While Santa Fe has yet to adopt a budget for the state’s upcoming fiscal year, another expenditure plan — the White House’s multi-trillion-dollar list of what it wants to spend in the new federal fiscal year — was released last week.

For a glimpse at how dependent New Mexico is on D.C., look no further than the press release U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich issued in response. The fedpol hysterically asserted that the budget did not reflect “our core values and principles,” and “would be devastating for New Mexico.”

Heinrich picked a curious item to place at the top of his litany of complaints. His first gripe was the president’s proposal to eliminate funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant. The senator’s love for the program notwithstanding, it’s a well-documented disaster. The Reason Foundation’s Victor Nava noted that “waste, fraud, and corruption [are] continually seen” with CDBG projects. The Cato Institute documented “a history of financial abuse and dubious … spending,” including a marina, renovations to a ski chalet, a shooting range, an off-track-betting facility, and “a festival to celebrate a shopping center.” There’s no shortage of documentation to justify CDBG’s richly deserved death: inspector general audits, reports from the Government Accountability Office, state investigations, exposés by the print and broadcast media.

Heinrich couldn’t be bothered to notice, but there’s a prime example of CDBG chicanery right here in his “home” state. In November, KRQE reported that the City of Albuquerque was asked to give Washington back “nearly a million dollars,” due to a “multitude of issues” regarding its handling of programs that received HUD funds. The bureaucracy now considers Albuquerque a “high risk” for grants, meaning that if reforms aren’t made, federal housing officials might freeze the city’s “ability to draw down from its HUD accounts.”

Heinrich’s tale of woe starts poorly, and gets worse. Energy subsidies, goodies from the Department of Education, the Community Services Block Grant, Amtrak, “public lands,” AmeriCorps — the shrieking is intense, because the chief executive “is not committed to the success of hard working families and our rural communities.”

In addition to checking in on waste and mismanagement of federal funds in New Mexico, the state’s junior senator should also click here. He’ll learn that the national debt, not counting unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities, is just shy of $20 trillion.

There are things to like and dislike about the president’s budget proposal, but no one can deny that the river of revenue flowing from D.C. to the Land of Enchantment will one day run dry. Isn’t it best to accept reality sooner rather than later, and begin implementing policies to ensure that New Mexico can stand on its own?

New Mexico’s dumpster-fire legislative session ended Saturday with no budget agreement between lawmakers and the governor and no noteworthy bills that promise to improve the Land of Enchantment’s dire economic/fiscal health.

But on the bright side, some truly awful pieces of legislation were not passed. Among the bullets dodged:

* Several bills, including HB 117 and SB 344, sought to hike income-tax rates.

* Multiple minimum-wage bills, including HB 27 and HB 67, would have raised the mandate to a jaw-dropping (and hyper-job-destroying) $15.00. An increase that was adopted hikes the minimum wage to $9.00 on April 1, 2018, with a lower, temporary rate allowed for trainee employees. It could be vetoed by the governor.

* HJR 2, the “brainchild” of Rep. Bill McCamley (D-Mesilla Park), would have squandered $7 billion from the Land Grant Permanent Fund on “infrastructure and energy projects,” as well as “clean energy and water technologies” and “early childhood services.”

* The charter-school moratorium, spearheaded by Rep. Christine Trujillo (D-Albuquerque), would have squashed all applications for the important school-choice option through January 1, 2020.

* SB 42, SB 54, SB 102, and SJR 7 attempted to disenfranchise New Mexico’s residents in presidential contests by awarding the state’s Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote.

Yes, the 2017 session was a disaster. But hey, it could have been worse….

We knew the 2017 legislative session was going to be a tough one for individual liberty and free markets. While most of the country moved right, New Mexico lurched far to the left in the 2016 election.

And, with the highest unemployment rate in the nation, poor economic growth, and a budget shortfall, the conditions were ripe for an acrimonious 2017 session. We were not disappointed.

The good news: although we knew going into the session that no big reforms like “right to work, school choice, or “prevailing wage” repeal were going to make it through, the question was whether the Gov. would hold firm against higher taxes and raising the minimum wage. To date, she has indeed held firm vetoing tax hikes and economically-harmful minimum wage hikes.

