In the Albuquerque Journal on Tuesday, there was a candidate profile done for New Mexico Senate district 15 and the race between incumbent Democrat Daniel Ivey-Soto and Republican challenger Eric Burton. On the question of “right to work,” the Journal noted that Ivey-Soto was “dubious.” Ivey-Soto has voted against “right to work” twice: once in 2015 on whether to have a vote of the full Senate and once in the Senate Public Affairs committee in 2016.

Ivey-Soto clearly opposes “right to work.” But, quickly looking up the exact definition of “dubious,” I found: two definitions:
1. hesitating or doubting.
2. not to be relied upon; suspect.

It would be safe to say that the latter definition applies in this case especially since the Journal has a more detailed response online: There, Ivey-Soto replied: “Before we consider making New Mexico right-to-work, we first need to address the significant deficiencies that keep companies from relocating to New Mexico. These include lack of broadband, low graduation rates, high crime, an out-of-date and dysfunctional tax system and a dearth of skilled workers. Otherwise, nothing will change.”

It sounds more like Ivey-Soto doesn’t want things to change. After all, the issues he cites have been around New Mexico for literally decades of Democrat control. What have they done about them (aside from spending more money)?

The reality is that he’s avoiding the issue at hand. “Right to work” could also have some pretty significant, positive impacts as seen in the following charts from the Illinois Policy Institute.

It’s happened again.

Another space start-up has chosen to avoid New Mexico.

Vector Space Systems, which aims to launch “small reusable rockets carrying micro-satellites into orbit,” picked the Tucson area for its manufacturing facility. Within the next few years, the company plans to hire 400 employees. Vector’s CEO praised the “very deep supply chain” in Tucson and Phoenix, which means that “most of our components are going to be sourced in Arizona.”

Adding insult to injury, Vector has no plans to do business at “Spaceport America.” It’s looking to launch from Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

A year ago, New Mexico joined the Aerospace States Association (ASA), and sent a “team of state officials to an international aerospace expo in Los Angeles.” But the sad reality — one you won’t hear from the happy talkers in “economic development” — is that the Land of Enchantment isn’t much of an aerospace state. As the chart below indicates, employment in the manufacturing sector is small, and trending slightly downward.

With UTC Aerospace shuttering its Albuquerque operation, the job numbers, at least in the short term, look to worsen. Perhaps it’s a bit premature for New Mexico taxpayers to be forking over “dues” to the ASA.

While there isn’t much direct democracy in the Land of Enchantment, this year voters will get the chance to vote on an important component of state fiscal policy: debt.

General obligation (GO) bonds, backed by a statewide property-tax levy, go to the electorate in even-numbered years. The capital expenditures are separated by category, a useful breakdown that allows voters to approve one type of borrowing while rejecting another.

* Bond Question A would borrow $15.4 million “for certain senior citizen facility improvement, construction and equipment acquisition projects.”

* Bond Question B would borrow $10.2 million “for academic, public school, tribal and public library resource acquisitions.”

* Bond Question C would borrow $142.4 million “for certain higher education, special schools and tribal schools … improvements and acquisitions.”

* Bond Question D would borrow $18.2 million “for state police, public safety communications and national guard facilities statewide.”

Add it all up, and legislators are asking voters to put another $186.2 million on the state’s credit card. (Here’s a link for more details about the individual projects to be funded.) The vast bulk of that borrowing would benefit government-run universities and colleges, and higher-educrats know it. Here is Dr. Christopher Dyer, CEO of UNM’s branch campus in Gallup, asking voters in McKinley County to approve “$1.5 million … to be used for planning, designing, construction and equipping of a new physical plant facility.”

New Mexicans usually approve the issuance of GO bonds. But it’s worth noting that in September, Moody’s Investor Service announced that it was “considering downgrading the state’s top rating for general obligation bonds.” The recent special session may have alleviated concerns about New Mexico’s finances, but with stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, and a low workforce-participation rate, there’s little doubt that ratings entities will remain suspicious.

The State Board of Finance estimates that if approved, “over a ten-year period, the four issues on the ballot would increase the average annual property tax bill by approximately $9.34 per $100,000 of asset value.” That may not sound like much of an additional burden to some. But this year, perhaps a majority of voters will decide that any tax hike, in a state that still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession, isn’t wise.

Every eight years, the University of New Mexico Hospital must ask Bernalillo County voters to renew their property-tax mill levy. The tax raises approximately $95 million per year and costs the owner of a $200,000 home between $300 and $400 annually.

The median overall property tax burden on a $200,000 home in Albuquerque is $2,698, so UNMH claims a significant proportion of your property-tax bill.

And while the hospital claims, rightly, that your tax burden won’t increase if the levy is renewed, the fact is that public-policy conditions have changed that should allow the hospital to require less of county residents’ hard-earned money.

