Category: Notable News

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Education Legislature Notable News Top Issues

Opinion piece: 2023 Legislature Punts on Education reform

The following appeared at KRWG and in numerous other media outlets.

In October of last year, results for the Nation’s Report Card (NAEP) placed New Mexico dead-last in education among all states, the District of Columbia, and DoD schools. The test covered reading for 4th and 8th graders and math for the same age groups. New Mexico was last across all categories. These results should have been a wakeup call for Gov. Lujan Grisham and the Legislature.

Bold solutions are needed and there’s no time like a 60-day session to enact big reforms. Unfortunately, as the legislative session hurtles onward, neither serious education reform nor prevention of future mistakes like those made during the COVID pandemic are likely to come to pass.

As a parent, I know first-hand that the Gov.’s COVID 19 lockdowns and chaos had a major, negative impact on young people. Kept out of their classrooms for over a year, often in rural areas with poor broadband service and working parents, it is no surprise that New Mexico students suffered more during the Pandemic than those living in wealthier “blue” states. Locking kids out of school is now widely seen as a mistake that had no noticeable impact on the spread of COVID.

Sadly, efforts to give the Legislature a seat at the table in future emergencies, HB 80 and HJR 3 (one was a bill, the other an amendment), both failed on party lines in the House Judiciary Committee. They would have simply required the Legislature to approve declared emergencies lasting longer than 90 days, but that was too much for the majority Democrats.

Having the Legislature debate and vote on whether to lock kids out of their schools for over a year shouldn’t be a partisan issue.

COVID is hardly the only reason for New Mexico schools’ poor performance. The system has always been near the very bottom in producing student outcomes. Sadly, aside from continuing to spend more and more money, the Legislature and Gov. remain unwilling to shake up the system in ways that would improve outcomes.

My organization has long pushed for “money to follow the student.” The best single bill attempting to do that was Sen. Craig Brandt’s SB 109 which would have set up a system of “education savings accounts” similar to the one adopted last year in Arizona. The bill was killed on partisan lines in its first committee (Senate Education).

Though necessary, school choice remains a dirty word among New Mexico’s education establishment. But choice isn’t the only way to improve education results. Just ask the folks in Mississippi where simple reforms to how reading is taught have resulted in massive learning gains, especially in 4th grade reading.

What did Mississippi do to achieve success? It pushed teachers to teach reading through phonics, it invested resources into teaching teachers how to teach phonics effectively, and it made sure that students understood the subject material before passing them on to the next grade (they ended social promotion).

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Mississippi’s initiative broadly reflects the reform efforts of former Gov. Susana Martinez. Sadly, union-backed Democrats in the Legislature prevented those efforts from being codified into law. Her reforms were immediately undone by Gov. Lujan Grisham.

But, as the New York Times notes, Mississippi went from 49th on 4th grade reading in 2013 to 29th in 2019. Mississippi further increased its already substantial lead on New Mexico in the first post-COVID NAEP test in 2022. Notably, Mississippi spends about $10,000 per student while New Mexico spends $15,000.

New Mexico’s children (and its employers) desperately need a high-performing education system. Unfortunately, without the Legislature and Gov. embracing bold reforms that upset the status quo, improvement is unlikely to occur anytime soon.

Doing the same thing and expecting a different result is a worthy definition of insanity. It also appears to describe New Mexico’s education policy.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is 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

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Legislature Notable News Top Issues

New Mexico’s increasingly partisan Legislature

The Rio Grande Foundation tracks and rates legislation in New Mexico and has done so since 2014 (find our Freedom Index archive here). Bills are given scores as bad as -8 and as good as +8 and when those bills move to the floor for votes, the points with a “yes” or “no” vote are attributed to all of the legislators in both parties.

Currently just a few floor votes have been tallied, but that number is starting to grow along with the numbers associated with each legislator. We strongly encourage citizens and anyone interested in what is happening in New Mexico to check out our Freedom Index and use it.

A side benefit of our software provider BillTrack50 is some interesting “data nuggets.” For example, the chart below shows whether bills enacted by the Legislature and Gov. were sponsored by Democrats, Republicans, or both parties. Understanding that a Republican, Susana Martinez was Gov. from 2010 through 2018, Democrats remained quite influential in passing bills throughout that time.

Since Lujan-Grisham and the Democrats took over all three branches of New Mexico government in 2019, the number of GOP-sponsored bills passing began to shrink dramatically. Just one GOP-sponsored bill passed in 2022.

You can find out more interesting nuggets for yourself here.

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Economy Health Care Legislature Notable News Tax and Budget Taxes Top Issues

Solutions for New Mexico’s medical provider shortage: part 2 of the two part series

New Mexico has a shortage of medical providers across most practice areas (as discussed in Part 1 of this series). So, as the 2023 legislative session gets rolling, what can be done about it?

The Rio Grande Foundation has looked high and low throughout New Mexico laws impacting medical providers and has produced a series of recommendations laid out in an extensive policy paper.