Also, the Legislature (despite being firmly under Democrat control) was unwilling to tap the “permanent fund” for pre-K and more spending.

In summary, no major damage was sustained.

The bad news: Since Gov. Martinez is vetoing $350 million in tax hikes, that means the budget will be out of balance and that the Legislature is moving towards yet another special session. With Democrat legislators desperately wanting to raise taxes and Gov. Martinez holding firm against raising taxes, there are only a few potential outcomes:

1) Democrats fold and agree to budget cuts;
2) Some previously-unknown or untapped source of money is found to fill the budget gap;
3) Republican legislators fold and vote to override Gov. Martinez’s veto. Such a move could destroy the Republican Party “brand” in New Mexico for years to come;
4) Gov. Martinez folds and agrees to raise taxes (another move that could inflict terrible harm on the Republican Party for years;
5) A government shutdown the ultimate results of which are unclear but really boil down to the first three items on this list.

These are fraught times. New Mexico’s economy faces unprecedented challenges and the conservative movement faces existential challenges. Democrats have the proverbial wind behind them and feel it is only a matter of time until they hold all levers of power. If conservatives don’t stand firm, they risk becoming totally irrelevant in this State.

Contact your legislators, especially if they are a Republican and tell them not to raise taxes. Make sure they know that you are watching!

Also, support the Rio Grande Foundation which is providing clear data to show that New Mexico’s problem is bloated government, not inadequate revenue.

A reminder: find out how your legislators are voting on freedom and which bills voted on this session would have the biggest impact on freedom at our Freedom Index.

Click here for registration form.

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan’s request. ATR works to limit the size and cost of government and opposes higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels and supports tax reform that moves towards taxing consumed income one time at one rate.

ATR organizes the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to the American people to oppose all net tax increases. In the 115th Congress, 212 House members and 45 Senators have taken the pledge.

Grover is one of the most influential voices for free markets and limited government in Washington. What agreements will President Donald Trump and Congress come to on the all-important issues of healthcare and tax reform? How good/bad will these reforms be for taxpayers and the U.S. economy?

• Location:  Marriott Pyramid located at: 5151 San Francisco Rd NE, Albuquerque, NM  87109.
• When:  Monday, April 10, 2017, 12:00 noon to 1:00pm.
• Cost:  Seating is limited and can be purchased at the discounted price of $30 until Wednesday, April 5, 2017; $40 after that.

More about Grover Norquist: He chairs the Washington, DC-based Wednesday Meeting, a weekly gathering of more than 150 elected officials, political activists, and movement leaders. The meeting started in 1993 and takes place in ATR’s conference room. There are now 60 similar center-right meetings in 48 states including New Mexico.

He also:

• Serves on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association of America, the American Conservative Union, the Parental Rights Organization and Center for the National Interest (formerly The Nixon Center.)
• Serves as a Contributing Editor to the American Spectator Magazine.
• Serves as president of the American Society of Competitiveness.
• Authored four books: Rock the House; Leave Us Alone – Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives; Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future (with co-author John Lott) and End the IRS Before it Ends Us – How to Restore a Low Tax, High Growth, Wealthy America – published April 7, 2015.

Click here for registration form.

Was having a “discussion” on Twitter with two of New Mexico’s leading union officials. Both men strongly support Mayor Javier Gonzales’ plans to impose a 2 cent/ounce tax on sugary drinks sold in “The City Different.”

In doing some research on the issue I noticed that the Teamsters Union in Philadelphia was among the leading OPPONENTS of that City’s 1.5 cent/ounce tax on soda and sugary drinks. The following Tweets outline the exchange with Jon Hendry, head of the New Mexico Federation of Labor, AFL/CiO:

So, as I gather from Hendry’s comments, if Santa Fe’s bottler were unionized, his position might be the exact opposite of what he holds now. It would indeed be interesting if Santa Fe’s Coke distributor were unionized. Perhaps Mayor Gonzales wouldn’t even be undertaking this plan against a political ally?

There are all kinds of alternative scenarios, but the fact is that the unions have real political muscle and the way those muscles are used is less about political principle and ideology than it is about grasping self-interest. Easy for us think tank folk to lose sight of.