A big portion of UNMH’s mission is “indigent care.” That means providing services for the uninsured and others who can’t pay for their own health care. But since the last mill levy passed, Obamacare took effect, with a primary mission of “insuring” indigent care via a massive expansion of Medicaid.

Whether you think Medicaid expansion was a good decision or not, UNMH has seen indigent care needs drop dramatically. In 2013, UNMH served approximately 27,000 county residents. UNMH is now serving less than half the uninsured county residents it did in 2013.

So why is UNMH requesting the same mill levy for a rapidly declining number of uncompensated-care cases? Perhaps it assumes that voters will blindly go along with yet another feel-good scheme to separate them from their money?

Voters should carefully consider not renewing the mill levy – and instead, force UNMH to come up with a different, smaller ask in the future. After all, it isn’t as if we’re not paying for Medicaid expansion already.

As federal taxpayers, we have been funding – and borrowing money to fund – Medicaid expansion for years. But over the next five years, New Mexicans will be on the hook for a bigger portion of the overall bill: $778 million, to be exact.

We know how bad our economy is. What no one knows is how we’re going to pay the huge new bill for Medicaid expansion.

Perhaps more troubling, as far as UNMH is concerned, is why a government-owned entity with a core mission that includes indigent care advertises its services. The Rio Grande Foundation requested data for the calendar years 2014, 2015, and 2016, and found the hospital spent $1.3 million over that time period on advertising.

Yes, the U.S. Postal Service, which like UNMH, is government-owned, advertises, but that doesn’t make it right or necessary. (And at least the post office charges its customers.) Why spend hundreds of thousands annually to tout that UNMH exists and that it is New Mexico’s “only Level I Trauma Center?”

UNMH already has a website set up in support of the mill levy. The deck is always stacked against those who oppose publicly funded entities in campaigns to either raise taxes or keep the tax revenue flowing in.

To the extent that any grass-roots opposition to the UNMH mill levy forms, it will be outspent dramatically. Amazingly, the hospital’s annual advertising budget far exceeds the annual budget of the Rio Grande Foundation.

There is nothing new about the forces of limited and responsible government being outspent, but with the amount and cost of indigent care on the decline, shouldn’t Bernalillo County residents have a fully informed debate about the UNMH mill levy before Election Day?

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

Santa Fe’s mayor has drafted a resolution directing the city manager to “explore active ways of reducing sugar intake among … residents, and the benefits that would result.” For good measure, Javier Gonzales has thrown in a demand that state legislators address “the impact of excess sugar consumption among New Mexico residents,” and wants the FDA to “remove fructose from the generally regarded as safe … list.”

Seriously.

The document doesn’t specifically endorse a tax on soda, but that’s been the preferred tool for the left’s army of lifestyle police. Embraced by Nanny Statists from Michael Bloomberg to Hillary Clinton, a soda tax is in effect in Philadelphia, and could be imposed by voters in San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, California, and Boulder, Colorado, next month.

For New Mexico’s taxpayer and personal-freedom activists seeking to nip Gonzales’s mission creep in the bud, here are some resources worth reviewing:

* “The Case Against Regulating or Taxing Soda,” published by the Center for Consumer Freedom in 2013, is invaluable.

* Last year, a Cornell-University of Iowa study concluded that a soda tax adopted in Berkeley, California “so far has fizzled, raising retail prices for high-calorie sugary drinks by less than half the amount expected.” One of the paper’s authors noted that a “sugar-sweetened beverage tax is a very narrow approach to internalizing the external costs of obesity, because there are many other food and drink items that are also energy dense and lack nutritional value.”

* A recent Gallup poll found that the “majority of Americans report they try to avoid drinking soda, regardless of whether it is regular or diet. This is a drastic change from just over a decade ago.”

* In May, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mexico’s soda tax of “one peso per liter has raised more than $2 billion since January 2014,” but nevertheless, sales of liquid candy were “rising … after an initial drop, making the country a key-growth market again for soda giants Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc.”

* In June, the Competitive Enterprise Institute published “Soda Taxes: A Failed Experiment that Needs to End,” which contained the inconvenient fact that in the U.S., “researchers estimate that calories from sugary drinks comprise just 7 percent of total calorie intake.”

With serious fiscal, economic-development, and housing-affordability issues impacting the denizens of Santa Fe, the city’s mayor needs to get his priorities right. A crusade against sugar doesn’t belong on his to-do list.

The entire New Mexico Legislature is up for election this November. And, while the presidential race is generating a lot of noise, New Mexicans’ votes will have a far more significant impact on those legislative races.

We recently encouraged New Mexicans to use our “Freedom Index” bill tracking tool to make better informed decisions about the floor votes taken by New Mexico’s Legislature. While we do rank all legislators based on their floor votes, there are other approaches to ranking the track records of legislators and the prospective records of their challengers. The New Mexico Business Coalition rates all legislators and candidates in its scorecard here.

