New Mexico is widely-recognized in study after study as among the very most federally-dependent states in the nation. A recent Wallethub report puts us at 6th, but an interesting report from Smart Asset ranks New Mexico at the VERY top in terms of overall federal dependence.

You can see that while not at the top in ALL categories, New Mexico’s percent of workforce employed by the Feds is higher than any state besides Hawaii or Virginia/Maryland which naturally have numerous federal employees. Not surprisingly New Mexico’s federal employee wages are also considerably higher than local private sector dollars.

To many the federal jobs and money flowing into New Mexico are an unmitigated positive, but it certainly hasn’t led to the broad-based wealth and prosperity one might expect or hope for. And, every federal dollar spent no matter how important is either taxed away from the private sector or added to the massive, fast-growing federal debt.

In a story that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal recently the reporter made it sound like Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) was going to be “eliminating” their trucker and jewelry training programs.

In interviews and other discussions, we at the Rio Grande Foundation expressed concern that while the State pushes for “free” college CNM was eliminating basic vocational programs. After doing some research and meeting with someone knowledgeable about the situation at CNM, it turns out that the “elimination” of these programs is simply spin being applied (and readily picked up by the media) pushed by the CNM union.

CNM is simply proposing to reduce costs by ending these two programs as college courses receiving credits through the College and replacing them with noncredit programs focused solely on job skills development, licensing and certification in a cost effective time frame. It strikes us as unnecessary to have EVER had in place college credit programs for these two industries as trucking companies care about commercial drivers licenses and jewelers care about skills, not college credits.

At RGF we have long considered CNM and its focus on vocational learning as one of the bright spots in New Mexico’s otherwise mediocre and bloated higher education system. We are glad the media and by extension WE were wrong.

In the first of what will be a handful of “special” episodes of Tipping Point NM, Paul sits down with congressional candidate Louie Sanchez. Louie is a Republican businessman and entrepreneur running in New Mexico’s revised 1st District with a primary battle to be decided by voters on June 7. Based on recently redrawn maps, this district could be highly competitive for Republicans looking to unseat Democrat Rep. Melanie Stansbury.

College is “free” but CNM is pushing to eliminate trade education for truck drivers and jewelry. Paul and Wally wonder if this means a shift away from vocational learning at New Mexico’s “free” institutes of higher education.

The Biden Administration has decided to increase royalties and scaled back leases on federal lands including an 80% reduction in leases in New Mexico.  The federal and state pushes for ethanol are the wrong way to address gas prices.

The Legislature denied funding for it, but MLG announced a plan to spend $500,000 for fare reduction on the Rail Runner anyway. Paul and Wally briefly comment on the fact that at least Rail Runner riders won’t need to wear masks thanks to a Trump-appointed federal judge. Nonetheless, MLG extended New Mexico’s health emergency yet again to April 30.

RGF president Paul Gessing recently spoke to KOAT for a story on RGF’s successful public records suit and the constant flow of tax dollar payments for denied public records.

Union backed Albuquerque Mayor Keller has vetoed a bill that would have restored market forces to public works projects.

RGF has an upcoming luncheon speaker who will discuss vaccine mandates.

When New Mexico is not being ignored entirely by the national media, they usually just get things completely wrong. This is often the case with what “conservative” outlets like Fox News, but since most media are liberal, it happens more often from the left. Take this Politico piece.

The gist of the article is that New Mexico Democrats have somehow figured out that supporting an “all of the above” energy strategy is a key to political success. But even New Mexico Democrats praised in the article have to be shaking their heads at some of the statements contained within. Here are a few of the worst:

1) The entire premise: while MLG has not attacked New Mexico’s revenue source head-on, she is hardly takes an “all of the above” position on energy and routinely attacks the industry through absurd policies like the Clean Fuel Standard, Methane rules, and electric vehicle mandates (to name a few).

2) Rep. Angelica Rubio, “represents an oil patch district in the Permian Basin.” FALSE!!! Rubio, among the most left-wing members of the New Mexico Legislature, represents Las Cruces. Everyone in New Mexico knows that liberal Las Cruces is well outside the Permian Basin.

3) Far from working to “find middle ground” as Rubio claims, she signed a letter from anti-oil-and-gas liberal legislators in SUPPORT of the Biden Administration’s permitting moratorium despite its impact on New Mexico.

