Fiscal Crisis in NM? Let’s Raise Construction Prices!

Legislation now moving through the New Mexico Legislature (it has already passed the Senate and will be heard in the House Labor Committee tomorrow). The legislation will expand so-called “prevailing wage” (read inflated wage) laws.
The simple truth is that this bill will increase costs to NMDOT projects by as much as 50% compared to the [...]

Councilor Benton Doesn’t Get It

Too many elected officials seem to get into politics simply to tell the rest of us what to do. One of the most prominent examples of this tendency is Albuquerque City Councilor Isaac Benton. Benton, in an op-ed published in the Albuquerque Journal, argued in favor of the City’s new green building codes and ripped [...]

ACORN and the Housing Crisis

New Mexicans, especially Albuquerque residents, have dealt with the radical leftist group ACORN on multiple occasions in the past. ACORN led the charge in imposing a higher minimum wage in Albuquerque (before the Legislature and Congress imposed their own wage laws). This wage law is now an important factor in making it difficult for teenagers [...]

Feds stall on Native sovereignty and economic development

The Navajo Nation is planning on building a coal-fired power plant near Burnham, NM. It applied for an air permit from the Environmental Protection Agency in early 2004, but still hasn’t received permission to begin construction. The Diné Power Authority, a Navajo enterprise, filed a lawsuit against the EPA on March 18 attempting [...]

Feds Propose Increased Financial Regulation

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson disclosed a plan to massively increase the powers of the Federal Reserve to regulate private financial institutions. The unveiling comes 11 days after House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank proposed a “Financial Services Risk Regulator” which would be managed by the Federal Reserve and would have the [...]

FCC, Chimayo Residents Threaten Property Rights

Federal Communications Commission representative Stephen DelSordo will be making an appearance at the Chimayo Elementary School gymnasium Wednesday, March 26, at 6:30 pm to discuss possible infringements of historical preservation made by a T-Mobile cell phone tower erected over two years ago, according to The New Mexican (Meeting set over cell tower, Tom Sharpe, Mar. [...]

Don’t Forget: The State Hates Your NCAA Tournament Pool and It’s Illegal!

We at the Rio Grande Foundation don’t really take a position on gambling although our tendency is certainly that individuals and not the state should decide how to spend their hard-earned money. That said, we do take a position against “outrageous laws” in New Mexico.
This brings me to an outrageous law New Mexico has on [...]

Call off the Water Nannies!

Micha Gisser has an excellent opinion piece on the Albuquerque-Bernalillo Water Authority’s power grab in today’s Albuquerque Journal
Among his more salient points is the fact that from 1994 to 2006 the price of water, adjusted for inflation, increased by from 35 to 45 percent, thus causing consumers to reduce consumption. Presumably, if water is [...]

Gas Prices Up, NM Oil Production Down

New Mexico is one of the largest oil and gas producing states in the country. Unfortunately, the industry — and other economic activities — are regulated by politicians who are totally ignorant of how wealth is generated and destroyed. That is why, despite record-setting oil and gas prices, the number of rigs operating in the [...]

The “Permit Raj,” Albuquerque Style

If you have ever seen the excellent film “Commanding Heights,” you are probably familiar with the “Permit Raj” which held India’s economy back for more than 50 years.
A story in today’s Albuquerque Journal (subscription required) reminded me that the “Permit Raj” is alive and well here in our own over-regulated city. First, “an unexpected [...]

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