-government approach that have been relied on for decades in New Mexico have ALREADY failed. PFM should recognize that fact.

3). Diversifying the economy and diversifying government revenue sources are not the same thing. It’s no surprise that their recommendations are so “off” given the consulting is funded by the left-wing Rockefeller Family Foundation.

Several members of the Lujan Grisham Administration have departed recently in the midst of the legislative session. Paul and Wally discuss some of the more notable departures.

RGF recently released a study about the medical provider shortage. 

Last week was School Choice week. Bills have been introduced on both the Democrat and Republican sides of the aisle to create choice. These bills will be heard in the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, February 1.

Despite a massive surplus some powerful Democrats are pushing to raise taxes. One bill, HB 119 would add a 6.5% and 6.9% top rate on top of the 5.9% rate and the 6.5% rate would kick in at $200,000 annual income for married couples.

Under Bill Richardson NM’s top income tax rate was dropped to 4.9%.

Some bills reining in the Gov.’s emergency powers have passed out of their first committees and are on their way to House Judiciary Committee.

The Foundation’s Freedom Index bill tracking site is a tool people can use to find out how the bills they support/oppose are faring and how their legislators are voting on them.

A new Wallethub report says New Mexico has one of the smallest wealth gaps by race/ethnicity. This undermines a lot of left-wing talking points, but notably New Mexico is poor AND even the wealthiest in New Mexico don’t register relative to other states.

Anyone who follows New Mexico’s budget and politics is well aware that the State is going through an incredible oil boom. As can be seen in the chart below from the Financial Times, New Mexico now produces more oil than the entire nation of Mexico.

This is a testament the American ingenuity, but it is incumbent upon New Mexico’s Legislature and Governor to use this windfall to improve the State’s economy and move the state toward economic prosperity.

Most New Mexicans are at least vaguely aware of the outsize impact the State’s oil and gas industry has on the State’s economy. A new report from the Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University called “State of New Mexico County-Level Revenue & Expenditure Analysis, 2015-2021″ highlights that economic impact by examining revenues and expenditures on a county-by-county basis. 

The list of top-5 counties in terms of their net contributions can be found below. When contributions and expenditures (by the state) are taken as a whole, Lea and Eddy County contribute massively to the State budget with Los Alamos, Bernalillo, and San Juan counties all contributing significantly as well.

Interestingly, Santa Fe and Doña Ana both have negative net returns per person in the $10,000 range. Here’s the full report with data from each of New Mexico’s counties.

It is way to early to be optimistic about them passing, but for those who (like the Rio Grande Foundation) would like to see a restoration of balance of power between the Legislature and Gov. in future emergencies, a few bills that would restore that balance have moved through their first committees.

HJR 3 and HB 80 would require some form of legislative approval to change or end a state of emergency in New Mexico. The former would amend New Mexico’s constitution to do it while the latter would do it legislatively (constitutional amendments are lengthier but do not require the Gov.’s signature).

After nearly three years since the Gov. declared COVID 19 an emergency. According to the National Academy for State Public Health New Mexico is one of just eight states in a declared emergency and MLG shows no sign of letting go of her powers.

We hope that now that the 2022 elections are behind us the partisan Democrats in control of both houses will make separation of powers and “democracy” in New Mexico government a priority.

Despite New Mexico having an unprecedented budget surplus the “progressive” Legislature seems hell-bent on raising YOUR taxes.

HB 119 which is being sponsored by the Chairs of the House and Senate Tax Committees AND the Senate Majority leader is one of the most concerning bills of the 2023 session. It also highlights the rapid leftward shift of New Mexico’s Democrats.

Back during the Richardson Administration New Mexico’s top income tax rate was dropped to 4.9 percent and as the Rio Grande Foundation noted, they were successful in moving New Mexico’s economy in a positive direction. 

HB 119 would create TWO new rates and would NOT index them to inflation, meaning that over time more and more New Mexicans would be pushed into them.

For Married couples filing jointly, the income tax rate is 4.9% up to income of $315,000. The rate rises to 5.9% after that.

Under HB 119 the new, higher top rate for married couples would move to 6.5% while kicking in at $200,000 and the 6.9% rate would kick in at $500,000.

The bill awaits hearing in the House Tax and Revenue Committee, but given the sponsors it must be of concern.

On this week’s interview Paul talks to his old friend Drew Johnson. Drew and Paul both worked in Washington, DC for the National Taxpayers Union (and Foundation). Drew and Paul discuss government waste and their past and current efforts to reduce it. Also, Drew recently ran for office in Nevada which allows for mail-in ballots and vote harvesting among many other questionable practices. You don’t want to miss this informative conversation.

Braver Angels, the burgeoning national movement battling our country’s painful political divide in every state, will be presenting its signature event, the Red/Blue Workshop, online via Zoom on Saturday, March 4. You can participate in this free event!

This event, hosted by BA’s North-Central New Mexico Alliance, brings together an equal number of people (usually 5-8) from different sides of the spectrum in a structured but spirited conversation aimed at moving beyond partisanship to work together for goals we share.

Thousands of people across the country have joined in these workshops and found through personal interaction that having a different opinion need not make someone else our enemy, and that the fight to save the nation we
love begins with a cease-fire among ourselves.

