The House Taxation and Revenue Committee passed HB 122 this morning which would add a surtax to health insurance premiums. The surtax would partially be used to fund a “health insurance affordability” commission. The bill will go to the House Floor next.

This afternoon, the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee is considering a step in the right direction on liquor license reform, HB 255.

The committee webcasts can be found here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to HB 122 and in favor of HB 255.

HB 4 the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, is an ambitious piece of legislation introduced by Speaker Brian Egolf in the 2021 legislative session.

The legislation itself is moving through the process AND has been amended, but we are going to discuss it in general terms here. We ALL want improved public safety AND for civil rights to be protected, but it doesn’t appear that HB 4 does much to improve the situation in New Mexico. The legislation will also be expensive for taxpayers with costs expected to start at $20 million annually.

Ultimately, increasing the ability to litigate against law enforcement is not going to improve policing in New Mexico. This is especially true in rural New Mexico, where local, especially rural, governments cannot afford to pay, recruit and train qualified officers.

1. There has never been qualified immunity for lawsuits brought under New Mexico law against New Mexico law enforcement officers.
2. You can clearly sue for violations of the State Constitution under the Tort Claims Act. It’s embodied in existing law.
3. In some areas, including search and seizure and privacy, the New Mexico Constitution actually provides broader protections than the U.S. Constitution.
4. The probable reason defendants are arguing that there is immunity for some State constitutional claims is because the State Constitution contains vague references to “life and liberty” which some courts, understandably, have determined to be too vague to find a waiver of SOVEREIGN immunity under the Tort Claims Act. This is not “QUALIFIED IMMUNITY.”
5. Fundamentally, the reason we are so up in arms about so-called constitutional violations by government is because we have allowed government to have an ever expansive role in our lives. Obviously, the more power and intrusive the government is, the more likely it is we will find a constitutional violation in some area. Limit government’s reach, on the other hand, and the violations would also dissipate.

Senator Antoinette Sedillo Lopez’s SB 149, which would ban new fracking licenses, will go before the Senate Conservation committee on Saturday. The oil and gas industry is an essential part of New Mexico’s economy, providing 134,000 jobs, $16.6 billion in economic activity, and 39% of the state government’s budget. A ban on new fracking operations would cripple that industry in New Mexico and drive out producers. Current geological science shows that fracking is safe and does not contaminate drinking water.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to SB 149.

The meeting starts at 9 AM on February 13th, and you can watch the webcast here.

New Mexico’s 2021 session is truly unprecedented. The Rio Grande Foundation has been involved in the New Mexico Legislature for more than a decade, but we’ve never seen anything like the  locked down 2021 legislative session.

While we find the locked-down nature of the session has hugely-problematic, many Democrats have claimed that the “virtual” session has allowed new participants into the process.

Here’s our take on the good, bad, and ugly of the virtual 2021 session:

Good: Not commuting to Santa Fe. Unless you are from Santa Fe, not having to make your way to the Capitol is a good thing. An hour in the car each way from Albuquerque is nothing compared to up to 5 hours one way from other parts of our State. Of course, “Zoom” technology has been around for years, there is no doubt that if the Legislature was serious about hearing new voices they could have done (and we asked for) YEARS ago.

As the head of an organization that cares about a large number of bills, it is easier to track and engage with the large number of bills in committee during a “virtual” session.   

BAD: Simply put, most of the useful information exchanged between legislators, advocates, and lobbyists during a legislative session comes outside of committee hearings in the halls and “lobbies” of the Roundhouse where frank, private conversations can be had and information exchanged. That is being missed and we won’t know how badly it is missed until the laws passed this session take effect.

Also, not having the Legislature open to the public just FEELS bad. Behind a chain link fence and with no public access to the people or the process, the Roundhouse goes from “the people’s house” to “no trespassing” very quickly. It really defies New Mexico values and the accessibility people once had to the process (hopefully they do again).

UGLY: Without the public in attendance and watching, will this fully “progressive” legislature feel empowered to pass any number of policies? Obviously, the last election provided the legislative majorities they need to push whatever they want. Will they hold back due to the pandemic’s impacts, budgetary uncertainty, or electoral concerns? We won’t know the answer to that until late March when the session is over.

On this week’s podcast Paul discusses his recent IN PERSON talk to Santa Fe Republican Women group!

Super Bowl 20,000 people attend. Halftime dancers wear bizarre and de-personalizing “diapers” on their heads.

Top Golf is open while other similar businesses remain shuttered.