Additionally, the national American Conservative Union has ranked all of New Mexico’s legislators based on votes taken on particular issues. Their ratings can be found here.

They rated Sens. Cotter and Rue as the top two performers in the Legislature and gave Reps. McQueen and Stapleton the moniker “Coalition of the Radical Left” for their poor performances. There is no doubt that Sheryl Williams-Stapleton is truly part of the radical leftist coalition, but McQueen isn’t the first Democrat I’d lump in there with her.

Every eight years, University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) must ask Bernalillo County voters to renew the Hospital’s Mill Levy. Bernalillo County imposes a mill levy for the Hospital at a rate approximating 6.400 on both residential and non-residential property in the County. This money is used to fund Hospital operations. Initially, $95 million will be collected annually although the exact number will fluctuate based on property values and economic conditions in the County. The trend should be upwards, however.

• As of June 2016, UNMH served 6,812 uninsured county residents. If that trajectory holds through December that would mean the Hospital will serve 13,624 uninsured patients in 2016.

In 2013, UNMH served approximately 27,000 county residents. UNMH is now serving less than half the uninsured county residents as they did in 2013.

New Mexicans are paying the bills for both the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion that is reducing those “uncompensated care” rates, but UNMH wants to continue taking hundreds of dollars from both commercial and residential property owners throughout Bernalillo County for another eight years!

As the Rio Grande Foundation’s Paul Gessing argues in a new issue brief, voters should consider sending UNMH “back to the drawing board” for a smaller mill levy that reflects the falling costs of uncompensated care. The image below illustrates how the current UNMH mill levy impacts at least one property owner’s tax bill.

Pete Domenici’s recent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal contained the scary fact that by “2035, publicly held debt will surpass the all-time high of 106 percent of gross domestic product … that it reached during World War II.”

But the retired pol‘s alarm over the country’s fiscal health is more than a little curious. In three and a half decades in the U.S. Senate, he did everything possible to “bring home the bacon.”

The taxpayer-watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste repeatedly hit Domenici for his profligacy. In September 1999, the organization named him “Porker of the Month” for his “sudden about face” on surplus Social Security revenue, which would leave “the funds exposed and ripe for the pickings of lawmakers hungry for pork projects in their own states and districts.”

A year later, CAGW dinged Domenici for his lame claim that a $200,000 subsidy to the Las Cruces Railroad Museum “could improve transportation for the entire nation.”

Domenici was a serial offender in CAGW’s “Congressional Pig Book,” an annual examination that tracks federal expenditures that are requested by only one senator or representative, not requested by the executive branch, not competitively awarded, not explored in a congressional hearing, and benefit “only a local or special interest.” Among many, many other grants, the senator secured:

* in 1993, $3.1 million for the federal courthouse in Albuquerque

* in 1997, $10 million for an advanced laser research facility at Kirtland Air Force Base

* in 1998, $5.5 million for the National Hispanic Cultural Center

* in 2000, $1 million “for Columbus-port-of-entry realignment,” even though “New Mexico Secretary of Transportation Pete Rahn tried to reject the funding because he did not want the state to be liable for 25 percent of the cost of this unnecessary project”

* in 2001, $2 million for a “science and technology facility” at New Mexico Highlands University

* in 2002, $1 million for “infrastructure improvements and to build a multipurpose event center at the Southern New Mexico Fair and Rodeo”

The federal budget is a disaster — all rational Americans share Domenici’s concerns. But the former fedpol is a little late to the party on “our fiscal challenges.” Maybe if he hadn’t spent much of his career making the Land of Enchantment desperately dependent on federal largesse, the nation’s finances wouldn’t be in quite so rough shape.

As New Mexicans continue the slog to November’s election, some are already looking forward to next October’s municipal election. In fact, supporters of a complicated and onerous mandatory paid sick leave proposal are attempting to get Judge Malott to change his mind about placing the entire language of the ballot measure (available here) on the ballot.

For starters, it would seem that proponents of this proposal realize that regulations of this type and complexity simply should NOT be placed on the ballot for input from the public. They are too complex with far-reaching impacts that are hard to understand unless you are in business. Even a summary of the proposal written by its opponents takes up significant space.

The reality is that proponents are afraid that voters will realize the proposal is too complicate and will vote against it. A summary, by contrast, will be inherently politically-formulated to emphasize the positives and gloss over the negatives of mandatory paid sick leave. Exactly what components of this proposal will be left out and which will be put in to the summary?

Lastly, what happened to transparency and openness in government? Is it really appropriate to ask voters to make an important policy decision affecting ALL businesses in their community without having the ENTIRE text of the proposal at their fingertips?

The competition is fierce, but perhaps the worst state-level policy proposal that’s been bandied about in recent years would have the “laboratories of democracy” run pension plans for businesses and/or nonprofits that don’t currently offer retirement benefits.

In California, it’s now the law. Governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill which, as the Los Angeles Times described it, “requires all California companies with at least five employees to either offer their own retirement savings plan or enroll workers in the new California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program.”