4) Sen. Martin Heinrich who takes a backseat to no one in his environmental radicalism is quoted downplaying solar jobs. The story quotes him as saying, “Now, I love those jobs, but to be honest, those rooftop jobs, they’re not in my view a benefit because they’re going to replace a job for an [oil company] operating engineer. They’re not.” This IS a robustly sane statement, but Heinrich is NOT some kind of moderate. He’s pushing very hard to eliminate natural gas in home cooking and heating for example.

The article DOES go on to have some useful quotes from NMOGA and Gov. candidate Mark Ronchetti along with some anti-energy statements from environmental groups. It is interesting for some of the things it gets right as well as the big things it gets wrong.

The biggest thing it ignores is how long Democrats have controlled the New Mexico Legislature and the fact that under their “leadership” New Mexico is dead last in numerous rankings of well-being. Dependency on oil and gas absent a thriving private sector economy should hardly result in praise for Democrats’ willingness to tolerate the industry.

How does New Mexico spending on public education stack up against its neighbors? While the Rio Grande Foundation has no love for the National Education Association union which attempts to thwart reform at every turn, they do have a useful report called “Rankings and Estimates.”

The data are not “brand new,” unfortunately as the latest available information is from 2019-2020, but as the data below highlight, New Mexico’s per-student spending (even before the recent influx of money) exceeds each of its neighbors. Alas, one cannot say the same for results.

Furthermore, according to the NEA report New Mexico’s per-pupil spending is 24th-highest nationally.

Rio Grande Foundation Job Opportunity

Director of Communications/Marketing

This position is ideal for young conservative/libertarian minded professionals who are looking to break into the world of state level free market policy work.

Must haves include: familiarity with WordPress design and site maintenance and MailChimp, basic graphic design knowledge, solid writing skills, and overall strong communications skills;

Must be willing to learn New Mexico public policy and learn new skills working in office located in Downtown Albuquerque.

Pay and benefits commensurate with skills but salary would start at $50,000 including health and retirement.

Send cover letter and resume to Paul Gessing, President, Rio Grande Foundation: info@riograndefoundation.org

For someone who claims to wish to “uphold democracy,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham certainly doesn’t do much to actually uphold the “will of the Legislature” when given the opportunity.

Case in point: as the Albuquerque Journal reported, in the recent special session of the Legislature, the Gov. pushed to get $1 million appropriated for Rail Runner fare reductions. She was denied in this attempt by a Legislature that is overwhelmingly controlled by her own Democratic party.

But, again as the article above references, the Gov. pulled together $500,000 from Rio Metro and NM DOT to nonetheless reduce train fares by 75% for the time period from April 18 through July 31 in a desperate attempt to revive flagging ridership in the commuter train which we are told is currently 60% of pre-pandemic levels (representing steep drops from the early days of the train.

Read the headline of this post again. That isn’t a Rio Grande Foundation effort to skew what the Biden Administration is doing to keep gas prices higher than they need to be. In fact, we “stole” the headline from this National Public Radio story.

We’ve been (justifiably) critical of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland for her inaction, even muteness on the issue of energy prices. So, it is hardly a shock that she and the Biden Administration took this step on the Friday before the Easter Holiday. The “step” being taken involves increasing the royalty rate for new oil and gas leases to 18.75% from 12.5%. That’s the equivalent of a 50% tax hike.

Furthermore, according to NPR, while the Biden Administration is complying with court orders to resume onshore oil and gas leasing, the “Leases for 225 square miles (580 square kilometers) of federal lands primarily in the West will be offered for sale in a notice to be posted on Monday, officials said. The parcels represent about 30% less land than officials had proposed for sale in November and 80% less than what was originally nominated by the industry.”

The Administration’s decision will directly impact New Mexico with the number of oil and gas leases reduced by 80% from a total of 26 to just 5.

Secretary Haaland took the time to speak agains the oil and gas industry saying, “For too long, the federal oil and gas leasing programs have prioritized the wants of extractive industries. Today, we begin to reset how and what we consider to be the highest and best use of Americans’ resources.”

We are pleased to announce our next in-person event, which will be co-sponsored by The Federalist Society. We will be hosting one of the nation’s top legal experts on limited government and emergency power.