Otero County‘s pretty cool. White Sands National Monument, the Flickinger Center for Performing Arts, the New Mexico Museum of Space History (really cool), the Alamogordo Museum of History, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, the Sacramento Mountains, Holloman Air Force Base — it’s an interesting place, and has contributed quite a lot to the Land of Enchantment’s culture and history.

But in sponsoring “a contest with students from all over Otero County to create a logo that represents the county in a more modern light,” the county’s commissioners have done something all “public servants” in the state should notice.

No offense to the artist, but Otero County’s current logo, depicted above, is kind of lame. So commissioners have asked Alamogordo Public Schools, New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, private-school pupils, and the homeschooled to design an update “a little bit more fresh and more updated to represent the county better.”

That’s quite a contrast to the approach Santa Fe County took in 2016. It “set aside nearly $100,000 to replace its logo,” paying nearly half of the sum to “GumCo, a creative agency in Salt Lake City, and … Southwest Planning & Marketing of Santa Fe, which conducted surveys and focus groups.”

But the new look was “met with underwhelming enthusiasm” by commissioners late last year, and a decision on the logo was postponed until January. What was the final outcome? We don’t know — no information is available online, and Errors of Enchantment contacted the county, but has received no response.

No, volunteers can’t do undercover police work, enforce zoning rules, adjudicate complex criminal/civil cases, and maintain official records. But there are abundant opportunities for members of the community to pitch in elsewhere, and in so doing render many local-government appropriations unnecessary.

In 2016, four out of five members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation had little, if any, regard for “the fiscal interests of American taxpayers.”

That’s the conclusion of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, which has released its 2016 congressional ratings. The organization “scored 65 votes in the House of Representatives and 16 votes in the Senate.” No fedpol in the former earned a perfect 100, but four senators won the title of “Taxpayer Super Hero,” including a senator just to our west: Arizona’s Jeff Flake.

New Mexico’s senators, both Democrats, each scored a 13, and were thus labeled “Hostile.” Two members of the House, Democrats Ben Ray Luján and Michelle Lujan Grisham, performed even more abysmally, scoring in the single digits. (That’s down in Nancy Pelosi territory.)

U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican whose district comprises the southern half of the Land of Enchantment, was found to be a Taxpayer Hero. He scored an impressive 91.

CAGW looked at legislation covering everything from redundant catfish regulations to the banning of Internet-access taxes, Puerto Rico’s insolvency to Obamacare. Here’s the full list of bills that were scored.

Clearly, when it comes to “important tax, spending, transparency, and accountability measures,” New Mexico’s delegation has plenty of room for improvement.

As the 2017 legislative session heads toward a conclusion absent any significant economic reforms, but having passed several tax hikes that may be vetoed by Governor Martinez, the State’s economic picture continues to darken.

After months of hovering near the top of the national ranking of states with the highest unemployment rates, New Mexico “broke through” in January rising to 6.7%. The contrast is even more stark when New Mexico is compared against its more economically-free and successful neighbors, especially Colorado which does not have “right to work” (as do our other neighbors), but has Constitutional tax and spending protections, no Davis-Bacon prevailing wage law, and has legalized and taxes marijuana.

Making New Mexico’s high unemployment rate even worse is the fact that, as the Albuquerque Journal noted recently, the proportion of New Mexicans working relative to the population is the lowest its been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started measuring back in 1976.

A version of the op-ed below ran in The Los Alamos Monitor on March 12.

What makes a tax “good” or “bad?” Fairness is often in the eye of the beholder. Should the wealthy pay more, as a percentage of their income? If so, a tax is said to be “progressive,” with the best example being the federal income tax.

On the other hand, if applied at the same rate regardless of income, a tax is said to be “regressive,” since less-affluent households pay a higher share of their income. A tax that is both applied at the same rate and applied to those goods disproportionately purchased by the poor is particularly regressive.

These issues are critical to several tax changes under discussion in the Land of Enchantment. Liberal groups, with New Mexico Voices for Children leading the charge, have been adamant in opposing the re-imposition of the gross receipts tax on groceries as a component of broader tax reform. While the proposed shift fits the technical definition of regressive, food-stamp benefits, currently claimed by a distressing 26 percent of the state’s population, reduce the sting significantly.

