Fresh off their defeat of the PNM/Avangrid merger (an effort on which we didn’t disagree with them), the radicals at New Energy Economy are pushing a far more concerning plan. They want to make ALL utilities government-run. A group of more than a dozen far-left legislators (list on page 5 of the document above) has petitioned the Public Regulation Commission to “study” the issue.

Reading through the proposal it is no surprise that this is part of a push to hasten the abandonment of “traditional” energy sources in favor of unreliable wind and solar. As frustrating as PNM’s government-regulated monopoly model may be, the thought of these people running a utility is even more frightening.

Ironically, as is so often the case with government-ownership of ANYTHING, the real question is WHO owns it. Right here in New Mexico the City of Farmington owns and manages its own utility. That is the entity pushing to keep the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station open and use  carbon capture technology to do it.

There is nothing to be done at this point. If this proposal is adopted, the PRC will study the issue. Nonetheless, the LAST thing New Mexico needs is a new area of our economy for the State to manage, especially along the lines proposed by the most radical “environmentalists.”

Perhaps the PRC should ALSO undertake a study of what a free market utility market might look like, especially one untethered from the Energy Transition Act.

New Mexico’s unemployment rate in November 2021 is now 6.2%. That’s 5th-highest in the nation and worst than each of our neighbors. The data are available here from Bureau of Labor Statistics.

No matter how interesting or promising a technology developed in New Mexico may be, it seems that government inevitably gets involved and mucks things up. Take Sceye.

The idea behind the company which is Swiss, but with major operations here in New Mexico, is to provide Internet and other services to remote locations using dirigibles or blimps. That’s a fine idea and I’d love to see it taken from concept to application (without fleecing New Mexico taxpayers).

But, in her bid to deploy broadband across New Mexico, Gov. Lujan Grisham and the Democrat-controlled Legislature are spending an astonishing $70 million for just five blimps.  Mind you this is an unproven technology as the company JUST performed its first and only test flight in October of 2021. New Mexico ALSO gave the company $3.2 million to study the concept of dirigible-based Internet service in April of 2021, so the company is cashing a lot of checks from the State.

While Sceye is hardly the only entity working on deploying Internet service to far-flung rural areas (Elon Musk’s Starlink system is one big competitor), it is difficult to see New Mexico’s massive “investment” as cost-effective. According to Rio Grande Foundation calculations, $70 million would get 2,500 miles of deployed broadband (without the risk of investing tax dollars in an unproven technology) thus offering broadband to many rural providers for whom access is unavailable. Furthermore, based on the $1 billion hybrid model (fiber/fixed wireless) to the “un-served” areas of New Mexico in which such Internet service is unavailable, spending on Sceye comes out to $8,000 per-person.

That’s an expensive way for New Mexico to deploy broadband service!

The City of Albuquerque has some nice parks. It also has some parks that need a little “TLC” and then there are others (like Coronado Park) that have been completely overrun by “homeless” campers.

No matter what you think about the City’s homeless policy, it would seem that public parks are not an appropriate place to simply hand over to the homeless. In New York City (not known as a bastion of free market policies by any stretch) managing the limited green space is of utmost concern. So, the City works with private companies to manage the parks.

Not only are the homeless kept at bay, but there are numerous amenities available that make these New York parks economically-beneficial to their surrouning areas. Check out this short video.

On this week’s podcast conversation, Paul sits down with Jennifer Rivera, MA Ed. Jennifer is the Executive Director of Estancia Valley Classical Academy which is part of Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Initiative. Jennifer is a return guest and we discuss what makes her charter school unique, the fact that the school just received a 5-year extension on its charter, and the challenges students and families have been dealing with during COVID.

In this in-depth and candid discussion, we discuss lost learning (even at a high-performing school) and how teachers, families, and students alike have dealt with the mental health challenges during the pandemic, the impact of broadband access, and of course the Gov.’s masking mandates. If you are concerned about education in New Mexico, don’t miss this conversation.

New Mexico has always struggled with low workforce participation levels. It was hardly a surprise when a national study earlier this year called New Mexico the “least hardworking state” in the entire nation. The COVID 19 pandemic AND the federal/state governments’ fear mongering, mask and vaccine mandates and massive social spending programs have done nothing to lure people back into the workforce.

Alas, as the chart below shows (using data from Bureau of Labor Statistics) New Mexico’s workforce participation rate has remained depressed even relative to other state. In January of 2020 the rate for NM was 55.5%. As of October 2021 that rate was 53.3% , a decrease of 4%.

