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

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

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

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

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

New Mexico among states losing young, wealthy residents.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is a nationally-administered test. Unlike the test the state administers, NAEP doesn’t change when a new administration takes over so it is a MUCH better measure of educational performance over time.

The first post-COVID results were JUST RELEASED (on Monday, October 24) and for locked down New Mexico the results are not pretty. New Mexico saw dramatic COVID-related declines which are reflected in the 2022 scores below, but more importantly came in dead last in all four categories (4th grade math/reading and 8th grade math/reading). Those scores placed New Mexico 51st across the board in ALL categories tested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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There are few bad ideas that fail to gain traction in New Mexico, especially with big-city liberal politicians, but (thankfully), rent control has been rejected by Albuquerque’s City Council and by a 7-2 vote no less. Only Fiebelkorn and Benton supported it.

Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.” Economists from across the political spectrum argue that rent control is harmful. And, while the Albuquerque measure was merely a memorial, it would have been harmful had it passed. Kudos to the five councilors who opposed this ill-advised measure.

The Rio Grande Foundation tends to not focus on New Mexico’s Land Commissioner very much. They have one primary job which is to keep the revenue from oil and gas on state lands flowing to beneficiaries including the poor-performing K-12 school system. Thus, our philosophy on Land Commissioner has been hands off as commissioners have usually adhered to a revenue maximization philosophy.

Until now.  According to the Albuquerque Journal, “Garcia Richard said she would support a temporary moratorium on fracking permits for the oil industry on state trust land as a way to force the Legislature to boost New Mexico royalty rates to match Texas’ rates, an idea that has stalled in recent sessions at the Roundhouse.” Notably, Texas has the highest royalty rates, so Garcia Richard is hoping to match the highest rate, not a middle-ground royalty rate at 25%. In New Mexico, the royalty rate for production on state lands is as high as 20% and royalties in the Permian Basin spanning Texas-New Mexico and North Dakota Bakken Basin range from 18–20% while many western states charge royalties of 16.67 percent.

On this week’s interview Paul talks to Brian Domitrovic a scholar with the Laffer Institute about his new book, “Taxes Have Consequences: the definitive history of the income tax on the economy.”

John Kiesling is New Mexico’s own version of “Weird Al” Yankovich. Here’s his latest satirical parody of Alan Menken’s “Friend Like Me,” from “Aladdin,” about our high-handed, condescending, would-be ruler.

At the start of COVID, Kiesling did a hilarious parody of MLG’s power-hungry form of “leadership.”

John is not just a talented parody songwriter. He had a good grasp on the science early on. Our podcast with him was recorded in August of 2020.

On this week’s conversation Paul and Wally note that early voting at county clerks offices kicks off today. Early in-person voting begins on October 22nd. In order to inform people about some of the items on the ballot they do a “deep dive” into important issues on the ballot that average New Mexicans may not know or understand the implications of. If you or your friends and family members have questions about everything from judges to bond measures to constitutional amendments, this is YOUR episode!

Paul specifically wants voters to beware of Amendment 2. 

Some interesting migration trends are uncovered in the Allied Van Lines report (such as where Californians are moving). 

New Mexico Democrats are talking seriously about raising taxes in January. Paul and Wally discuss.

KRQE Channel 13 offers the following “fact check” regarding the education agendas of Mark Ronchetti and Michelle Lujan Grisham. We have previously stated that MLG has no plan for education. Ronchetti’s plan is highly detailed and can be found here.  MLG’s campaign website discusses education here.

KRQE largely reiterates the claims made by Ronchetti about the myriad failures of the Lujan Grisham Administration in the area of education. When KRQE asks MLG’s campaign about her plans for education Delaney Corcoran is quoted as saying, “the Governor does have a plan, the plan is to continue making investments in education across the state.”