Lujan Grisham raises pay for her top staffers. 

Responding to Sen. Mimi Stewart who wants New Mexicans to just move to Texas if they don’t like New Mexico public policies. 

Bill Richardson’s tax cuts were a success as the Rio Grande Foundation and other economists have noted.

Nearly half of school districts offer in-person learning. The Rio Grande Foundation is tracking districts as they make these decisions.

The House Agriculture and Water Resources Committee will consider HB 177 in a meeting this morning starting at 8:30 AM. HB 177 would loosen restrictions on New Mexico’s cottage food industry. If passed, the bill would allow homemade food producers to sell their products online and from home and do so without a permit or a home kitchen inspection. Most other states already allow this kind of commerce and have reported zero health issues resulting from these homemade products.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in favor of HB 177.

You can watch the committee meeting here, or join the Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation’s Tipping Point New Mexico podcast is one of the best ways for people to keep track of what is happening in New Mexico and its important political and policy issues.

But it is not “just” a podcast. We ALSO upload video footage of the interviews and discussions to Youtube.

Here is a recent conversation with site selector John Boyd.

Here is the most recent conversation on “news of the week” with Wally Drangmeister:

And, here is a recent conversation with Fred Nathan of Think New Mexico:

We are working with a broad coalition of groups in opposition to mandatory paid sick leave bills that are now moving in the New Mexico Legislature.

It is not going to be easy to get the VERY “progressive” Legislature to abandon their plans to make it even harder to do business in New Mexico, but we will do our best. Please click here to send the Legislature an email.

It has now become an article of faith on the left in New Mexico that Gov. Bill Richardson’s 2003 tax cuts were a failure. Several tax hike bills including (at least) two that would raise New Mexico’s personal income tax rate have been introduced this session including:

SB 56: Sen. Bill O’Neill’s bill to increase New Mexico’s top personal income tax rate to 8.2% (the bill was heard in Senate Tax on Thursday);

SB 89: Sen. Bill Tallman’s bill to increase New Mexico’s top personal income tax rate to 6.5%;

You MAY recall that the Richardson cuts took New Mexico’s top income tax rate from 8.2% down to 4.9% over 5 years where it was until 2019. The cuts ALSO cut capital gains tax rates in half. These were REAL tax cuts and they passed the Democrat-controlled House without a single dissenting vote and passed the Senate by a margin of 39 to 2 and were signed into law on Valentine’s Day, 2003.

Richardson and Were Richardson’s tax cuts REALLY a failure? No. In fact, none other than the liberal “fact checking” site PolitiFact said that Richardson’s job creation claims (made in advance of his 2008 reelection campaign) were “mostly true.”

As PolitiFact noted in 2007,

Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that New Mexico gained 75,800 jobs from December 2002 to July 2007, which is slightly lower than Richardson’s claim.

As our friends at FactCheck.org note in this article , Richardson has consistently cited the higher number, even when the actual number was lower.

For our ruling, however, we’ll rely on the current 75,800 and call it mostly true.

PolitiFact further quoted none other than NMSU economist (one of NM’s top economic gurus) Jim Peach approvingly.

Peach said Richardson’s tax incentives and income tax cuts have created a favorable atmosphere for business that is a stark change from the state’s mentality in the mid-1970s, when state officials refused to provide help to a promising young company named Microsoft.

The climate here has changed considerably since then, Peach said. Bill Richardson has been a big part of that. He’s not the whole story, but he’s been a big part of it.

The fact is that if Richardson were governor today he would be too conservative for New Mexico’s Democratic Party on both guns and taxes.

Tomorrow will be another busy day in the Roundhouse. Two bad bills will go before Senate committees and a refreshingly good bill will be under consideration in a House committee.

SJR 3 will appear before the Senate Rules Committee in a meeting starting at 9 AM. This bill would lead to a ballot proposal amending the state constitution to include provisions for “environmental rights” and allow for private right of action.

SB 148 will appear in a Senate Education Committee meeting, which also starts at 9 AM. SB 148 would create a “diversity commission” to implement policies to advance “diversity, equity, and excellence” in New Mexico public schools.

HB 164 would lower costs for restaurants and customers by gradually increasing the number of liquor licenses in circulation. HB 164 goes before the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee. That meeting starts at 1:30 PM.

All webcasts can be accessed here, and you can join the House committee Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to both Senate bills and in favor of the House bill, which you can read below.

