If you haven’t already purchased your tickets for our upcoming luncheon on Margaret Thatcher on the 25th, our reception in Santa Fe later that day, and our breakfast in Albuquerque on Tuesday, you need to do so by Monday in order to get the best price.

More noteworthy is that it is women who are leading the charge for liberty here in New Mexico. It has been well-documented that we have the nation’s first Latina Governor, a conservative, but even in the Legislature, women are showing a strong resolve to vote for freedom. With just a day or so remaining in the 2013 legislative session, I logged on to our “Freedom Index” vote tracking site and noticed that the top five legislators in terms of pro freedom votes are ALL women. Reps. Herrell, Brown, Crook, Ezzell, and Espinoza currently hold the first five slots in the analysis of the voting patterns of New Mexico’s legislators when it comes to pro/anti liberty issues.

As if having such a strong contingent of pro-liberty women in the Legislature were not enough, I have always been struck by the large number of women who lead business and industry groups around New Mexico. Here is a (partial), by no means exhaustive list of women who lead pro-freedom, pro-business organizations in New Mexico (if I’m missing anyone, email me at info@riograndefoundation.org)

Terri Cole, Albuquerque Chamber;
Beverlee McClure, Association of Commerce and Industry;
Carol Wight, New Mexico Restaurant Association;
Minda McGonagle, National Federation of Independent Businesses New Mexico;
Karin Foster, Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico;
Carla Sonntag, New Mexico Business Coalition
Marita Noon, Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy
Lynne Anderson, NAIOP

Check out the following chart from the Heritage Foundation:

Another legislation is almost over and the Legislature has once again done nothing to improve educational performance in our state which so often trails the nation (which in turn trails the world) in educational performance.

Interestingly enough, the Obama Administration (unlike many Democrats in the Legislature) has actually been quite supportive of Gov. Martinez’s reforms. Now, we have Peter Orszag, Obama’s former Office of Management and Budget head, has written this article detailing how standardized tests can and should be used to evaluate teachers.

The use of such standardized testing to even partially evaluate New Mexico teachers has been anathema to the unions which have effectively killed any and all such reforms. Now, are standardized tests perfect? No. If we had a truly free market education system where resources were commanded by parents and children, not bureaucrats and politicians, they could choose whatever method of teacher evaluation they wanted. But that is not the reality. Standardized tests, imperfect as they are, accurately measure teacher effectiveness. Unfortunately, that accountability is not welcome in the world of education.

HT: George Richmond

Over the weekend, the Albuquerque Journal ran an excellent story on the UNM Campus in Rio Rancho, built at a cost to taxpayers of $13.5 million, which is severely underutilized. The story details the paucity of students who take classes on the campus and includes interviews with several local politicians who attempt to defend the white elephant.

Of course, the proliferation of college campuses is right in line with previous RGF research on the topic of New Mexico’s many college campuses and the fact that these buildings are too often built for “economic development” purposes and not due to actual demand.

This “build first, ask questions later” attitude is common in government, but especially common here in New Mexico. And, if you think it has gone away, you better think again. For one example, check out the scope of UNMH’s Master plan which includes adding an astonishing 1.5 million sq/ft of office space by 2020. And yet the plan spends more time discussing sculpture gardens than it does analyzing the budget or any demonstrated demand for that kind of massive development.

Are you or someone you know qualified to be a principal at a New Mexico school? New Mexico Connections Academy is hiring a principal to head up the unique virtual school which will open this coming fall. If you are a go-getter and interested in getting involved in this innovative educational option, check out the job qualifications and apply.

(Albuquerque) Responding to the ongoing debate over whether to increase state government employee pay in New Mexico, the Rio Grande Foundation has produced a new report, “Public v. Private Sector: Income Differences in New Mexico” that attempts to create an “apples to apples” comparison of the overall compensation of workers in the public and private sectors.

According to the Foundation’s analysis, New Mexico government workers are paid an 8.6 percent premium over their private sector counterparts.

“It is widely known and reflected in our report,” notes policy analyst Ben Sugg, “that government workers give up some upfront pay in exchange for more generous health care, pension, and time-off/retirement. The question is whether those ‘fringe benefits’ lead to relatively higher pay for workers in New Mexico’s state government or not.”

The Rio Grande Foundation analysis used a statistical technique called “Regression Analysis” in order to better understand the differences in pay among various types of workers. Regression analysis is a statistical technique for estimating the relationships among variables. In this paper, it is used to account for the relevant differences between state and private sector workers.

According to the report’s findings using regression analysis, despite having not received a raise since 2008, New Mexico’s public sector workers remain better-paid overall than their equivalents in the private sector. That difference is 8.6 percent. Read the brief for yourself here.