That is not to argue that groceries should be taxed, but rather that the merits of the measure must be judged against various alternatives. In fact, there are several proposals moving through the legislature — and other governing bodies in this state — that are equally regressive and more economically harmful. Yet when it comes to these taxes, our friends on the left are silent. Or even supportive.

Let’s start with the gasoline tax. Legislation raising the tax from 17 cents to 27 cents passed the New Mexico Senate, and it’s likely to pass the House of Representatives. The increase represents a stunning 63 percent hike, and its regressively isn’t in question. (And it’s worth noting that the poor often drive older, less-fuel-efficient cars. Ownership of hybrids and fully electric vehicles is not common among households of modest means.) But liberals don’t seem to care. At least we haven’t heard from them.

Another tax hike making its way through the legislature is a 33 percent increase in the levy imposed on automobile purchases. While not as regressive as the gasoline tax, a rise in the motor vehicle excise tax is no benefit to people on the fringes of the work force, who need affordable, reliable transportation to seek all available employment opportunities.

Finally, a bill moving through the legislature makes a breathtakingly massive boost to the tax on tobacco products. The rate on cigarettes would nearly double, from $1.66 per pack to $3.16 per pack — a 90 percent hike. Again, the levy is imposed at one rate regardless of income level. Since the poor disproportionately smoke, the tax hike will hit them much harder than middle- and upper-income consumers.

Even worse, the “anti-smoking” bill imposes, for the first time, taxes on e-cigarettes and vaping technology, tools that have been used by millions of people to quit cigarettes. While data from the U.S. is hard to come by, researchers at University College London have estimated that 891,000 people have used one of the devices when trying to kick the habit. Since vaping has been repeatedly found to be healthier than smoking, taxing it is likely to worsen health outcomes for many, a disproportionate number of them poor.

All this talk of raising taxes on New Mexicans would be understandable if the budget were truly “cut to the bone,” as some assert. But state government spends more as a percentage of economic output than any of our neighbors, and all but a few states nationwide.

Taxpayers subsidize the movie industry, tourism-related businesses, an outrageously bloated higher-education system, and out-of-control spending on K-12 schools. Yet neither liberal groups nor the hard-left politicians in command of the legislature have made any contribution to the effort to right-size state government.

This hypocrisy is doing great harm to our state, especially the working poor.

D. Dowd Muska (dmuska@riograndefoundation.org) is research director for the Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on the principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.

Source: 2016 Annual Report, New Mexico Department of Transportation

At least we’re not alone.

Santa Fe’s solons are scheming to increase the state’s gasoline tax, in part to raise additional revenue for transportation. To our north, a bipartisan cabal of Colorado state pols wants more moolah “for transportation infrastructure funding purposes,” and the group has drafted a bill to ask voters for a sales-tax hike — from 2.9 percent to 3.52 percent — that “would start in January 2018 and remain in place for 20 years.”

The Rio Grande Foundation has warned, again and again, that there are many ways to boost spending on New Mexico’s roads, highways, and bridges that do not involve raising taxes. Repealing the state’s anti-taxpayer prevailing-wage mandate is an easy way to make all infrastructure dollars go further. Shifting 100 percent of the revenue raised by the excise tax placed on motor-vehicle sales to transportation is another promising reform. And walking away from the Rail Runner, however painful, will stop throwing good money after bad.

In Colorado, the Independence Institute has launched an effort to stop their state’s potential tax hike. Calling the measure the “Fix Our Damn Roads” initiative, the organization’s president called the proposal “a re-allocation of existing … spending to roads.”

The initiative’s language charges that “Colorado’s elected officials have decreased funding for road and bridge construction, maintenance and repair by 9 percent over the last decade,” and decries the diversion of funds “that should have gone to roads pursuant to state law” to “programs outside the core responsibility of state government, such as, inter-city bus services (duplicating many services of the Regional Transportation District and unfairly competing with private sector transit providers), resort town housing, duplicative education programs, subsidies for large out-of-state businesses and automatic raises for state officials.”

“Fix Our Damn Roads” would pay for $2.5 billion worth of “road and bridge expansion, construction, maintenance and repair” with revenue anticipation notes.