Searching for solutions beyond partisanship is a key goal Braver Angels shares with the Rio Grande Foundation, said BA’s New Mexico state coordinator, Marty Gerber. All levels of the organization, he noted, from local to national, share their leadership between Red-leaning and Blue-leaning citizens, and the
local alliance is actively seeking to add more conservative participants for its March 4 workshop.

Further information and a chance to sign up are available here.

Asked how realistic it was to think the polarization that continues to shred our country can actually be changed, Gerber quoted the words of Keith Johnson, a Republican who had just attended his first BA Red/Blue Workshop: “If you did 20,000 of these across the nation,” Johnson said, “you would change the world—I truly believe that.”

In 2019 Paul sat down with New Mexican Scott Lopez who was State Director at the time to, among other things, discuss Braver Angels.

The New Mexico Legislature has convened in Santa Fe and “progressives” led by Democratic House Speaker Javier Martinez will be actively promoting “equity” and other policies supposedly meant to help the poor.

Interestingly, according to a new report from Wallethub analyzes the states with the largest and smallest wealth gaps by race/ethnicity and found New Mexico came in just 45th which means that New Mexico’s wealth gap was among the SMALLEST among US states.

Curiously among the states with smaller wealth gaps were a diverse group including Florida, West Virginia, Alaska, and Hawaii.

Among States with larger gaps were Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Nebraska.

Arguably this is good news for New Mexico’s, but it also reflects New Mexico’s overall poverty of which New Mexico is among the very poorest. Even when it comes to tracking the very richest person in each state New Mexico’s “richest” is low on the list (further reflecting both New Mexico’s poverty and its lack of a robust private sector).

RGF/Paul’s case against the City of Albuquerque for its “donation” to Planned Parenthood has officially been filed.

Also, RGF successfully appealed its free speech case at the United States District Court.

A few notable bills coming up in Committee for which RGF will deliver testimony.

Also, the Democrats added $2 million to the must-pass “feed bill” which funds the session. The money will pay for a study of “professionalized” legislature, but this kind of policymaking should be done in the traditional legislative process, not the feed bill.

Build Your Dreams 2.0: Albuquerque experiences another EV fail as legislation is being introduced to mandate 75% of the State’s fleet is electric.

RGF examines the reality of NM’s medical provider shortage in a new report that is part 1 of a 2 part series.

Meanwhile, the amount of money being requested in the latest budget for Medicaid is a positively mind blowing: $10.5 billion. A portion of those dollars are being proposed to “backfill” for an expiring federal COVID program that expanded Medicaid for 100,000 people in New Mexico. Paul had an opinion piece in several New Mexico newspapers highlighting the costly failure of Medicaid expansion in New Mexico. 

Finally, RGF’s Freedom Index bill tracking system is up and running so you can track the best and worst bills (and votes) of 2023.

It’s National School Choice Week across the United States. And, while New Mexico’s Legislature has not been particularly friendly to choice in recent years, the fact is that New Mexico DOES have some choice to celebrate (most notably charter schools), but it needs a lot more to improve the State’s poor educational performance.

A few bills are likely to come up for hearings in the New Mexico State Senate soon. Here is a link to the Senate Education Committee page with a list of members.

The VERY best bill is SB 109 put forth by Republican Craig Brandt, a Republican, which would create a system similar to that adopted in Arizona in 2022 which would create a program to allow the Public Education Department, in contract with parents of participating students, to pay for private school and other eligible expenses.

Another bill worthy of support is SB 113. This bill, introduced by Albuquerque Democrat Jerry Ortiz y Pino, would create a system of tax credits to be used for school choice. This is an idea the Rio Grande Foundation has been working on for more than a decade and Ortiz y Pino has supported the idea in the past. A brief (albeit old) discussion of how a school choice tax credit program might work can be found here.

We’ll keep track of other bills of interest and report on them in this space.

New Mexico has a shortage of medical providers across most practice areas (as discussed in Part 1 of this series). So, as the 2023 legislative session gets rolling, what can be done about it?

The Rio Grande Foundation has looked high and low throughout New Mexico laws impacting medical providers and has produced a series of recommendations laid out in an extensive policy paper.

1) While forward looking in nature, HB 75 passed in 2021 and was revised later on that same year makes New Mexico’s medical malpractice much more plaintiff and attorney friendly through the increase in damage award caps is  causing a great deal of concern among providers even though it will not be implemented until 2024;

2) Stop taxing medical providers via gross receipts tax. The State is one of the few states in the entire nation that levies the equivalent of a “sales” tax on certain medical services. In New Mexico’s largest city, Albuquerque, the rate of taxation is currently 7.75 percent. Rates tend to be even higher in outlying areas of New Mexico. This could be part of a broad reform or more targeted.

3) Reduce Medicaid dependency.  According to the American Hospital Association, Medicaid underpaid hospitals by $24.8 billion in 2020. For Medicaid, hospitals received payment of only 88 cents for every dollar spent by hospitals caring for Medicaid patients in 2020. In 2020, 62 percent of hospitals received Medicaid payments less than cost.

4) Expand scope of practice/telemedicine.

There are several additional ideas outlined in the report along with more detailed discussion of the ideas listed above. All of it can be found here.