Fair enough. As the Albuquerque Journal noted in a recent editorial, despite MLG increasing spending by 1/3rd ($1 billion in a few short years) New Mexico has not “moved the needle” on education results.  So, MLG has a “plan,” but that plan has already been tried AND FAILED. Continuing to spend more money is not much of a plan, right? FACT CHECK: TRUE

RGF’s president Paul Gessing sat down with KOAT Channel 7 to discuss two of the constitutional amendments that will be on New Mexicans’ ballots when they vote this fall.

Constitutional Amendment 1 would tap into New Mexico’s Land Grant Permanent Fund. Gessing’s appearance is toward the end of the clip.

A separate KOAT segment addressed Amendment 2 which would allow the Legislature to spend taxpayer dollars on infrastructure projects that would expressly benefit private interests.  Here is our detailed assessment of Amendment 2.

The Commonwealth Foundation is the larger, Pennsylvania-based version of the Rio Grande Foundation, a free market think tank.

They recently produced a study (you can read it here) of state public bargaining laws. With the 2018 Janus decision by the US Supreme Court to end forced unionism for government workers, government employees have experienced an undisputed increase in freedom, but “Right to Work” is  one of many state-level laws impacting worker freedom. Unfortunately (but unsurprisingly) New Mexico’s Democratic dominance has led to policies that are VERY beneficial to government employee unions.

The Commonwealth Foundation gives New Mexico a “D-” while UT, OK, and CO all achieve “C” scores. AZ is a “B” and TX is “A+.” In addition to labor laws written in favor of government unions New Mexico has bloated government which further gives the unions power and consumes human resources that could otherwise be used in the private sector.

If you’re looking for the merits and demerits of the various candidates for governor and attorney general, there are plenty of other posts on this page or podcasts at TippingPointNM.com. We’re here to discuss the so-called “down-ballot” or lower-profile issues before voters this November. In person early voting at the county clerk’s office begins Tuesday, October 11 while early voting sites open on Saturday, October 22nd.

JUDGES: without putting too fine a point on it, New Mexico’s judiciary is in need of a massive overhaul. It is one of the primary bodies responsible for the States horrendous crime problems. Currently, New Mexico’s Supreme Court is 100% Democrat with 4 of the 5 having been nominated by Gov. Lujan Grisham (only Michael Vigil who was elected in 2018 and faces retention this election was NOT appointed by MLG).

There are numerous other Metro Court and other positions, most of which are unopposed, but there are retention elections and those are VERY IMPORTANT. In New Mexico a judge must must receive at least 57% of the vote. So, it IS possible for voters outraged by deteriorating public safety conditions to push back against the judiciary in hopes of getting better judges on the bench.

In terms of constitutional amendments Amendment 1 would tap into New Mexico’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to create a host of early childhood programs, but most significantly universal pre-K. RGF has written extensively on the serious problems with this proposal here and here (for starters).

Amendment 2 would allow the Legislature to fund infrastructure projects for PRIVATE benefit. We have serious concerns about this proposal.

Amendment 3 would require that an appointed judge shall be up for election at the first general election one year after being appointed. At the election, the winning candidate would serve the remainder of the term in effect. This amendment actually gives nominated judges an opportunity to consolidate control over their seat before appearing on the ballot which may be of concern.

Bernalillo County voters are being asked to amend the County charter. After some difficulty finding out exactly what changes would be made we reached out to the County. You can read for yourself here what it would do (this information is not on the actual ballot). We have no problem with the amendment.

As a general rule we recommend voting against ALL bonds, not because all of them are bad or wasteful, but because local voters have a tendency to blindly vote YES on nearly all bonds. Bonds are simply government debt which must be paid off by your property tax dollars. Broadly speaking voters should be more careful about these, but bonds are almost never voted down at least in the Albuquerque metro area (this may not be the case in other areas of the State, so vote accordingly).