As the chart above indicates, the major, indigenous sources of New Mexico’s “road fund” haven’t seen much growth in the past dozen years. And federal funding, which contributes nearly half of all “transportation” spending, is an highly unreliable revenue stream.

So it’s time — long past time, really — to prioritize. Ditch the regulations that drive up infrastructure costs. Allocate transportation dollars more appropriately. And follow the “Fix Our Damn Roads” approach of stopping expenditures on projects that return little (or no) value to the taxpayer.

Smart, not more, transportation spending is the answer. While there’s not much chance of a “Fix Our Damn Roads”-style solution being enacted in New Mexico anytime soon, we’ll keep watching our neighbor to the north, and report on the initiative’s progress.

There are several solid reasons why New Mexico should not raise taxes this legislative session. An economy that hasn’t climbed its way out of the Great Recession and a political establishment that won’t pursue a thorough right-sizing of state government lead the pack.

But keeping an eye on the competition is another justification for no new taxes. As the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) puts it, a “large volume of academic literature finds taxes negatively affect economic growth.” In a country where picking up and bolting for lower-tax jurisdictions is relatively simple, states that enjoy thriving economies get that simple truth.

ALEC’s annual “Tax Cut Roundup” is out, and the organization found that in 2016, nine states “provided substantial tax relief for their citizens.” The best of the best included:

* Arizona, which eliminated the sales tax placed on electricity and natural gas purchased by manufacturers and hiked its bonus depreciation schedule to 100 percent of the federal allowance

* Mississippi, which “passed what may be the largest tax cut in state history,” including lower income taxes and a phase-out of the “business franchise tax on investments in business property and capital”

* North Carolina, which made 2016 “another year of substantial tax relief,” dropping the rates for both its income and corporate taxes

* Tennessee, which adopted a full zeroing-out of its tax on dividend and interest income and put a final end to its death tax

* Florida, which continued cutting taxes “for the fourth consecutive year” by making permanent the sales-tax exemption for manufacturing equipment and reducing “the ‘required local effort’ property taxes for schools”

ALEC notes that “more than half the states have cut taxes over the last five years.” And there’s sure to be more tax-cutting in 2017, including, possibly, Ohio, Florida, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Texas, and Iowa.

So where does that leave the Land of Enchantment? With Santa Fe’s revenue-grubbers pushing tax hikes on gasoline, “smoking,” and motor-vehicle purchases (as well as a constitutionally shaky extension of the GRT to sales from beyond-borders vendors), New Mexico is headed in the wrong direction, and offering individuals and entrepreneurs one more reason to leave — or avoid — the state.

Here at the Rio Grande Foundation we stick to New Mexico policies, especially the economy. Of course, the state of the economy greatly impacts New Mexico although we tend to lag the national economy in most areas. We don’t expect the 2017 legislative session to do much positive although tax hikes and minimum wage increases could have negative impacts.

So, barring a massive run-up in oil and gas prices, New Mexico’s most likely path out of recession is a strong national economy. This brings us to President Trump. Like him or not (and we have concerns about his trade, spending, and now health care policies),  the first month’s worth of economic data are in and the stock market boomlet that we’ve seen since the election is trickling down from Wall Street to Main Street.

Check out some of this data from this US News & World Report article (which relies upon data from payroll processor ADP):

Happy International School Meals Day!

Yes, that’s a thing.

“Managed” by “Children in Scotland,” ISMD “is a unique campaign with the aim of raising awareness of good nutrition for all children regardless of their circumstances.” Federal “agriculture” bureaucrat Yibo Wood writes that the day raises “awareness of nutritious school meals and their importance to the health of our kids,” gushing that “nearly every country provides some form of school meal for about 368 million children each school day worldwide, including more than 30 million children here in the U.S. through USDA’s National School Lunch Program.” ISMD, she claims, “brings the world a little closer, helping kids understand the importance of healthy nutrition to a healthy future.”

Here in New Mexico, one school district recently decided to take a pass on federally funded meals for the young ‘uns. Los Alamos Public Schools is planning to “cut ties with the National School Lunch Program by next school year.” Local donors — imagine that — will provide grub. The shift, according to the district’s food-services manager, “just gives us the opportunity to give some larger portions and be a little bit more creative with our menu.”