Might the Land of Enchantment be next? AARP New Mexico claims it is “time to start looking at some viable solutions that allow New Mexicans to have a secure retirement.” The editorial page of the Albuquerque Journal wants legislators to “consider what can be done to level the retirement playing field for private sector employees in the state.”

Enter Sen. Martin Heinrich. Yesterday, he introduced the “State Retirement Savings Act,” which “would allow states to create Individual Retirement Account … programs where workers and employees would automatically be enrolled upon hiring to start saving.” The legislation “would give state legislatures the legal authority to build new retirement programs that are custom tailored for each state.”

Yeesh. Maybe before we shove more people into politician-overseen pension funds, it’s worth examining where things stand now. The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Chuck DeVore notes that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System is “grossly underfunded.” Include pensions for teachers and local governments in the Golden State, and the retirement debt “is about $991 billion.”

The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2014, New Mexico’s Public Employees Retirement Association and Educational Retirement Board did not attain positive “net amortization,” and thus failed to reduce their unfunded liabilities. At 67 percent, the share the plans met was just a few percentage points higher than California’s dismal ratio, and among the lowest in the nation.

But wait — it gets worse. Estimates of the national figure for public-pension debt vary, but are usually in the $2 trillion ballpark. However, there is reason to believe the figure is much higher. As the American Enterprise Institute’s Andrew G. Biggs observed in July, if the rules recommended by a recent task force commissioned by the Actuarial Standards Board are adopted, “actuarial valuations for state and local government pensions will report unfunded liabilities of over $5 trillion and funding ratios of just 39 percent.” New Mexico’s unfunded liabilities, currently totaling about $10 billion, would surely be much higher under “market valuation.”

Heinrich’s legislation, and pressure within the state to have government meddle with retirement income in the private sector, warrant strict scrutiny — and severe skepticism.

The media may be hopelessly obsessed with Hillary versus The Donald, but in the Land of Enchantment, voters are facing a smackdown that is likely to impact daily life just as much as — if not more than — the presidential contest.

In Santa Fe, Republicans narrowly control the House of Representatives, while Democrats hold a slight edge in the Senate. Control of the chambers will play a major role in determining whether New Mexico remains stuck with federal dependence, a hideously complex tax code, excessive regulations, and no right-to-work law, or moves toward pro-growth, limited-government measures that promise stronger economic and fiscal futures.

While not intended as an election tool, the Rio Grande Foundation’s Freedom Index is a way for voters to gauge legislators’ commitment to free markets and a constrained, accountable, and affordable public sector. The 2016 version of the index rated all bills that impact liberty, opportunity, and prosperity in New Mexico — including legislation drafted during the regular and special sessions.

The index is designed to hold elected officials accountable for their votes. Scores can be as high as 100, and as low as 0. (In 2016, the best-performing lawmaker attained a score of 94.3, while the worst posted a dismal 41.5.) The index doesn’t care about partisanship — some Democrats score surprisingly well, while some Republicans score shockingly poorly.

Plenty of incumbent senators and representatives are asking for your support in 2016. Give the index a look, to see how they scored. New Mexico’s at a tipping point, with the choice to continue with long-discredited public policies, or change course, and finally build a vibrant private sector that supplies adequate tax revenue for essential government duties. Control of the Roundhouse, to be decided in less than four weeks, is a yuge deal. Get as much information as possible about candidates before Election Day.

That’s the conclusion of research our organization has conducted on the public revenue and resources dedicated to fighting substance abuse and mental disorders in the Land of Enchantment.

Certainly the crisis is severe. Alcohol-related deaths are rampant. The drug-overdose rate remains among the highest in the country. More citizens here have mental illnesses than the national average, and the prevalence of suicide is greater here than in all but three states.

But what’s more depressing than the reality of the behavioral-health epidemic is state government’s inconsistent and failure-ridden attempts to address the problem.

In 2002, “Behavioral Health Needs and Gaps in New Mexico,” an investigation commissioned by the Legislature, concluded that there was “no identifiable behavioral health system leader with responsibility or authority across the behavioral healthcare systems in the state.” In addition, the “benefit packages of the various behavioral health systems within New Mexico” were “not organized to maximize available resources or to provide incentives to providing care that has been proven to be effective (evidence-based or promising clinical practices).”

In response to the report, legislators and then-Gov. Bill Richardson created the New Mexico Behavioral Health Purchasing Collaborative, overseen by the Human Services Department, to bring leadership, focus, and accountability to the state’s public system of behavioral healthcare. But reports by the Legislative Finance Committee have repeatedly found that the collaborative hasn’t performed nearly as well as its creators hoped.

Even worse, radical policy shifts — including “carving out,” then “carving in” behavioral-health services for Medicaid recipients, and the brutal, partisan fight over Gov. Susana Martinez’s 2013 suspension of Medicaid payments to nonprofit providers due to suspicions of fraud — have taken a heavy toll.