Update, appropriate to this study, check out this new article from Albuquerque Business First which states that “Private employers paid their workers an average of $28.89 an hour in wages and benefits in December 2012, while state and local governments paid an average of $41.94 an hour according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

One of the tricky things about economics is that isolated instances or well-publicized stories (like a factory closing or a big store opening) can lead to inaccurate assumptions about the world around us. I today’s Albuquerque Journal business section, I attempt to explain that we need to use data not anecdotes when dealing with New Mexico’s economy and overall economic health.

Letter writer Christopher Timm misunderstands the work of my Foundation and others who are concerned about New Mexico’s weak economy. He cites the fact that new businesses open in our area “all the time” as a refutation of our repeated statements that our state’s economic situation is dire.

In a state of more than 2 million people, jobs and businesses will come and go. Usually no single business opening or closing will by itself drive the economy. The question, rather, is “how does New Mexico stack up relative to other states?” On this score we don’t fare so well.

Our poverty rate is the highest in the nation according to the Census Bureau; Economic freedom (according to the Canadian Fraser Institute) is worst among the states; according to The Economist, New Mexico is the most economically-reliant state on an increasingly erratic federal government, and our state has been losing jobs year-over-year since June 2011 while states throughout the west have been adding jobs. We were also named the top “Death Spiral” state by Forbes and made it onto the list of states from which people are moving (the only western state to do so) in a recent United Van Lines report.

Most depressing is the fact that the leadership in our Legislature would rather raise the economically-harmful minimum wage and throw more money at the film industry and a broken education system than make the tough choices needed to turn our state around.

Paul J. Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation
PO Box 40336
Albuquerque, NM 87196
505-264-6090

Although we are far apart when it comes to public policy, I’d always gotten along personally with Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino. Unfortunately, when someone starts spreading lies about you in a public forum, that respect can evaporate in a hurry. So it happened during the ongoing show-trial of Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera in the Senate Rules Committee on Saturday.

Go to the video and fast-forward to the 1 hour mark. After stating accurately that I am a prolific op-ed and letter writer in the local media, Ortiz y Pino falsely claims that I am making 2% off of the contract for New Mexico Connections Academy. He goes on to state that (correctly) Rio Grande Foundation won’t be running the school, but goes on to falsely claim that Connections will be running the school.

Before making false claims in a public form in order to hurt Skandera, Ortiz should have checked his facts. I would have informed the Senator that:

1) I am just one of the members of New Mexico Connections Academy’s Governing Council, nothing more, nothing less;

2) Rio Grande Foundation, the organization which I run, has no direct involvement in New Mexico Connections Academy. We have researched and philosophically support school choice and digital learning options;

3) I and my colleagues on the Governing Council are not compensated by Connections Academy or anyone else for our work;

4) The Governing Council of New Mexico Connections Academy made up of New Mexico citizens “manages” the school not our curriculum/virtual learning partner.

The mail-in election in Albuquerque is turning into a debacle with more than 10 percent of votes being thrown out due to lack of signatures. Democrats are saying “count every vote” and are naturally critical of City Clerk Amy Bailey.

Of course, we were critical of the process at the outset and recognize that voting entirely by mail is problematic and should probably be abandoned entirely.

Rather than just blindly counting every vote in what is clearly a problematic process, how about just tossing the entire election out and putting the issue on the ballot at a time when turnout might be more respectable and when voters can show up in person? Just a thought and throwing out the election seems to be no further beyond the bounds of city law than “counting every vote” in a way that clearly violates the law.

Albuquerque’s City Council has signed on with $1.5 million of taxpayer money in support of a “hub” economic development concept from Florida. On one hand, we totally understand and appreciate Mayor Berry’s efforts to do something to spur economic growth independent of the federal government in Albuquerque.

Unfortunately, we remain skeptical about the likelihood of an investment of $1.5 million of city tax money (or more as the project develops) having the kinds of impacts seen in Florida. Rather, we’d like to see New Mexico’s liberal legislators wake up and realize that Florida’s success is driven by:

1) Having no personal income tax;
2) Being a “Right to Work” state;
3) An improving education system in which reforms (instituted by leaders like Hanna Skandera with the support of legislators) have led to dramatic improvement in areas like 4th grade reading. Check Florida vs. New Mexico.

These are just a few of the biggest reasons why entrepreneurs and small businesses are likely to set up shop in Florida and not New Mexico. I don’t know if the $1.5 million that City Council allocated to this “hub” concept will be wasted or not, but chances for success would be much higher if New Mexico embraced the business-friendly policies found in Florida.