Daniel Suhr serves as Managing Attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, where he spends every day on the front lines of the fight to preserve our rights and liberties. Daniel holds a B.A. and J.D. from Marquette University, and master’s degrees from Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Missouri-Columbia. When he’s not pursuing major constitutional cases in court, he can be found writing about them on op-ed pages like the Wall Street Journal, discussing them on Fox News, speaking about them at places like Yale Law School, or arguing about them with equally nerdy friends over beers.

Event details:

• Topic: Limiting Government in an Emergency: Vaccine Mandates, Lockdowns, and the Next ‘Crisis’
• Speaker: Daniel Suhr
• Date and Time: Thursday, May 5th, 2022, 11:30am-1:30pm
• Location: Albuquerque Marriott Pyramid North, 5151 San Francisco Rd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87109-4641

KOAT Channel 7 recently did an excellent story about the propensity of cities throughout New Mexico to make big payouts to citizens who have been denied access to basic public records. The Rio Grande Foundation has won multiple lawsuits including one against the City of Albuquerque but we are not alone. The City of Albuquerque’s taxpayers have paid out more than $330,000 over the Keller Administration’s repeated denial of public records.

The KOAT story includes comments from the Foundation for Open Government, local attorney James Gover, and the Rio Grande Foundation. You can find the full story here or by clicking the image below:

At the Rio Grande Foundation we believe that taxpayers should get the best possible government service for our tax dollar. New Mexico’s failure to do that is one reason Wallethub ranked the State 2nd from the bottom in terms of the Return on Investment (ROI) for those tax dollars.

Alas, Albuquerque Mayor Keller apparently believes that local roads and public buildings should be made even more expensive by requiring union labor. Flanked by union members, he just vetoed repeal of the City’s Project Labor Agreement legislation which will give unions control over major public works projects, thus padding their bottom lines.

As the Albuquerque Journal article points out, “Unions contributed heavily to the political action committee backing Keller’s successful 2021 reelection bid.”

National report gives MLG poor marks on pandemic performance. You can find the report here. The Wall Street Journal also covered the report here.

MLG extended the health order until April 15. Arizona and even Oregon have allowed their emergencies to expire.

The recent special session of the New Mexico Legislature resulted in tax “rebates.” Taxpayers will receive checks of $250/$500 by June 30 depending on single/couple filing status with a second check coming in August. These are “refundable” credits. The rebates will reduce state revenues by $220 million with $20 million of that going to illegal immigrants, seniors, and others who do not file income taxes to the State. This legislation also creates a logistical challenge for the Tax and Revenue Department.

Is Richard Branson abandoning Virgin Galactic (that’s according to the investing website Motley Fool)?  

NM’s unemployment rate remains the worst in the nation in February, but our workforce participation rate remains low as well. 

According to Wallethub NM’s ROI for tax dollars is 2^nd worst in the nation. 

An RGF email survey controversy generates controversy with the Public Regulation Commission.

RGF submits comments and encourages the public to submit their own comments on new Biden Administration charter school regulations. Comments are due by April 13, 2022 (this Wednesday).

The following is a Twitter thread from a crop scientist who also describes herself as an ex-farmworker and lists her pronouns in her Twitter bio (not likely conservative).

It is relevant because there are some very real issues going on in the global economy with regard to fertilizer and fuel prices. The statements below are relevant for multiple reasons.

1. The Biden Administration JUST announced that it is allowing an INCREASE in ethanol usage in an attempt to bring gas prices down. Ironically, as the article points out, ethanol, which is supposedly used because it is “clean” is “usually prohibited between June 1 and Sept. 15 because of concerns that it adds to smog in high temperatures.”
2. The Legislature for two years running has narrowly defeated a “clean fuel standard” bill which would mandate increased usage of ethanol  as touted in this opinion piece by several leaders in the Lujan Grisham Administration.

It is time to abolish the federal ethanol program and STOP any new mandates like the ones being discussed in New Mexico.

No matter what metric is used, New Mexico’s pandemic performance under Gov. Lujan Grisham has been poor. The Rio Grande Foundation has been saying this for over a year now we are getting some academic studies to back our points up.

The latest study which is discussed at some length in the Wall Street Journal uses three basic metrics: economy, education, and mortality. With the nation’s worst unemployment rate, arguably the nation’s most negatively impactful education response, and a high COVID death rate (currently 13th-highest), Lujan Grisham’s response looks quite bad.