Not only did New Mexico START with lower workforce participation than its neighbors, but it has seen a the steepest decline of any of its neighboring states. No state has gotten back to January 2020 workforce participation rates, but Oklahoma and Utah have gotten close.

The Spaceport and its primary tenant Virgin Galactic have always been secretive when it comes to their finances. Perhaps the taxpayer-funded facility and its main tenant are embarrassed by the fact that the facility has open for more than a decade without having been used for its intended purpose.

In New Mexico, gross receipts tax (GRT) is applied to all financial transactions unless the Legislature specifically calls them out for an exemption or deduction.

A ruling from the State of New Mexico Tax and Revenue Department does provide a “deduction from GRT which includes receipts from launching, operating or recovering space vehicles or payloads in New Mexico.” Tax deductions cannot be taken on the assumption that someday the Spaceport will engage in these activities. Rather, if launch, operation, or recovery trigger the deduction, then ticket sales should be taxed and there should be records of those taxes being collected and distributed to the State of New Mexico.

Despite the fact that Virgin Galactic has repeatedly reported to the press and filed documents stating that it has sold (or accepted hundreds of non-refundable deposits on) seats on space launches, there have been no taxes collected or reported (using the Tax and Revenue Department’s CRS-1 form) outlining either GRT paid OR deductions taken. Virgin Galactic has already pre-sold some 700 space tickets: 600 between 2005 and 2014, and another 100 since August, when they were relisted for a price of $450,000. Approximately, 100 people have put down $150,000 in deposits since ticket sales were reopened at $450,000 per seat.

According to the Company’s SEC filings, in the 3^rd quarter of 2021 Virgin Galactic reported revenues of $2.58 million, but reported no GRT payments (or deductions taken) to the State of New Mexico. RGF has also researched potential GRT payments by Virgin Galactic to the State of New Mexico and as seen no payments or accounting for those deductions.

“Lame duck” Albuquerque City Council is at it again. Fresh off a big giveaway to local labor unions, the “lame duck” progressives on city council are pushing a big subsidy for the University of New Mexico. Specifically, the subsidy is for redevelopment of property and the subsidy would be given to the university’s “redevelopment corporation.”

The vehicle for the subsidy is a “Tax Increment Development District,” or TIDD.

The deal works like this: Albuquerque diverts future property tax revenue increases from a defined area within the city toward the UNM improvement project. Because the subsidy is not appropriated directly from the city’s budget, the city will incur the immediate loss through forgone tax revenue. The funding is created by the borrowing against future increases in property-tax revenues. Long story short, it’s a bad idea: taxpayers and property owners all draw the short straw while UNM sees a major influx of cash.

Being considered is 2,491,300 square feet of building improvements–with $136,500,000 of $300,000,000 being tax-exempt and subsidized. This directly benefits UNM and its development arm at the expense of taxpayers throughout the city. Why is $136 million in “building improvements” being given to a tax-exempt university? Isn’t that the purpose of the bonds we already vote for?

The issue is being considered by vote of the city council on December 20th and I need you to write an email to Albuquerque City Council to urge their opposition to the deal. I’ve already drafted the email for you: all you need to do is click on the link and press send.

>> Click here to write an email to Albuquerque City Council. <<

Or you can write your own message using cabq@riograndefoundation.org. This email gets forwarded to all members of the city council.

A local activist has been working with the Rio Grande Foundation on this issue. He wrote an article in the Albuquerque Journal that identifies the major concerns with the proposal. I encourage you to read his piece here. (https://www.abqjournal.com/2442578/300m-for-tidd-is-public-finance-on-steroids.html)

Help us stop this “lame duck” Council from pushing through even more bad policy on its way out the door!

Last week saw the final runoff votes in Albuquerque’s City Council races. Wally and Paul discuss the results and the fact that another “lame duck” city council meeting on December 20 could result in a generous TIDD for UNM.

The special session is still going on in Santa Fe. What’s the status of those maps? Paul and Wally discuss. An issue regarding medical malpractice got added to the agenda. Wally and Paul discuss what is happening.

The full PRC has rejected the Avangrid/PNM merger on a 5-0 vote. Where to next?

A new Wallethub report highlights MLG’s ongoing failure on unemployment.

RGF files a formal complaint with the AG’s office regarding MLG’s travel to Scotland.

Covid cases really are declining now in New Mexico.

Polis: “The emergency is over.” 

MLG: Extends mask mandate to January 7. 