While the federal school-lunch program is sacred to the left, the subsidy is long overdue for some serious scrutiny. As The Heartland Institute’s Teresa Mull explained last month in The Hill, “Feeding a child is the fundamental duty of a parent.” (If moms and/or dads are unable to provide a decent breakfast and pack a nutritious lunch for their kids, what else aren’t they providing? Isn’t it time to get family services involved?)

The Heritage Foundation’s Darren Bakst and Rachel Sheffield add that the program’s “community eligibility provision” incentivizes “schools to give students free meals regardless of whether or not they come from low-income homes.” It’s an outrageous policy — one that wastes scare funds and “imposes a wealth transfer, taking hard-earned money from lower-income taxpayers and using it to subsidize higher-income families who have no need for such welfare.”

According to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics, in New Mexico, a colossal 67.6 percent of government-school students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. (Only Mississippi, at 70.6 percent, is higher.) Let’s hope that more districts follow Los Alamos’s lead, and question the “wisdom” of “partnering” with the feds for school meals.

With all of the bad legislation coming out of the Legislature in Santa Fe, HB 228 (“Right to Try” by Rep. Rebecca Dow) is one of the few bills that would expand freedom in the 2017 session. This opinion piece ran in today’s paper.

Source: “PADDs 1 and 3 Transportation Fuels Markets,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, February 2016

In news that must surely come as a shocking surprise to the Trump administration, Bloomberg reports that last year, Mexico “relied on U.S. gasoline … for nearly 50 percent of its total consumption as refineries operated by state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos … malfunctioned.” In the final month of 2016, the country “imported a record high of 1.2 million barrels a day of U.S. fuels.”

How many of those barrels were imported from New Mexico’s refineries? Zero.

While the Land of Enchantment produces over 400,000 barrels per day of crude (more than double the figure for 2010), its refining capacity is just 127,500 barrels per day. And the state’s two refineries — one in Gallup, one in Artesia — don’t ship a single barrel of petroleum products south.

As the the map above depicts, infrastructure is an issue. New Mexico’s pipelines don’t do exports. Given Bloomberg’s finding that “the U.S. refining industry has shifted its game over the last five years, taking advantage of gaps left by struggling refiners in Latin America, Africa and Asia,” that’s a distressing reality.

The U.S. is experiencing a bit of a refinery boom. Four new facilities came online in 2015 — three in Texas, one in North Dakota. And Raven Petroleum is building a $500 million refinery east of Laredo that’s geared toward exports to Mexico.

Given its own reservoir of crude, as well as its proximity to other oil-producing states, New Mexico could be a refining powerhouse. So why isn’t it? Regulations, taxes, eco-hysteria-driven NIMBYism, a lack of a right-to-work law? Something for the state’s well-compensated advocates for “economic development” to ponder.

In today’s Albuquerque Journal, Democrat Sen. Howie Morales made his case for higher taxes on tobacco and e-cigarettes. We at RGF share Gov. Martinez’s concerns about any and all tax hikes, but that’s not really the point of this post.

Rather, Morales justified his tax hike, in part, by noting that a near-doubling of the tax “means there will be thousands of fewer smokers in the future.” He went on to say that “making smoking more expensive would save the lives of 7,000 New Mexicans,” presumably by reducing demand.

The idea that artificial price increases reduce demand is a basic tenet of economics, but just a few days ago Morales’ colleague Sen. Clemente Sanchez argued in the Albuquerque Journal that raising the minimum wage would “stimulate the economy and job creation.”

So, which is it? Do government-mandated price increases reduce demand for a good (as basic economics and logic imply) or do they somehow increase demand? You can’t have it both ways Senators!

Higher education is a mess. Here in New Mexico it is clearly unsustainable as a line-item in the budget and nationally the cost is growing faster than almost any important good purchased by large numbers of people:

Enter Praxis which essentially moves to replace the costly (in both time and money) traditional college diploma with an apprenticeship program. The program (started by a libertarian young man named Isaac Morehouse), touts an average starting salary at a real job of $50K annually and a 98% placement rate all after 9 months in the program.

Morehouse recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to discuss the program:

At a time when the New Mexico Legislature seems hell-bent on making life more difficult for businesses and entrepreneurs, Praxis is a reminder that sometimes the best way to deal with bloated, expensive, and inefficient government is to just go around them.
 