No one can change the mismanagement and chaos of the past. The goal now is to move forward with sound principles and policies. A good place to start is with the flawed assumption that the only thing wrong with New Mexico’s behavioral-healthcare system is a lack of revenue.

Our examination found that states with high-performing systems do not necessarily spend more on substance abuse and mental illness. The key is to use what funding is available in the most effective ways possible. In 2014, legislative researchers found that the state spent just “11 percent of its … funding on proven and effective (behavioral-healthcare) programs for adults, even though past studies have recommended greater spending on these services.”

An expansion of mental-health courts would be a wise investment. Diverting an offender with behavioral issues from jail is an early intervention measure proven to be effective. Columbia University’s Paul S. Appelbaum wrote that most recent research shows that participation “is associated with reduced rates of rearrest and reincarceration compared with ordinary handling by the courts and correctional system.” Mental health courts exist in the Albuquerque-Santa Fe region, but not elsewhere in the state. Otero County is exploring a court of its own, and others should follow.

For those with a chronic condition who refuse help despite multiple arrests and/or hospitalizations, a stronger approach is need. Assisted outpatient treatment is a court-ordered plan that can include medication, tests, therapy, training or counseling. In the words of the Treatment Advocacy Center’s Brian Stettin, that type of treatment “leads to reduction of hospitalization and criminal acts,” and reduces the number of “people … getting treated in jails or prison for mental illness.”

New Mexico adopted AOT earlier this year, but was one of the last states to do so. However controversial the process remains, it’s now incumbent upon local governments and the courts to use the tool to help behavioral-health sufferers and taxpayers alike.

Finally, New Mexico’s behavioral-health workforce is inadequate — a harsh reality exacerbated by the governor’s decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. For fiscal and economic reasons, there is little chance for a quick turnaround. But training public employees in mental health first aid, and expanding the state’s system of peer support, can help compensate for an insufficient number of professional caregivers.

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

New Mexico’s pols are falling over each other, attempting to take credit for Facebook’s new data center in Los Lunas. But a new study by Good Jobs First, a liberal research organization that scrutinizes corporate welfare, explores some inconvenient facts that the state’s political class enthusiastically ignores.

“Money Lost to the Cloud: How Data Centers Benefit from State and Local Government Subsidies” is a scathing indictment of the billions of taxpayer dollars being given away to companies “like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook.” Some highlights:

* “[D]ata centers have a small employment impact. While the number of construction jobs is comparable to building a factory or distribution center, an operating data center requires few permanent workers: an average of just 30 to 50 permanent jobs.”

* As for compensation, the positions “created are a mix of low-paying janitorial and security jobs and some more remunerative technical positions.”

* Economic benefits to local businesses are “limited.” The servers stored at the centers are purchased “from companies such as HP, IBM and Oracle that source from offshore plants.”

* Long-term, the fate of subsidized facilities is unknown. “What is the life cycle of a data center? Might not companies demand a renewal of their tax breaks as they re-equip data centers? We … have seen many examples of companies threatening to relocate if new subsidies are not offered to older facilities. With the tech world’s notoriously short product life cycles, there is no guarantee that data centers will stay around for two or three decades.”

Access to industrial revenue bonds, GRT reimbursement, LEDA funding, JTIP subsidization — New Mexico taxpayers are handing Facebook a pretty sizable package of perks to set up shop in Los Lunas. Supporters of the giveaway should read “Money Lost to the Cloud” — perhaps they’ll change their minds about “this … big win for our state and the community here.”

As the Orange County Register observed, Californians have a lot of decisions to make on Election Day. In addition to picking “public servants,” voters will confront 17 ballot measures, weighing in on everything from marijuana to the death penalty, cigarette taxes to pornography.

Direct democracy has fans and critics. And the debate is a very old one — James Madison thought that “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.”

In New Mexico, it’s often said, ballot initiatives aren’t allowed. While the Land of Enchantment has referendum, whereby voters adopt or nix measures put before them by the legislature, citizens are not permitted to gather signatures to enact legislation and/or add provisions to the state’s constitution.

That’s true. But often forgotten is one tiny exception, exercised just twice, in 1950 and 1964. As Governing New Mexico explains, voters have a “limited ability to disapprove legislation enacted by the legislature.” The process, “a compromise concession to progressives in the 1910 constitutional convention,” allows the repeal of laws “enacted at the last preceding session of the legislature.” Unfortunately, the limitations are broad and deep. Petition signatures for anti-lawmaking must top 10 percent of all votes cast in the last general election, and be gathered in three-fourths of the state’s counties. Appropriations are exempt, as are “laws providing for the preservation of the public peace, health or safety,” “the maintenance of the public schools or state institutions,” and “local or special laws.” Even if a huge majority of votes are cast in favor of repeal, unless those votes total at least 40 percent of all votes cast in the election, the overturn is invalid.