California re-imposes a universal indoor mask mandate. So does New York.

The ABQ Journal editorializes on vaccine mandate at Pit. While RGF does NOT support vaccine mandates, we DO question the double standard imposed by MLG regarding forced vaccination and boosters for UNM students and faculty, but no vaccine for basketball fans.

When the special redistricting session got going in Santa Fe RGF and others were fairly sure that no substantive policies would be changed during the session. The session would spend millions of dollars in federal recovery dollars and draw up the new lines and go home.

That all changed when a group of doctors spoke out regarding a bill (HB 75), sponsored in that session by trial attorney and left-wing Democrat Damon Ely, which passed the Legislature in the 2021 session.

After much negotiation during the session, HB 75 AS PASSED was a “compromise” that raised certain limit on “damages” under New Mexico’s Medical Malpractice laws.  This write up from the New Mexico Medical Society gives a pretty good explanation of the issues and compromises worked out (and who benefitted from the effort in the first place…that’s trial attorneys, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful members). Rio Grande Foundation gave it a “-3” out of a potential score of “-8″ in our Freedom Index.

Fast forward to the special session and suddenly some doctors were threatening to leave New Mexico by the end of the year due to the impact of the bill on their businesses. So, during the special session a bill was introduced and passed that pushes off implementation of much of the bill for 18 months. That’s some good news, but the fundamental problem with the law remains. The legislation’s harm has only been postponed.

As we reported recently, New Mexico’s performance on employment since COVID 19 began has been terrible. A new Wallethub report further illustrates that fact. As the map below shows, New Mexico saw the 50th-most “recovery” in joblessness over the past week.

And as the image below shows, New Mexico’s increase in unemployment since the start of COVID in early 2020 has been worse than all other states beside Delaware and Rhode Island.

(Albuquerque, NM) – The Rio Grande Foundation has filed a complaint with New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas under New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA) alleging that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has failed to disclose records relating to the governor’s attendance at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

In their official capacity, Governor Lujan Grisham and members of her administration attended the conference as representatives of New Mexico. The expenses incurred for travel, food, and lodging are subject to inspection by the public, whether the expenses were paid for with taxpayer funds or otherwise. If special interests funded this excursion, the public has a right to know.

The Foundation submitted a request for records on November 1, 2021 asking for all documents related to these costs. On November 16, 2021, the request was improperly denied. The request to inspect records was expanded and a revised request was submitted on November 18, 2021 and was wrongfully denied on November 23, 2021.

According to the Inspection of Public Records Act, “public records” means all documents, papers, letters, books, maps, tapes, photographs, recordings and other materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, that are used, created, received, maintained or held by or on behalf of any public body and relate to public business, whether or not the records are required by law to be created or maintained.

Patrick Brenner, Vice President of the Rio Grande Foundation, said “We requested all receipts and documents associated with the administration’s attendance at this international conference. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has acknowledged that her attendance was in her official capacity as a representative of New Mexico. As such, the records related to transportation are subject to inspection, especially if they were paid for by a special interest or foreign entity. No disclosure of any in-kind contribution can be found in the latest campaign finance report. The administration’s continued devotion to anti-transparency is deeply disturbing and undermines the public trust.”

The Foundation maintains that the Office of the Governor has improperly and wrongly withheld documents that ought to have been made available for inspection by the public. We look forward to a swift response from the Attorney General.

The original complaint can be examined here: http://rgf.storytellersdigital.com/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/12/Combine-December-9-2021.pdf

This press release is available in PDF format here: https://errorsofenchantment.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Press-Release-Attorney-General-Complaint_-Gov-MLG-Travel.pdf

On this week’s interview, Paul talks to Dean Stansel, PhD. Dean is a professor at the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is the lead author of the Economic Freedom of North America Report for 2021 which is published by the Fraser Institute, a free market think tank based in Canada.

Paul and Dean discuss the meaning of economic freedom and its various components and why economic freedom is a good thing. They also discuss which states and even Canadian provinces and Mexican states are the freest. Finally and most notably, Dean and Paul discuss the report’s findings and New Mexico’s backsliding on economic freedom under Gov. Lujan Grisham.

Prior to being reelected, Mayor Tim Keller claimed, “I’m 10 times the mayor going forward than I was when they elected me to take this job in the first place because of what I’ve learned and what we’ve been through.”