Source: Site Selection, March 2017

Site Selection is out with its annual look at capital investment in the states. The publication, using information obtained from the Conway Projects Database, tabulates projects that cost at least $1 million, create 20 or more jobs, and take up a minimum of 20,000 square feet.

Don’t bother sitting down for this: Texas’s chief executive took “his third Governor’s Cup,” and “the Lone Star State’s fifth consecutive such Cup.” At 642 projects, the contest wasn’t even close.

But states vary considerably in population, so Site Selection provides a helpful look at investments per capita. Surprisingly, New Mexico did not rank at rock bottom. The Land of Enchantment did, however, tumble into the bottom 15 states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii. We’re in lousy company — e.g., Delaware, Connecticut, New York. And every state that borders New Mexico fared better. (See graph above.) Note that energy-rich (and right-to-work) Texas and Oklahoma secured the most investments in the Southwest.

Like the Rio Grande Foundation’s ongoing analysis of job-creation in right-to-work vs. compulsory-unionism states, Site Selection‘s data are particularly valuable, because they track real-world investment. Surveys of CEOs and projections of the future have their place, but it’s tough to argue with facts.

Think the legislation emerging from Santa Fe in the final weeks of the session — more regulations, higher takes — will improve New Mexico’s capital-investment performance in 2017? Errors of Enchantment doesn’t, either.

The Albuquerque Journal did an important public service to New Mexicans with its two-part series on New Mexico’s unsustainable higher education system. Part 1 is the most important part containing the big-picture data and a broad overview of the problem. Unfortunately, as New Mexico’s Legislature grapples with the budget, it shows no signs of systematically addressing the fundamental issues in higher education.

As we’ve noted before, New Mexico’s spends 6th-most of any state per full-time student. Clearly, it is not getting a great return on that investment in terms of economic growth or an educated workforce.

Amazingly, while the map that ran with the Journal story (below) was dotted with campuses, it actually under-reports the issue. CNM is listed as one dot on the map, for example, yet it has 7 branches not including its main campus.

Western New Mexico University has campuses in Gallup, Deming, and Lordsburg, none of which are shown on the map.

NMSU has an Albuquerque campus and UNM has its West Side campus which is also not found on the map.

In other words, New Mexico’s higher education bureaucracy is extremely bloated and expensive. Cutting back would be an important means of saving limited resources and concentrating them in ways that improve the system’s mediocre outcomes. Alas, the Legislature has not addressed the issue in any serious way this session.

As we at the Rio Grande Foundation have previously noted, New Mexico government is bloated. The number cited is typically total state spending including all of the federal pass-through money, but even the General Fund (which represents 1/3rd of total spending) has grown in recent years. See our latest chart illustrating that growth below:

Thanks to our friends at Americans for Tax Reform for the research!

Click here for registration form.

At the Rio Grande Foundation, we feel very confident that the ideas of free markets and individual liberty are the best methods for economic and social organization. We have repeatedly debated the merits of various such policies over the years.

Unfortunately, the political left – from college campuses to the media to congressional town halls – is increasingly unwilling to tolerate differing views.

• Location:  Albuquerque Marriott Uptown, 2101 Louisiana Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM  87110.
• When:  Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 12:00 noon to 1:00pm.
• Cost:  Seating is limited and can be purchased at the discounted price of $30 until Friday, March 10, 2017; $40 after that.

Mary Katharine Ham (current CNN contributor and former Fox News Channel contributor) and Guy Benson (currently a Fox News Channel contributor) rank among the most recognizable and influential young conservatives in the American media today. Ham serves as Contributing Editor to HotAir.com; Benson is Political Editor at Townhall.com and appears regularly on the Hugh Hewitt radio show.

Close friends for nearly a decade, the pair has collaborated on numerous projects &ndash coauthoring political analyses, co-hosting radio shows, and speaking jointly to live audiences across the country. Ham graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Georgia in 2002 and lives in Arlington, VA. Benson graduated with honors from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2007 and lived in Obama country (Chicago) prior to relocating to the Beltway in 2010.