And, according to the analysis, it is indeed 3rd worst among US states as seen below.

The latest Wallethub report which ranks states by the return on investment their taxpayers receive for the tax dollars paid. Sadly, but not surprisingly, New Mexico’s return on investment on those tax dollars is terrible (49th overall as the map below shows).

While the following chart comes straight from Wallethub’s report, it is impossible to fully include below. You can clearly see that New Mexico’s overall rank (not ROI) is 50th in education, 50th in safety, and 50th in economy. Health and Infrastructure/Pollution are somewhat better.

Interestingly, New Mexico’s tax burden is ranked a relatively low 34th in this report because it is calculated on a per-capita basis. When Wallethub calculates tax burden they do so as a percent of income and New Mexico ranks 12th-highest.

That’ not OUR speculation, that’s from the folks at the prominent investing site Motley Fool. According to the article, speculation is driven in part because Branson revealed in a CNBC interview that he’s planning to hitch a ride on a craft operated by Virgin Galactic’s rival, SpaceX.

That’s like the President of Ford announcing to the press that he’s just purchased a Chevy pick up.

The Fool article goes on to note that “his related entity Virgin Investments remains a major company shareholder, it’s sold off a much larger stake in a series of divestments.”

The Rio Grande Foundation has been a prominent critic of the taxpayer-funded Spaceport America at which Virgin Galactic is the primary tenant. And, while Branson DID launch with a crew out of the Spaceport last summer, there have been zero paying customers launched out of Spaceport America which has been open for over a decade.

Losing Branson’s involvement or loyalty is by no means a death blow to Virgin Galactic’s hopes to get viable space tourism flights going at Spaceport America, but it can’t help and it isn’t a vote of confidence in the company or its technology.

As RGF has previously reported, New Mexico has the highest unemployment rate in the United States. Unfortunately, New Mexico also has a very low workforce participation rate as seen below. The BLS data are available here.

In addition to having the lowest workforce participation rate New Mexico’s rate has dropped by more than any of our neighboring states since the month prior to the Pandemic. NM’s rate is 2 percentage points lower today. Texas, the worst performing state beside NM dropped 0.8 percentage points.

Any car-owning American who has taken a recent trip to the pump will be able to tell you one thing: Gas is expensive. Really expensive. Indeed, as of last week, a gallon costs $4.231 — up $1.379, from a year ago. (The same trend is true for natural gas.) The crisis has evidently lasted longer — and proved more economically serious — than the Biden administration suggested.

Curiously, the cabinet official best equipped to address it has remained completely mum on the issue. I’m referring to former New Mexico political activist, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and current secretary of the Department of the Interior, Deb Haaland.

Secretary Deb Haaland manages the federal government’s onshore subsurface mineral estate — about 700 million acres (30 percent of the United States) held by the Bureau of Land Management alone. There are, of course, additional oil and gas resources to be found on tribal lands, in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and on the outer continental shelf.

According to the website operated by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, in fiscal year 2018 (which is unfortunately the most recent data available), sales of oil, natural gas, and natural-gas liquids produced from the federal and tribal mineral estate accounted for only a small fraction of total sales in the U.S. (8 percent of all oil, 9 percent of all natural gas, and 6 percent of all natural-gas liquids).

These numbers could be much higher. In the best of times, the federal government might be a more difficult partner for oil and gas companies than private landowners or even state land offices that have a much stronger financial incentive to approve permits than does Washington. Now, with the avowedly anti-fossil-fuels Biden administration and anti-oil-and-gas activist Deb Haaland in control of the Interior Department, the permitting situation is much worse.

And that’s the point of this critique. If the Biden administration really wanted to address rising gas prices, it could do so most readily by encouraging drilling on federal lands — especially on onshore resources in Deb Haaland’s home state of New Mexico.

Yet rather than pursuing that fairly simple solution, the administration would rather plead with such hostile nations as Venezuela and Iran to expand their production.

Whether it is Deb Haaland calling the shots within the administration on energy policy or whether she is just one of many decision-makers, the Biden administration’s embrace of anti-energy environmental groups and their policies appears to be the root cause. Not surprisingly, Haaland herself rose to some level of prominence by opposing traditional energy, calling for a fracking ban, and promoting the Green New Deal. “I am wholeheartedly against fracking and drilling on public lands,” Haaland said in an interview with the Guardian in May 2019.