Unfortunately, it seems that the homeless and crime situations are “10 times” what they were when Keller took office. Now that the runoff election is in the books, we know that Keller will no longer have a “rubber stamp” council, but he also won’t have a veto-proof group ready to take him on, it will really be up to the Mayor to do “10 times better” than he did in his abysmal first term.

Also, the following photos were taken on and around 2nd Street south of Coal in an area that Keller (unwisely) had pushed for a stadium. Keller claims to be an “environmentalist” and yet the physical environment of parts of our city look like the very worst of the Third World. The photos below were taken on December 7, 2021.

n a last-ditch effort, ABQ City Council’s liberals push through a big union giveaway in the form of a Project Labor Agreement. Is it even legal?

Runoff elections are today. Perhaps if they go well the ordinance can be repealed?

The redistricting special Session kicks off in Santa Fe with mandatory vaccines, metal detectors at the doors, and no guns. Also, Sen. Jacob Candelaria is now an Independent, but the good news is that they are focused on drawing lines and not much else.

After a brief drop, NM’s COVID case count has suddenly jumped again. 

MLG unveils the details of her plans to increase gas prices in the January legislative session. 

NM’s budget is more dependent than ever on oil prices. Here’s the data on oil production which has skyrocketed in recent years. 

This news story about “homeless” will make your blood boil. What ARE we paying taxes for anyway? 

More info on learning loss during the pandemic. 

The latest film subsidy report shows (again) that subsidies are a dud.

Acting VERY quickly and at the behest of some of New Mexico’s most entrenched and powerful special interests (labor unions), the Albuquerque City Council passed its own Project Labor Agreement (PLA) law on Monday evening.

The bill was formally introduced after the election on November 15 and was not heard by a city council committee ahead of December 6 vote.

The bill passed 6-3 with the leftists and lame-duck councilors all voting “YES.” The bill was sponsored by outgoing councilors Borrego and Sena with Davis, Benton, Gibson, and Peña supporting.

Assuming Mayor Keller signs it, the legislation would require union labor be hired for public works projects if any part of them are paid for by the city. One study found that such agreements increase construction costs by 13 percent. Numerous other studies show that such agreements are unfair to the 92% of workers who are NOT union members and they jack up construction costs for no benefit.

There MAY be legal challenges due to the way it was passed without the usual procedures being followed, but the easiest way to overturn the law is for a 6-3 “conservative” majority to repeal it outright.

Yet another report makes it abundantly clear that locking kids out of classrooms during the Pandemic has had an incredibly detrimental impact on student outcomes.

As we’ve noted repeatedly, New Mexico students lost more classroom time than students in all but 5 other states last year. The new report which is discussed in this Politico article is based on Performance on the iReady test administered nationally by Curriculum Associates.

Quoting from the piece, scores “plummeted for all students compared to the last time it was given before the health crisis began. Nearly three million students took the test both times. But achievement among children who attend schools with large proportions of Black and Latino students suffered the most, the data shows.”

“In reading, declines were nearly twice as steep for students at majority Latino schools as they were for children at majority white schools.”

A study OAK NM reported on just last week ALSO highlighted learning loss thanks to the abandonment of in-person learning. 

Starting today and for the next two weeks (hopefully JUST two weeks), the New Mexico Legislature will be in a special session to redraw New Mexico’s political boundaries for all manner of public offices.

The good news is that the session MOSTLY will focus on the task at hand which is to draw those political lines as opposed to passing a bunch of extraneous legislative priorities.

The most notable districts to be drawn involve the Legislature and members of Congress. Speaker Egolf said he’d work to eliminate Rep. Yvette Herrell from Congress, but considering this is a partisan process and Democrats are in charge of it all, they’ll likely work to make sure that they hold on to power in Santa Fe as well.

Of course, New Mexico is a “blue” state. It has been for some time legislatively and in the last decade or so it’s Congressional representation has shifted to the Democrats as well.

But, as we just saw in Virginia, no party has a “lock” on voters. Republicans can win if they provide a solid alternative to 90 years of failed Democrat policies. It also helps that Gov. MLG and Joe Biden are not especially popular. In other words, draw the lines. It will be partisan. It always has been. It is time to convince New Mexicans to change their state. It CAN happen.

In addition to redistricting, the Legislature will have a chance to allocate money from the American Rescue Plan Act (the Biden “stimulus” bill) which a coalition of GOP and Democrat legislators won the right to distribute (as opposed to MLG acting alone).

There WAS a redistricting commission and here are some of the options they provided, but the Legislature and Gov. (controlled by Democrats) ultimately draw the maps.