SJR 3 Testimony

SB 148 Testimony

HB 164 Testimony

John Boyd is a site selector who splits his time between Florida and New Jersey. He is familiar with New Mexico and its economy and was interviewed for the Tipping Point New Mexico podcast on April 9, 2020 in the early days of the COVID 19 pandemic. 

The Rio Grande Foundation has long called for basic education reforms that would empower parents and families when it comes to education resources including school choice. But, with the onset of COVID 19 and many districts moving to “virtual only” models, we have joined the Centers for Disease Control and many others in calling for students to return to their classrooms.

We will be tracking announced school reopenings under Gov. Lujan Grisham’s latest orders which call for hybrid learning for ALL students to begin on February 8. Check this space for updates. We gleaned this information from various district and news websites. If you have new info please let us know at: info@riograndefoundation.org

This information was last updated on February 22. 

Shortly before the Biden Administration imposed a moratorium on oil and gas leasing on federal lands, the Foundation’s president Paul Gessing joined the Institute for Energy Research podcast to discuss New Mexico’s energy portfolio and what possible consequences the state could face from a ban on hydraulic fracturing instituted by the Biden administration.

A long-shot piece of legislation (actually constitutional amendment SJR 15) introduce in the 2021 legislative session would allow counties that wish to get out of the State of New Mexico to do so.

While its sponsor, Sen. Cliff Pirtle (R-Roswell) has no illusions of passage, it was written up in the Albuquerque Journal and generated some waves with Sen. pro tem Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque) saying, “If you like Texas better, just pack up your bags and move – it’s not that far.”

The reality is that it’s not that easy for average citizens to leave family, friends, and jobs to move to another State. What is more likely is that people never show up in the first place while a relatively small number do indeed leave when jobs and other opportunities become available.

Census Bureau data of course track this. Over the decade from 2010 to 2019 it is clear that people are taking Stewart’s advice and are moving to New Mexico’s more-economically-free neighbors, some of which compete with New Mexico’s ample geographical and weather attributes which are indeed hard to compete with.

Even Oklahoma which (unlike Texas) has an income tax and is not nearly as “enchanting” as New Mexico from the perspectives of weather or geography, grew THREE TIMES faster than New Mexico last decade.

It’s always worth noting that New Mexico sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of economic freedom on the Fraser Institute’s annual index. And, while partisan Democrats may note that for much of the decade in question New Mexico had a Republican Governor, the Legislature remained at least partially controlled by Democrats the entire time and thus Republicans couldn’t actually change many public policies.

On this week’s podcast conversation:

Apparently, not everyone was consulted by MLG on her back to school order. 

The number of active COVID cases is MUCH higher than it was for most of the time the schools were on lockdown. 

Good news. More counties are moving from red to yellow.

Under what logic can Top Golf open but not Cliffs or Hinkle Family Fun Center?

Biden’s energy crackdown isn’t just for 60 days. But, as discussed on the podcast recently, Kathleen Sgamma’s Western Energy Alliance has indeed filed a lawsuit. 

New Mexico is #1 in Medicaid recipients. MLG’s old business partner Rep. Deborah Armstrong (and seeming Medicaid profiteer) wants to levy a tax on insurance policies to fund additional welfare. 

Wally and Paul discuss some good bills this session. 

They further address a few bad bills including one on private prison prohibition and another on mandatory solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations on new homes.

Mandatory sick leave vs. tax incentives.

Watch EoE for details and regular updates during the virtual session.

NM unemployment rate jumps as economy locks down in November. 

Finally, Paul and Wally remind listeners to use the Foundation’s Freedom Index and check www.ErrorsofEnchantment.com as bills move through the process.

Rio Grande Foundation has long opposed the New Mexico Spaceport. The facility, which opened nearly a decade ago and has yet to be used for its intended purpose (space tourism) was tailor-made for one company: Virgin Galactic.

Unfortunately, Virgin Galactic has put together what can only be described as a spotty safety record (and that’s before the company launches its first space tourist). We knew about the dead test pilot back in 2014. And recently the company had to abort a test launch because the engine failed to ignite. Now, according to revelations made in a soon-to-be-printed book, the company narrowly averted disaster back in February of 2019.

According to the Washington Post, Todd Ericson, a test pilot who also served as a vice president for safety and test said, “The structural integrity of the entire stabilizer was compromised (during the test), I don’t know how we didn’t lose the vehicle and kill three people.”