“Power to the people”? In New Mexico, not so much.

Still, as poor public-policy choices continue to emanate from Santa Fe, it’s something for New Mexico’s pro-capitalism, limited-government community to explore. Repeals of regulatory laws, it would appear, are legitimate ways to use the constitutionally enabled power to “disapprove, suspend and annul.” Who’s for giving it a shot?

What’s the most powerful lobbying force in New Mexico?

Unionized educrats?

Medicaid’s dead-end defenders?

Purveyors of politically correct energy?

No, if the fate of the special session’s HB 15 is any indication, the film-and-television industry has the mightiest “juice” in Santa Fe. The bill, as initially written, would have cut the $50 million annual perk Hollywood gets from New Mexico taxpayers in half for the 2017 fiscal year. (An amendment raised the cap to $30 million.)

As the legislature’s fiscal analysts noted, the “savings” would be “temporary, because qualified applicants [would] still get the entirety of their claims,” just at a later date. “In effect, the bill borrows money from future years for use in FY17.”

Yet HB 15, sponsored by Rod Montoya, David Gallegos, James Strickler, and James Townsend, didn’t get so much as a committee vote. And there was little chance that a comparable draft in the Senate would have met with success.

The extravagance and ineffectiveness of New Mexico’s annual giveaway to Hollywood has been documented time and time and time again, but most legislators continue to believe that the corporate-welfare program is an effective economic-development tool. Looks like those of us who regularly document the real-world consequences of subsidizing Tinseltown still have a lot of work ahead of us.

The special session drags on, with no final agreement between the Senate and House of Representatives on how to drain last year’s red ink, in addition to the massive budget deficit plaguing the current fiscal year.

Unfortunately, one piece of legislation that could raise new revenue is being ignored: HB 11.

Sponsored by Representatives Bill McCamley and Javier Martínez, the Cannabis Revenue and Freedom Act legalizes, regulates, and taxes marijuana for recreational use. Among other things, it makes possession of “more than one ounce of usable marijuana in a public place” illegal, prohibits the “use of marijuana while driving,” and allows local governments to “adopt reasonable time, place and manner regulations related to nuisance aspects of a licensed marijuana retailer’s business if the municipality or county makes specific findings that the business would cause adverse effects to occur.”

In the Foundation’s detailed plan for fixing New Mexico’s budget gap, we cite the Tax Foundation’s estimate that a 25 percent retail tax on recreational marijuana in the Land of Enchantment would yield annual revenue of $57 million. That’s not a silver-bullet solution to our deficits, but it would make a significant contribution.

HB 11 is big — 91 pages, printed from the web — but whether you’re liberal, conservative, libertarian, or anything else, it’s worth a look. With a majority of Americans favoring the legalization of marijuana, smart states (Alaska, Oregon, Washington, and our neighbor Colorado) have already gotten ahead of the inevitable, and enacted regulatory/taxing architectures. New Mexico should be the next early-adopter.

The website of U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham doesn’t supply fodder for Errors of Enchantment very often, but yesterday, the congresswoman posted a press release worth noting.

Lujan Grisham “expressed outrage” over the finding that the New Mexico VA Health Care System facility in Albuquerque “failed to notify many patients about positive test results indicating they could have colorectal cancer.”

Specifically, the Office of Healthcare Inspections of the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs looked into “allegations made by an anonymous complainant,” and concluded that “nine patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer … experienced delays and, in some instances, significant delays that may have affected the patients’ clinical outcomes.” In addition, investigators “determined that during FY 2013 and FY 2014, the facility did not have a process in place to monitor provider compliance with colorectal cancer screening. In 2012, facility leaders had assigned a registered nurse to follow up on positive fecal immunochemical tests and report to the Chief of Staff monthly. However, the employee transferred from the facility, and the position had been vacant for over 2 years. We found that facility leaders did not institute another process for monitoring provider compliance with colorectal cancer screening and reporting to ensure that patients with a positive fecal immunochemical tests received timely notification of results and appropriate follow-up care.”

Here’s a link to the full report — worth forwarding to friends, relatives, and co-workers who think single-payer healthcare is a good idea.

Tired of the budget shenanigans in Santa Fe? Grab a copy of the October issue of Smithsonian magazine. The cover story explores the battle over the migration of the jaguar (Panthera onca) back into the United States.

Author Richard Grant profiles “El Jefe,” the “fourth documented male jaguar to make the border crossing in the last 20 years.” Hudbay Minerals “intends to build a gigantic open-pit copper mine” in the cat’s territory, and eco-leftists are … well, you can guess how they’re reacting.

Grant deserves credit for explaining that it was legal action by the Center for Biological Diversity that had the federal government designate six units of “critical habitat” for jaguars. But he fails to mention the lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Farm & Livestock Bureau, New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association, and New Mexico Federal Lands Council over the feds’ inclusion of New Mexico in the territory.