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Last week Errors of Enchantment called HB 252 a “silly billy,” since it would spend $125,000 “to educate the people of New Mexico about the missions of the nuclear-powered submarines USS New Mexico, SSN-779, and USS Santa Fe, SSN-763, and the effort to retire the USS Albuquerque, SSN-706,” as well as recognize “the state’s naval junior reserve officers training corps,” and lobby to “name a navy warship after Los Alamos county.”

In response, a helpful reader, who is also a retired naval officer, informed us that two “bases” of U.S. Submarine Veterans, Inc. exist in New Mexico — and if members are anything like the shipmates he had, “they would be more than delighted” to provide information to the public about the submarine force, “and would not need tax $$$ to do it.” Albuquerque’s base can be found here, while the White Sands unit is here. (Our reader also suggested the Naval Submarine League as another resource.)

As for the retirement of the Albuquerque, Naval Today recently reported that the boat, launched in 1982, was “decommissioned during a ceremony held at Keyport Undersea Museum.” At the event, Rear Adm. John Tammen noted that the Albuquerque “deployed 21 times to every corner of the globe, accumulating approximately 1.1 million nautical miles steamed, the equivalent of 52 global circumnavigations.”

Just because something is a good idea doesn’t mean that taxpayers should be subsidizing it. The fascinating tales of the submariners who served aboard the New Mexico, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque deserve to be told, but individuals and non-government organizations are more than capable of doing the job.

The Foundation is tracking announcements of expansions, relocations, and greenfield investments published on Area Development‘s website. Founded in 1965, the publication “is considered the leading executive magazine covering corporate site selection and relocation. … Area Development is published quarterly and has 60,000 mailed copies.” In an explanation to the Foundation, its editor wrote that items for Area Development‘s announcements listing are “culled from RSS feeds and press releases that are emailed to us from various sources, including economic development organizations, PR agencies, businesses, etc. We usually highlight ones that represent large numbers of new jobs and/or investment in industrial projects.”

In February, of 20,775 projected jobs, 13,441 — 64.7 percent — were slated for right-to-work (RTW) states:

The results for non-RTW states were better than usual last month, but employment was boosted by two investments planned to create 2,000 jobs each: Amazon in California and Blue Apron in New Jersey.

As for the sub-metrics the Foundation scrutinizes:

* Ten domestic companies based in non-RTW states announced investments in RTW states. Five announcements went the other way.

* RTW prevailed in foreign direct investment, too. Eight projects are headed to RTW states, with three to occur in a non-RTW state.

Marquee RTW investments included:

* Intel announced its intention to complete its Arizona-based “Fab 42, which is expected to be the most advanced high-volume semiconductor factory in the world” (3,000 jobs)

* Nestlé’s American headquarters fled California for Virginia, choosing to spend $39.8 million on the relocation (748 jobs)

* Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney picked an existing facility in Georgia to “increase the production of parts and maintenance services and reduce costs for new and existing engine programs” (500 jobs)

Methodological specifics:

* All job estimates — “up to,” “as many as,” “about” — were taken at face value, for RTW and non-RTW states alike.

* If an announcement did not make an employment projection, efforts were made to obtain an estimate from newspaper articles and/or press releases from additional sources.

* If no job figure could be found anywhere, the project was not counted, whether it was a RTW or non-RTW state.

* Non-border-crossing relocations were not counted, border-crossing relocations were.

This article has been updated (as of 3/3/17) based on conversations w/ the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce

Government-mandated price floors are bad public policy. Minimum wages fall into the same category even though they are often popular with those who think wage mandates come with no cost.

But why in the world would the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce actively support a $9.00/hour minimum wage?

Notably, Albuquerque already has an $8.80 minimum wage, but most areas outside the Rio Grande Corridor are at the currently-mandated $7.50 an hour. This legislation will hurt businesses and low-skilled workers in those areas of the state while barely impacting Albuquerque. It would be better if the Albuquerque Chamber just stayed out as this really doesn’t affect them.

No matter what the motive, too many Republicans who should know better are falling for the deception. SB 386 just passed out of the Senate on a 24-6 vote. That means bipartisan support. Hopefully House Republicans better appreciate the perils of government-wage mandates. They may lose, but at least fight the good fight. As for the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, it may be time for members to give their leadership an Economics 101 lesson.