(Albuquerque, NM) – New Mexico’s free market think tank, the Rio Grande Foundation, is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to its board of directors.

Our first addition is David Hampton of White Rock, NM. Hampton ran for the Legislature in 2020 and stated that RGF was instrumental in providing him with data and analysis on important issues, which served as the foundation of many of the opinions he expressed in public. Now that the campaign is over, Hampton noted that RGF’s role is even more important, as RGF continues to try to shape culture and worldview in support of the next election cycle.

Hampton is retired from LANL, having served as a cost and schedule analyst for many years in support of project and program management.

Tamara Olive is a Client Executive, Vice President with HUB New Mexico based in Albuquerque. She I was born in Phoenix, AZ and raised in New Mexico. great grandparents founded Cliff’s Amusement Park in 1959.

She has seen the challenges they (and other businesses) are facing. Tamara has seen the devastation of locally owned businesses closing and is concerned about our states policies.

In her professional work she focuses on New Mexico-based businesses and works on understanding her clients’ business, dangers, opportunities and strengths.

Tomorrow the House Labor, Veterans’, and Military Affairs committee will consider HB 19, the “Real Estate Transfer Tax Act.” The bill would impose a tax on the transfer of real estate valued at over $500,000, and an even higher rate for property valued over $750,000. For our state’s economy to thrive, we need to attract residents from out of state, but this bill would discourage many people interested in moving to New Mexico.

The meeting starts at 1:30 P.M. on Tuesday, and you can watch the webcast here, or join the Zoom meeting here.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to HB 19.

Tomorrow the Senate Tax, Business, and Transportation committee will consider SB 130, which would force 75% of the state’s vehicle fleet to be fully electric by 2030. This change would cost taxpayers not only for the vehicles but also to build out charging station infrastructure.

The meeting starts at 1:30 P.M. on Tuesday. You can watch the webcast here or request a link to give testimony by emailing scorc@nmlegis.gov before 10 A.M. Tuesday morning.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in opposition to the SB 130.

KOAT recently did an excellent story detailing problems with the court-ordered agreement with the Department of Justice that the City of Albuquerque has been under for several years now.

The agreement has cost taxpayers $20 million to pay for training, equipment, staffing and a court-appointed monitor and, while it is hard to prove causation, violent crime in the City has increased by 53 percent.

Watch the full story below. Gessing appears at the end of the Story.

On Monday afternoon the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider SB 74, the Health Order Termination and Renewal bill. The bill would force an expiration of emergency health orders after either fourteen or thirty days if they are not renewed by either the legislature or a group of legislative leaders. This bill is one of several that would advance legislative oversight over extended health orders and emergency declarations.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will meet on Monday, February 14th starting at 1:30 P.M. You can watch the webcast here. If you would like to speak in favor of this bill, please email sjc@nmlegis.gov before 5 P.M. on Sunday with your name, email address, the bill number (SB 74), the name of the entity you represent, and indicate that you would like to speak in favor of this legislation.

The Rio Grande Foundation submitted testimony in favor of SB 74.

In the last month, New Mexico and the United States as a whole have witnessed unprecedented attacks on the traditional energy sector. Nationally, President Biden’s ban — for now, just described as a pause — on new oil and gas leases on federal lands has been well documented. So too has his revoking of the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

While such decisions are undoubtedly popular with radical environmentalists and their well-funded allies, it is hard to see how they — or anyone likely to follow them — will achieve the reductions in CO₂ emissions necessary to make any difference to the climate. Look, for example, at the impact of the Keystone XL pipeline decision. With no available pipeline, Canada and its oil producers will simply load their oil onto trains or trucks, relying instead on modes of transport that are more risky and less energy-efficient. Indeed, doing so will involve higher greenhouse-gas emissions than the pipeline would have, especially considering the pipeline developers’ recent promise to use only renewable energy to operate the project.

Overall, less than 10 percent of American oil and gas comes from federal lands. Cutting production from them won’t have a real impact on producers on private and state lands, nor will it reduce demand for foreign oil. Nevertheless, this new policy could end up inflicting significant economic pain on an already shaky U.S. economy.

Even if a relatively small amount of U.S. oil and gas production comes from federal lands, bans or restrictions there will have a disproportionate effect on a good number of states and their economies (like my own in New Mexico). Half of New Mexico’s oil and gas production — much of it fracked — is on federal land. Long-term curtailment of oil and gas drilling on federal lands would devastate the state’s budget.

Not to be outdone by the Biden administration, the Democrat-dominated legislature here in “deep blue” New Mexico is considering a number of proposals of their own. (Mind you, the state is one of the poorest in the Union and, thanks to fracking, is the country’s third-largest oil producer.) Chief among them is legislation that would require all new construction (homes and schools) in New Mexico to incorporate solar panels and mandate that 75 percent of all state-government vehicles be electric-only. Another bill would require dramatic reductions in “carbon intensity” for vehicles purchased by everyday New Mexicans. The technology to reduce carbon-intensity of New Mexico vehicles is left unsaid because the regulation would oblige fuel producers to work this out for themselves.