Haaland is unlikely to moderate her views, even as skyrocketing energy prices have become a major problem. Instead, she avoids dealing with the issue entirely. Consider just a few examples:

• The Interior Department and its associated agencies have not issued a single press release on the energy-crisis situation, much less about increasing production on federal lands.
• There have been no tweets from Secretary Haaland on the issue of increasing energy production on federal lands.
• When the secretary does focus on energy issues, as she did in a visit to Ohio, the focus is on infrastructure — cleaning up orphan wells, legacy pollution from extractive industries, and moving toward renewables.
• Oddly, even Haaland’s calendar hasn’t been updated in nearly a year (since March 2021).

While the Interior Department and Deb Haaland have been completely missing in action during the ongoing energy crisis, Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm is at least publicly calling for ramping up production. Previously the White House was “quietly” calling for more production, but you can look far and wide for specific Biden-administration policies to increase supply. The best you’ll get is the recently announced release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Unfortunately for hard-pressed motorists and, more generally, American consumers being throttled by high inflation, the Department of Energy can’t really do anything directly to address America’s energy crisis. The department that can, though, is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the administration simply doesn’t want Haaland front and center because she has such a long track record of opposing the very energy resources necessary to solve the current crisis.

Will Haaland come out of “hiding” to lead the charge on behalf of increasing American supplies of oil and gas? I’m not holding my breath. This administration remains more beholden to radical environmental groups than any in history. Prices may come down a bit if the war in Ukraine ends, but high gas prices and constrained American production are a feature, not a bug, for the Biden administration and its interior secretary.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation.

There are several important issues on tap for Albuquerque City Council’s meeting tonight. You can sign up to speak or submit written comments to the Council on any of these issues here. For the first time in more than two years, in-person testimony will be allowed, but Zoom remains an option as well.

The top issues being discussed tonight are:

Final action on: O-22-1 This legislation, introduced by Council Dan Lewis, would reduce Albuquerque’s gross receipts tax by one eighth of One Percent (.125%);

Final action on: O-22-8 would rescind legislation passed after the November election that mandated the Use Of Project Labor Agreements On Certain Public Works Construction Projects In The City Of Albuquerque. It is sponsored by Bassan, Jones, Lewis, Grout; and

EC-22-51 would override Mayor Keller’s veto of the Council’s repeal of Albuquerque’s plastic bag ban.

New Mexico’s House Minority Leader wrote an excellent column in the Albuquerque Journal recently in which he touted the myriad benefits of school choice.

Oddly, but not surprisingly, this drew a hostile response from a Gallup teacher. It will come as a surprise to absolutely no-one reading this that the responding author has a Twitter account and the posts there are the kind that would make me as a parent look elsewhere if this guy were teaching my kids.

Aside from that issue, here are the two main critiques of school choice:

(School choice) does not actually address the core issues in education. We know from other states that have open enrollment, vouchers for private schools and charter schools, that they do not inherently increase student outcomes.

The second reason why school choice does not solve any of our issues is that, unless the representative plans on opening multiple private schools and charters in every town and village in New Mexico, there simply are not enough of these schools to be effective.

On the student outcomes issue there is ample evidence that school choice DOES improve students’ academic success as this meta-analysis (an analysis of numerous academic studies on school choice) shows.

The second complaint about choice is just silly. If parents and families had the ability to take their education funding dollars to the schools of THEIR choosing, would there not be any entrepreneurs and education leaders willing to open and operate new schools?

Clearly, New Mexico has a lot of work to do to improve education outcomes. Rep. Townsend is on the right path, but the system and the politicians currently in charge are going to put up a fight.

As the number of COVID cases continues to drop in New Mexico and across the nation, a number of states have ended their emergency orders.

Yesterday, Arizona Gov. Ducey announced that the State’s emergency would end immediately. But the trend is not limited to relatively “red” states. Deep blue Oregon will end its emergency on April 1, 2022. Missouri’s emergency will ALSO end on Friday (there seems to be some conflict over whether they have a mandate in place or not).

New Mexico’s latest emergency order ALSO expires on April 1, 2022. We will find out very soon what Gov. Lujan Grisham plans to do.