The latest Allied Van Lines report which highlights where people are moving to and from is out. You can see the map below. All six of the states Americans moved TO in great numbers were “red” states with 3 of the 6 most popular lacking a personal income tax (Texas, Tennessee, and Florida).

On the other hand, all six states that saw the most outbound traffic were “blue” states (CA, IL, MI, PA, NY, NJ, and MD).

The same report highlighted the number of Californians leaving their state (a few data points below). For better or worse, New Mexico is NOT a leading destination for Californians. Four of the five cities that ARE destinations for Californians are in zero-income tax states. The other is Phoenix, AZ.

• In 2021, California was the second-highest outbound state (66% of moves in California were outbound)
• California has been in the top 10 outbound states for the last 5 years
• Los Angeles was the 5th top outbound city (out of the entire country)

On this week’s interview Paul talks to Lindsey Burke, PhD of the Heritage Foundation. Lindsey has been a long-time researcher and advocate for education choice and she and her team recently published the Heritage Foundation’s “Education Freedom Report Card.” Paul and Lindsey discuss New Mexico’s performance on the Index and what could be done to improve it. Also, they discuss the policies that make some states leaders in educational freedom and what “blue” states like New Mexico are or can do to improve educational freedom.

The map below (from the report) contains a link to the report and there is a link above as well.

Despite having no less than $2.5 billion in surplus revenue next year when the Legislature convenes, New Mexico Democrats are making noise about raising taxes on alcohol.

Currently, New Mexico’s alcohol taxes are right in the middle when it comes to US states. So, why would legislators want to raise taxes? A report from New Mexico Indepth released earlier this year included all manner of harrowing statistics including those below.

Various studies purport to show that raising alcohol taxes is the best way to address alcohol abuse, but higher taxes are a blunt instrument indeed. It would seem that before penalizing ALL alcohol users in New Mexico for the behavior of a few that we might want some analysis of WHY New Mexico has such serious alcohol problems in the first place.

Clearly, New Mexico’s overall taxes on alcohol which are right in the middle of the pack don’t explain the situation. Neighboring Colorado and Texas have the 2nd and 3rd lowest tax burdens on alcohol in the nation and are not experiencing the same problems as New Mexico (according to the study).

KOB TV Debate wrap up and discussion;

Further breakdown of the ABQ Journal responses of both candidates.

MLG rescinds order relating to public health used in Ronchetti ad.

RGF makes news due to Governor candidate Mark Ronchetti’s visit to UPS facility. RGF weighs in.

A local Starbucks votes to unionize.

There is zero evidence the recent hurricane to hit Florida is the result of global warming; In fact, the end of August saw the development of NO named storms. There were no tropical storms or hurricanes in the month of August in 1961 (pre-satellite era) and 1997.

Credit where credit is due to the New Energy Economy on PNM/Avangrid merger.

As NM shuts down coal plants to defeat climate change, China builds MUCH more.

California Air Resources Board to prohibit natural gas heaters/furnaces (will MLG follow suit if elected?).

Most of the attention on non-candidate measures on this fall’s ballot will be on the plan to tap one of New Mexico’s oil and gas-generated “permanent funds” to provide pre-K and other early childhood programs.

But, voters should be aware of and concerned over proposed Amendment 2 on their ballots.

If adopted, the Amendment would add (another) exception to the state’s anti-donation clause to authorize the Legislature to appropriate state funds for infrastructure that provides “essential services.” The amendment defines essential services as “infrastructure that allows internet, energy, water, wastewater or other services provided by law.”

The State already provides various subsidies for broadband and other “utilities,” but the anti-donation clause simply prohibits government paying to directly provide such services to people. In other words, if adopted, there is no limit on who taxpayer dollars could be handed over to and there is very little restricting what could be done with those dollars. For example, your tax money could be used to build a road or water line on private property, with the road and water line then owned by the property owner, not the state.

You can read additional pro/con arguments (on all three amendments) provided by the Legislature here. Here is an article from the Albuquerque Journal.