We at the Rio Grande Foundation have had our differences with UNM Hospital for planning to invest a lot of taxpayer money into a project that we questioned.

However, the controversy, started by Rep. Michelle Lujan-Grisham over the Hospital’s outsourcing of transcription services is just silly. Another article appeared in the Albuquerque Journal with the headline “UNMH Outsourcing an economic decision.” Well, duh!

Of course, the author is with a union representing transcribers and Lujan-Grisham has a political interest in keeping those 57 people (and their families) happy. She’s got 100+ solid votes now. Who is going to vote against her BECAUSE of this effort? No one.

But the outsourcing is saving UNMH (or taxpayers) $500,000!!! That’s a decent amount of money even at UNMH. Now, imagine hundreds of potential cost-savings decisions made throughout UNMH’s budget and the budgets of government entities around New Mexico. Unfortunately, you can always count on a concentrated group looking out for their own best interests, but who defends the taxpayer?

So, kudos to UNMH. Stick to your guns on behalf of taxpayers. To the Laid off transcribers, it is time to either find another job in the field or get trained to do something that is more economically-viable and doesn’t need the intervention of a Congressperson to preserve your job. That may not be easy in New Mexico, but may I recommend North Dakota?

The “we can never cut any government program” crowd was in full-force recently on the Albuquerque Journal’s opinion pages with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty arguing that any cuts to food stamps would be a “profound mistake.” The arguments trotted out were very typical:

1) Welfare as economic stimulus;
2) Without food stamps, children will starve or won’t get enough food to eat and this will ruin their lives.

Of course, the implication is that food stamps are always and everywhere being used to benefit those who need them and that the doubling in food stamps since just 2008 is a direct result of the poor economy.

As Jim Scarantino reported, there has been widespread abuse of the cards given to recipients including in strip clubs. The legislation designed to curtail this situation somewhat was held up by Majority Leader Michael Sanchez. One wonders where the NM Center on Law and Poverty is on that issue.

The reality is that many of the funds allocated to food stamps do not go to poor people but the government is not eager to provide data that would allow analysts to better understand how the program is being abused and/or used to purchase junk food.

Of course, conservatives should not limit themselves to just attacking food stamps. They need to go after all of the wasteful agriculture subsidies in the farm bill (which is pretty much all $16 billion of them). After all, if you are perceived rightly or wrongly as being mean to poor people, you’ve got to take on the recipients of subsidies, most of whom are wealthy.

When discussing New Mexico’s graduation rates, we have always used “Diplomas Count”  from the Education Research Center. The latest report on national graduation rates was released earlier this month. Reports on the topic have noted that Diplomas Count and the State calculate graduation rates differently, but that New Mexico was at the very bottom in the latest report.

Obviously, this is not good news, but we wanted to put those findings into a bit of context. Using the Diplomas Count data, we looked back over more than a decade to see how graduation rates have evolved for New Mexico, its neighbors, and Florida (from whence Hanna Skandera came along with the “Florida Model” for education reform. Unfortunately (for New Mexico), as the data shows, not only is our state saddled with the worst graduation rate in the nation, our results did not improve much (at least relative to other states) between 1999 and 2010. The chart below illustrates the increase (or decrease) in graduation rates in the report.

This second chart illustrates the relative increase or decrease over the same time span:

Not surprisingly, Florida and Arizona have developed some of the most robust school choice programs in the entire nation.

The Rio Grande Foundation recently hosted a debate on the issue of inequality in America. Participants were Paul Gessing, president of Rio Grande Foundation and Nick Estes who recently worked as an analyst with New Mexico Voices for Children.

The footage of the debate can be viewed below:

“Rising Inequality in America … Should Government Respond? If so, how?” from Paul Gessing on Vimeo.

Nick’s powerpoint slides are available here while Paul’s are available here.

Leftists and their allies in the media are often very effective at portraying conservatives and libertarians as being heartless for their stances against massive government transfer programs. The reality is that government is the nastiest organization around because accountability is so elusive. Democracy, yes, but throwing the bums out is not the same as throwing them in jail and taking their ill-gotten gains.

George Will has a great column detailing how one person, Lois Lerner (most recently of the IRS) personifies in so many ways all that is wrong with government, especially the monopolistic and seemingly omnipotent federal government. Conservatives and libertarians have a golden opportunity to have an impact in terms of limiting government power if they approach the various scandals — NSA, IRS, and ObamaCare — from a principled position in support of limited government.

Two issues have bubbled to the surface in the local debate over economic development and the proper role of government. Those are:
1) Whether Bernalillo County should impose fees up to 3% on utilities that use right of way owned by the County;

On the this issue, we need to ask questions including the following:

How was the 3% number arrived at?
Do utilities impose costs on the County relating to its “right of way” for example in terms of moving wires or equipment that are not covered in the existing system?
Is a 3% fee going to cover such costs or result in excess revenues?
If so, what will those revenues be used for? Will they benefit utilities or their customers?
Who pays for rights-of-way currently?
How is this 3% fee different from a simple tax increase?

2) This issue relates to the ongoing discussion of Whether the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County should subsidize a grocery store downtown. Advocates explain their position in the initial article while I have written about the issue here;

If there is really a market for a second grocery store downtown, why isn’t one located there already?
Is it really in the best interests of taxpayers from all over the city and county to subsidize one part of Albuquerque?
If benefits are available for one business in one part of town, why not make these same benefits available for other businesses in other parts of town?
If there IS a market for another supermarket downtown, but the issue is one of public policy, what can the City and County do to mitigate of solve the issue?

Winthrop Quigley, business journalist at the Albuquerque Journal, had another economically-confused column on New Mexico economic policies and our potential for economic growth. Quigley questions efforts to lower New Mexico’s tax burden and make the state more attractive to businesses.

As Quigley notes, “our state’s corporate income tax changes were designed to signal…that New Mexico is open for business…competing with the rest of the country on the basis of price.”

Well, I’m not sure it is quite so simple. True, our state has relatively low wages and that can be a selling point, but this is an information economy. Quigley is right about that and the fact that we need an educated, entrepreneurial work force. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be competitive on taxes and economic policy.

Ultimately, businesses and individuals want to work where they can keep a higher percentage of their incomes (low income taxes, both corporate and income) and control who they hire and fire with fewer hoops to jump through (Right to Work) to name just two policies that impact where businesses locate.

New Mexico has not been “in the game” when it comes to being economically competitive for much of its history. That can change, but even if it does, it will take time to transform and improve New Mexico’s economy. The flip side is that New York and California do very little well when it comes to economic policy. They are high-tax states with heavy regulatory burdens. They also have some specific industries that have developed there over the decades.

However, the reality is that people are leaving economically-unfree states like New York and California and moving to economically-free states like Texas. The reality is that New Mexico can be a destination for highly-skilled workers and jobs, but we need public policies in place that give people a reason to set up shop here.