As if gasoline prices aren’t high enough already, Gov. Lujan Grisham and the Democrats have put forth draft legislation (you can provide comment on it NOW) that would further increase the price of gasoline.

The bill, available here is called the Clean Fuel Standard Act and it failed narrowly in the 2021 session. It is being reintroduced in 2022 and it is one of Lujan Grisham’s top priorities. If adopted, the legislation would lead to a 35 cent/gallon increase in gasoline prices. That’s based on the Environment Department’s statement that bill targets reductions “carbon intensity” of 20% by 2030 and 30% by 2040 from 2018 levels.”

The bill will be considered in the 2022 session no matter what and with a large number of “progressives” willing to blindly support Lujan Grisham it could easily pass, but the Environment Department IS collecting comments on the draft bill. We recommend something along the lines of “NO” or “Hell no” or perhaps something more nuanced as “Ethanol makes our air dirtier.” (feel free to review the EPA study linked).

As the article notes, “making ethanol and using it produces nitrous oxides in the atmosphere. Once there, nitrous oxides plus oxygen plus sunlight becomes ozone — a major pollutant.”

Please submit comments on the draft bill to cleanfuel.standard@state.nm.us by 5 p.m., Friday, December 10, 2021.

Lynne Andersen has been a fixture in Albuquerque politics for decades as the leader of NAIOP (more on that organization in the podcast).

Lynne is leaving the organization at the end of this year and Paul wanted to find out all about her lengthy history in New Mexico politics and how things have changed over the years. In addition to history, Paul and Lynne discuss development and economic issues in Albuquerque and how she sees things the industry and City changing in the future.

A new story in the Albuquerque Journal discusses the boom going on in New Mexico’s oil and gas industry.

According to the story, “In raw numbers, the industry generated almost $5.3 billion in revenue for state and local governments in the 2021 fiscal year – a 12% increase over 2020 and more than twice as much as in 2016.” Furthermore, “oil- and gas-derived income made up 35% of all general-fund revenue for the state budget last year.”

Ironically, while most of the Democrats quoted in the story want to keep cashing those checks, that is NOT a unanimous opinion among Democrats with 24 of them applauding Biden’s lease moratorium, fracking bans legislation being introduced, and articles like the following from Sen. Ortiz y Pino calling for an “end” to oil and gas in New Mexico.

In a sane world with a sane political party, the Democrats would be busily adopting economic policy reforms to make New Mexico’s economy more diversified regardless of oil and gas production. Instead we get a gusher of revenues, expanded government, and perpetual poverty.

The next time Gov. Lujan Grisham touts teacher pay raises and all of the new spending being funneled into New Mexico’s public education system,  be sure to remember this new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research which shows how keeping students out of the classroom negatively impacted student performance on test scores. The chart below really illustrates the point:

And, while New Mexico was not included in the study, the fact that, as the follow chart shows, New Mexico students lost more time in the classroom (due to our Governor’s policies) than all but six other states.

OAK NM had its own write up here.

On this week’s podcast, Paul and Wally begin with a discussion of NM’s COVID infection situation and the rise of the Omicron variant. Why is NM’s data so slow and how is the infection situation evolving?

Biden’s nominee to be Comptroller of Currency appears to be an actual communist or at least has communist sympathies.  

Remote learning due to COVID caused a drop in learning. How bad is it for New Mexico which already struggles?

Red states dominate jobs by state recovery since COVID. We crunched the jobs numbers on New Mexico ourselves and the numbers aren’t pretty.

Spurred by analysis by our friends in Texas who compared big red and blue states with each other, we compared these big red and blue states with New Mexico. The results are interesting.

A new report on New Mexico’s Film subsidy program actually provides further ammunition for critics.

RGF discusses New Mexico’s gross receipts tax and MLG’s small rate cut in the Las Cruces Sun News. 

Anyone who lives in and travels around Albuquerque sees the tents and shopping carts. Unfortunately, voters saw fit to give Tim Keller another four years as Mayor, but City Council MUST do everything in their power not to coddle and “help” the homeless, but to move them off of city property and enforce private property rights.

The “homeless” situation worsens day by day and the fact that this West Side family can no longer walk to school is a simple illustration that the City of Albuquerque is failing to provide even the most basic public services to its residents.

The story asserts that the “homeless” cannot be moved if they are on City property, but we know of no provision in City law that would prohibit their removal. If there is anything in ordinance, Council needs to make changing that top priority and Keller needs to be made to enforce the law.