Writing for the Albuquerque Journal, two Democratic state legislators explained the proposals:

By requiring fuel providers that refine, blend, make or import fuel used in New Mexico to gradually reduce the carbon intensity of the transportation fuel itself, we can reduce emissions by 4.7 million metric tons in carbon dioxide equivalent by 2040. That’s like taking 44,000 cars off the road every year for 15 years. A clean fuel standard would not apply to retail gas stations or cause cost increases at the pump.

Yet, the heavy-handed, economy-killing efforts in New Mexico and in various state capitals across the country will do little to rein in global CO₂ emissions. In fact, CO₂ emissions are already being curbed in the United States through a combination of market forces and government policies. The real problem is that emissions are exploding elsewhere, most notably in China.

In late 2020, Forbes noted that U.S. CO₂ emissions already comply with the Paris agreement. Goosed by an 11 percent drop in CO₂ emissions in 2020 due to COVID-19–induced travel reductions, the United States has seen emissions drop since the mid 1980s. Nowadays, despite a population that is 40 percent larger than it was in the mid 1980s, U.S. CO₂emissions are approximately the same as they were back then. This is a remarkable feat.

Indeed, the combination of a long-term shift in electricity generation from coal to natural gas (in no small part thanks to fracking), along with the energy efficiency generated both by market competition and regulatory pressure, fuel-mileage mandates, and the Clean Air Act, have made the United States a more CO₂-efficient national economy.

China, on the other hand, is not just rapidly increasing CO₂ emissions, it is massively expanding coal-fired electricity production. According to Voice of America, “China put 38.4 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity into operation in 2020, more than three times the amount built elsewhere around the world and potentially undermining its short-term climate goals.”

Furthermore, according to research released on Wednesday by Global Energy Monitor, China’s coal-fired fleet capacity rose by a net 29.8 GW in 2020 (including decommissions), even as the rest of the world made cuts of 17.2 GW.

China, which still has millions of citizens living in real poverty, certainly has a right to develop its economy. But if the Biden administration is serious about addressing climate change, it ought to use the bully pulpit to cajole China to move toward lower CO₂ intensity. After all, China is already the global “leader,” with CO₂ emissions approximately doubling those of the United States. Those emissions rose even during the pandemic year of 2020.

Even if the Biden administration and states such as New Mexico make a concerted and focused effort to reduce CO₂emissions (an open question to say the least), the United States won’t be able to halt climate change. Any CO₂ reduction we make is only displaced by a doubling from China, who seems more serious about developing its own economy than the Biden administration and many “blue” states like New Mexico are about theirs.

President Joe Biden and New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham telling us to pay more for energy while destroying thousands of energy jobs is a hard pill to swallow even if we were to make serious progress toward achieving our climate goals. But to do immense damage to the U.S. and New Mexico economies while allowing American progress on CO₂ emissions to be undermined by our economic and geopolitical rivals in China is woefully misbegotten.

HB 206, known as the Utility Affordability and Relief Act, will be heard in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee on Saturday, February 13, starting at 1:30pm. Click here if you’d like to testify.

The bill is designed to address issues relating to COVID 19 with regard to utilities being disconnected thanks in part to COVID 19. There are other provisions in the bill including the authorization of utility rate preferences for low-income New Mexicans.

While well-intended, unfortunately, the legislation would have an overall negative impact on ALL New Mexicans.

• The bill prohibits utility disconnects due to COVID 19 and creates a program for partial forgiveness of debts incurred during the Pandemic. Of course, that pandemic began 11 months ago, and this legislation would not take effect until the Pandemic has been going for a year or more.

In the meantime, the Public Regulation Commission has maintained a moratorium on utility disconnections for all ratepayers who fall into arrears while the governor’s emergency health orders remain in place. The PRC extended that order Feb. 3 for 100 days for public utilities like Public Service Co. of New Mexico, and 45 more days for smaller utilities and rural electric cooperatives.

Who knows what the future holds, but overall conditions relating to the Virus seem to be improving. It seems hard to understand why the Legislature would need to legislate on the issue at this late date.

• This bill would also open utility prices to manipulation in the form of “preferred” rates for certain groups, particularly “low-income” ratepayers. While current programs exist to assist those of modest means with their utility bills, the fact is that this bill would encourage utilities to begin price discrimination based on income levels. It would be unwise to further duplicate efforts to assist low-income payers.

Of course, if the Legislature cared about increasing utility costs, especially for electricity, they should have capped rate increases when they had the opportunity to consider HB 176 this session. Of course, if the Legislature were serious about keeping electricity rates low it would also consider repeal of the Energy Transition Act AND Richardson-era “renewable” mandates and instead returning electricity markets to something more closely resembling market prices.

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.