Last year, the three groups filed a complaint in U.S. District Court, claiming that the habitat designation subjects “private and public property to regulation which impairs Plaintiffs’ interests in fuel and fire risk reduction projects on forest lands, infrastructure projects, and development of range improvements.”

There is no evidence that any of the cats occupied Unit 5 (102,727 acres, in Arizona and New Mexico) or Unit 6 (7,714 acres, entirely in New Mexico) when the jaguar was listed as an endangered species, and thus, the parcels are “not essential for … conservation.” And as can be seen from the map above, the New Mexico “habitat” is far from El Jefe’s hunting grounds, in the Santa Rita Mountains in Arizona.

The outcome of the lawsuit remains anyone’s guess, but the compliant, written by attorneys from the Pacific Legal Foundation, makes a persuasive argument. Time will tell if jaguars re-occupy the Southwest in any significant way. But at this point, considering any portion of New Mexico “critical habitat” for the species appears to be another case of federal overreach.

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 September, of 14,498 projected jobs, 10,591 — 87.1 percent — were slated for RTW states:

As for the sub-metrics the Foundation scrutinizes:

* Sixteen 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. Eleven projects are headed to RTW states, with six to occur in a non-RTW state.

* Domestic relocations were tied, with Velocity Resource Group moving from Illinois to Florida and Solid Gold Pet moving from South Carolina to Missouri.

* One foreign-owned firm relocated its headquarters — moving from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.

Marquee RTW investments included NCR’s expansion of its Atlanta campus (1,200 jobs), Finland-based Huhtamäki’s selection of Arizona for a manufacturing and distribution center (300 jobs), and UPS’s pick of Utah for an operations facility (195 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.

The Legislature has convened in Santa Fe to address the massive budget shortfall. The Rio Grande Foundation has made elimination of New Mexico’s $50 million film subsidy program a cornerstone of its budget-cutting efforts. And, yesterday, a new study (the third) was released by the New Mexico Film Office which purports to study the economic impact of the subsidy program, this time on tourism.

Let’s recap: Study 1 found that “film production activity has produced an estimated $0.33 in state taxes for each dollar in production incentive granted.” In other words, the State loses 67 cents in tax revenue every time a dollar goes out the door to the film program.

Study phase 2 talked about employment data, but provided nothing really new about the economic impact of the program.

Now, we are told by industry supporters that phase 3 provides “definitive proof that movies make money for New Mexico.”

The latest report attempts to attribute a financial impact to the film industry in the areas of tourism and educational programs. The study makes some assumptions (high, low, and moderate), but how many people are making a special trip to come to New Mexico to see Walter White’s house from Breaking Bad? How much money is being spent here that wouldn’t otherwise be spent? And, more importantly, how many tax dollars are flowing into the State from film tourism? The new study’s assumptions are simply impossible to justify.

Lastly, the educational programs issue is just a red-herring.

Unfortunately, legislators are being asked to address a massive budget shortfall. Every interest group will say that their spending is ESSENTIAL. Fortunately, as principled liberals will point out, we know the film subsidy is one easy area to cut.

As legislators meet in Santa Fe to resolve the state’s hideous budget imbalance, one thing they might consider addressing is taxpayers’ tab for prescription drugs. A new report by the Legislative Finance Committee found that between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2016, state spending on meds prescribed by healthcare professionals rose by 54 percent.

The report reviewed “prescription drug spending by 10 state agencies and entities,” including the Human Services Department (Medicaid), the Interagency Benefits Advisory Council, Department of Health, UNM and UNM Hospital employee plans, Albuquerque Public Schools, the General Services Department, the Corrections Department, and the Children, Youth and Families Department.

Given the governor’s profoundly unwise decision to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, it was no surprise that the healthcare program for “the poor” drove the spike in RX expenditures. Average recipients per month grew from 559,292 to 810,157. The annual number of prescriptions issued rose from 4.4 million to 6.6 million. Thus, total spending rose from $231.7 million to $423.7 million — an increase of 83 percent.

The DOH actually saw a decline in prescription costs, as did the CYFD. But the prison system’s bill ballooned by 160 percent. State-employee and retiree health plans were up 21 percent. APS’s costs rose 34 percent. UNM increased by 42 percent; UNMH by 76 percent.

Add it all up, and prescription drugs cost taxpayers $680.1 million in 2016. To put that amount in perspective, it’s more than 10 percent of the entire General Fund, and more than the estimated deficit for fiscal 2017.

The report makes a couple of vague cost-control recommendations, such as improving price transparency and using “a variety of options to increase negotiating power through collaborative purchasing agreements.” Missing, of course, is the suggestion that New Mexico finally right-size state government, and reap big RX savings through fewer employees and the elimination of ineffective, and sometimes counterproductive, welfare programs.