The Post article further notes that: the regulations governing private space companies are relatively loose — the Federal Aviation Administration ensures the safety of people and property on the ground, but there is merely an “informed consent” standard for the passengers, who need only acknowledge the risks as if they were skydiving or bungee jumping.

RGF’s Paul Gessing interviewed private space expert and proprietor of the website Parabolic Arc, Doug Messier, on two separate occasions about ongoing issues at Spaceport America for the Tipping Point NM podcast here and here. Messier raised safety concerns about Virgin Galactic’s technology during both interviews.

The House Labor, Veterans’, and Military Affairs Committee will meet today at 2 P.M. HB 110, a phased minimum wage increase, is on the schedule. It would raise the minimum wage across New Mexico to $15 by 2025 . This bill also requires the minimum wage to rise with the Consumer Price Index after 2025.

You can watch the committee meeting webcast here, or join the Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to the bill which you can read here.

On this week’s Tipping Point interview Paul sits down with Fred Nathan of Think New Mexico. Think New Mexico is another policy think tank that works in New Mexico. They describe themselves as “A results-oriented think tank whose mission is to improve the lives of all New Mexicans.”

Fred and Paul discuss the organization’s past successes often working in tandem with the Rio Grande Foundation. For starters, Paul and Fred speak candidly about the security issues around the Roundhouse and the challenges of the unique 60-day “virtual” session. They also discuss grocery taxes and issues that cropped up over that issue since the onset of COVID 19.

Furthermore, they discuss Social Security taxation and efforts to limit or repeal that.

Finally, they have some disagreement over Think New Mexico’s latest proposal which would place a lower cap on various lending services in New Mexico.

Tune in to this interesting and informative conversation!

People who know the Rio Grande Foundation know that Paul Gessing enjoys playing golf. We made it clear that re-opening shuttered golf courses was a no-brainer early on in COVID. But, we (along with Mayor Keller) opposed over-generous subsidies for Top Golf.

But, now that the place is apparently going to open to the public THIS FRIDAY. And, in addition to appreciating having another OPEN entertainment amenity in the Albuquerque area, it is good when ANY business can open in our City, even those receiving subsidies.

But, ask yourself: how is hitting range balls in a stall any COVID safer than riding a roller coaster or playing at an open water area? As noted in my Albuquerque Journal column on the subject a vast majority of states across the nation have opened amusement parks.

So, if Top Golf can really open, I’m sure Cliffs and Hinkle will open as well, right? NOTE: Gessing has been to a few Top Golf facilities. Like most outdoor entertainment options you can make it COVID safe or unsafe depending on numerous factors.

On Tuesday, February 2nd, the Senate Conservation Committee will meet to consider SB 67 and SB 132, both of which push a “green” agenda and send the costs to New Mexicans. SB 67 requires all new power generation plants to be 100% renewable, while SB 132 mandates all new home constructions to include solar panels.

The meeting starts at 9 A.M. and you can watch the webcast here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to both bills, which you can read below.

SB 67 Testimony

SB 132 Testimony

The House Commerce and Economic Development Committee meets tomorrow, Friday the 29th, at 1:30 PM. They will consider two bills relating to paid sick and family leave. The bad bill, HB 38, requires employers to provide paid family and medical leave, while the good bill, HB 134, provides incentives for employers to provide family-friendly policies but does not mandate them.

You can watch the committee webcast here, or join the Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to HB 38 and in support of HB 134.

With everything going on in the Legislature and the Biden Administration’s attack on oil and gas, it would be easy to miss the fact that New Mexico is now the MOST reliant state in the entire nation when it comes to the welfare program known as Medicaid.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, an astonishing 43% of all New Mexicans were enrolled in the program statewide as of November

“The federal government provides $4.76 for every dollar in state general funds spent on the program, up from $3.65 pre-pandemic. That equation is providing the state with an additional $385 million.”

Medicaid levels are driven by the generosity of state policies and our impoverished status. HB 122 which has been introduced by Rep. Deborah Armstrong in the 2021 Legislature would impose a new tax on private health insurance in order to fund ADDITIONAL welfare programs in health care.

The Senate Education Committee will meet tomorrow, Friday the 29th, at 9 A.M. Several bad bills will be under consideration, including SB 31, which requires a school nurse in every school district in the state, SB 63, which requires all new schools constructed to include solar panels, and SB 110, which raises contributions to educators’ healthcare plans.

You can watch the committee webcast here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to these bills. You can read our statements below.

SB 31 Testimony

SB 63 Testimony

SB 110 Testimony