The Tax Foundation is out with its latest “State Business Tax Climate Index,” which is “designed to show how well states structure their tax systems,” as well as provide “a roadmap for improvement.”

New Mexico ranked 35th — not among the absolute worst, but far from the best. Unfortunately, each of the Land of Enchantment’s neighbors performed better. Utah ranked highest (9th), followed by Texas (14th), Colorado (16th), Arizona (21st), and Oklahoma (31st).

Disaggregating the index’s data, New Mexico performed best on the property tax — its burden was the lowest in the nation. Our sales tax (more accurately, the gross receipts tax) was 42nd. Not surprising, given the GRT’s high rates and mind-numbing complexity.

As authors Jared Walczak, Scott Drenkard, and Joseph Henchman note, for the top ten states, the “absence of a major tax is a common factor.” Wyoming, Nevada, and South Dakota lack both corporate- and personal-income taxes (with Nevada imposing its own type of GRT), while “Alaska has no individual income or state-level sales tax; Florida has no individual income tax; and New Hampshire, Montana, and Oregon have no sales tax.”

Serious simplification, and strong reduction, of New Mexico’s GRT would do quite a lot to improve the state’s ranking on the Tax Foundation’s index. Long-term, eliminating the personal-income tax — perhaps funded by a multi-year drawdown of the tens of billions of dollars in the state’s permanent funds — would yield even more benefits.

There WILL be a special session of the New Mexico Legislature after all and it will be tomorrow (Friday, September 30).

By far the most pressing issue is how to address the State’s serious budget challenges. The ONLY plan with any substance has been put forth by the Rio Grande Foundation. You can find it here and here.  There are zero tax increases, but we do include some new revenue from taxing and regulating cannabis. There is some low-hanging fruit like cutting higher education, reforming long-term-care insurance under Medicaid, and eliminating film subsidies and there are more challenging cuts.

The fact is that by almost any measure, New Mexico government is too big and spends too much money. It is time to cut back.

So, what WILL happen during this one day special session? Possibly, legislators will come to some agreement on dealing with the FY 2016 shortfall (FY 2016 ended on June 30 of 2016). This would just involve shifting some existing funds around (like tobacco settlement dollars) and closing out the books. You can’t raise taxes retroactively.

It seems highly-unlikely that Gov. Martinez will get any of her crime legislation (like re-instating the death penalty). Even if Democrats supported most of these “get tough” policies which I don’t believe they do, they are in no mood to give Martinez any big victories a month before an election.

It is also hard to believe that we’ll see any agreement on FY 2017’s more substantial deficits which are in the $450-$550 million range for the simple fact that Democrats want to raise taxes and Gov. Martinez doesn’t.

What does this all mean for the future? Will this special session last just one day? I believe so. There isn’t much agreement. There is no reason to keep people in Santa Fe so close to an election. Will there be another special session after the election? Possibly? Will there EVER be an agreement on New Mexico’s budget? That may depend on the outcome this November.

If the Democrats win back the House, their demands for higher taxes will likely be strengthened (but Martinez still holds a lot of cards). If the GOP retains the House and makes inroads in the Senate (like defeating Majority Leader Michael Sanchez or another incumbent or two), the Gov.’s “no tax hikes” position will be strengthened. A murky result and, well, the situation will remain murky. Only time (and November’s election) will tell.

Sometimes it seems that New Mexico’s economic-development cheerleaders live in an alternate reality. We all want New Mexico to be prosperous and wealthy, but anyone who believes that the state’s economy is doing well these days is simply not paying attention.

Gary Tonjes of Albuquerque Economic Development, writing in the Albuquerque Journal, touted New Mexico’s “business-friendly” environment, including corporate-welfare programs like LEDA and JTIP and their role in attracting business. He says that the Facebook win “sends a message to other employers that this is a great place for business.”

Unfortunately, the reality is far different:

• As of August, New Mexico’s 6.6 percent unemployment rate is the second highest in the nation;

• From 2004 to 2015, during the era of the “High Wages Jobs Tax Credit,” real median hourly earnings in New Mexico grew by less than a quarter;

• According to Forbes’s “Best States for Business” 2016 report, neighboring Utah, Colorado, and Texas rank 1^st, 5^th, and 6^th, respectively, while New Mexico is 47^th;

• CNBC has another “Top States for Business” index. On that one Utah, Texas, and Colorado rank 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd. New Mexico ranks 39^th.

And let’s not forget that New Mexico is facing massive budget deficits. Even if we wanted to spend more money to bring in more businesses, we don’t have the money available to do it.

It is easy to sympathize with Tonjes and New Mexico’s economic development cheerleaders. It must be a real challenge to compete with our more economically free neighbors. It is frustrating to see them growing while we remain stagnant and impoverished. But to say that throwing massive subsidies at one company and getting them to come here “vindicates” anything is just silly.

New Mexico has a long way to go to develop a private sector. Our leaders should be explaining what that means and educating the public, not encouraging complacency.