1) While forward looking in nature, HB 75 passed in 2021 and was revised later on that same year makes New Mexico’s medical malpractice much more plaintiff and attorney friendly through the increase in damage award caps is  causing a great deal of concern among providers even though it will not be implemented until 2024;

2) Stop taxing medical providers via gross receipts tax. The State is one of the few states in the entire nation that levies the equivalent of a “sales” tax on certain medical services. In New Mexico’s largest city, Albuquerque, the rate of taxation is currently 7.75 percent. Rates tend to be even higher in outlying areas of New Mexico. This could be part of a broad reform or more targeted.

3) Reduce Medicaid dependency.  According to the American Hospital Association, Medicaid underpaid hospitals by $24.8 billion in 2020. For Medicaid, hospitals received payment of only 88 cents for every dollar spent by hospitals caring for Medicaid patients in 2020. In 2020, 62 percent of hospitals received Medicaid payments less than cost.

4) Expand scope of practice/telemedicine.

There are several additional ideas outlined in the report along with more detailed discussion of the ideas listed above. All of it can be found here.

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Economy Health Care Notable News Tax and Budget Top Issues

A decade in, LFC Medicaid report highlights program failures

Hole torn in a dollar bill with medicaid text

The following appeared in the Las Cruces Sun News on Sunday, January 22nd, 2023.

LAS CRUCES SUN-NEWS - Downtown Las Cruces Partnership

In December the Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) published a report on New Mexico’s Medicaid program. Whether by design or accident, the report happened to coincide with the 10th anniversary of New Mexico’s Medicaid expansion. Then-Gov. Susana Martinez decided to accept the “ObamaCare” expansion dollars which, at the time, was 100% federally funded.

The LFC report is full of great information, but it doesn’t attempt to assess whether Medicaid expansion was worthwhile. Unfortunately, when it comes to government programs (especially here in New Mexico) increased spending and good intentions are not often followed by thoughtful assessment of whether the spending has achieved stated goals. Even less common are analyses of whether the new program itself was cost-effective in achieving those goals.

The media covered the LFC’s report which focused mostly on difficulties the Committee’s “secret shoppers” had in making appointments with doctors for Medicaid patients. For example, the LFC found that only 15 percent were able to make an appointment with a primary care doctor. Other doctors were not accepting patients, failed to return phone calls, or were no longer at that phone number. These findings highlight an important problem with Medicaid: having “coverage” (especially from a government welfare program) doesn’t mean you have access to medical care.

Less prominent in the news reports was the fact that the LFC reported that an astonishing 47 percent of all New Mexicans are on the program and a positively mind-blowing 77 percent of births are on Medicaid.

Ample reporting has been done about New Mexico’s medical provider shortage. While there are many reasons for that shortage, our State’s massive Medicaid population and the program’s low reimbursement rates for providers are certainly factors. Any doctor will share their views on the challenges of serving large numbers of Medicaid patients.

New Mexico’s extraordinarily high number of Medicaid recipients is at least partially to blame for the State’s low workforce participation rate. The LFC itself has noted that Medicaid and other government welfare programs, “can disincentivize work through either excessive benefits or reduction of benefits as recipient wages increase.”

Furthermore, the LFC report notes that Medicaid is the largest healthcare payer in New Mexico, and the state has the largest Medicaid program per capita in the country. Between FY19 and FY23, HSD projects total Medicaid spending to increase approximately 56 percent from $5.6 billion to $8.8 billion. In other words, by next fiscal year Medicaid alone will be spending more than New Mexico’s current General Fund budget.

Sadly, the LFC did not take up a detailed discussion of health care outcomes and the impact (or lack thereof) of Medicaid expansion. The LFC did note that, “the state continues to face poor health outcomes overall.” And, even more interestingly, while providing routine medical care for the poor was a stated goal of advocates for expansion, the LFC notes that “Emergency room visits for non-urgent reasons have increased, potentially leading to worse outcomes.”

After a decade of massive federal and state spending growth on Medicaid the LFC does not point to significant positive health care outcomes from Medicaid expansion for New Mexico’s population at large. Given the incredible impact this program has on state and federal budgets, it would be nice to know whether Medicaid expansion is having a positive impact or not. The LFC didn’t even mention the lack of evidence on health outcomes much less call for such research or upbraid the legislature for failing to conduct it already.

The largest and most expensive expansion of the American welfare state in the last 50 years seems to have resulted in bigger government and more government dependency. However, here in New Mexico with the highest percentage of people on Medicaid, evidence of improved health outcomes remains elusive.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is 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

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Constitution and Criminal Justice Local Government Notable News Tax and Budget Top Issues

RGF and it’s president Paul Gessing file lawsuit against City of Albuquerque over Planned Parenthood “Donation”

Thanks to legal help from the Liberty Justice Center, a non-profit, public interest litigation center, the Rio Grande Foundation and its president Paul Gessing have filed a lawsuit against the City under New Mexico’s “anti-donation clause” over the City’s “donation” of $250,000 of our tax dollars to Planned Parenthood. You can read more about the case here.

“New Mexico’s constitution prevents politicians from using taxpayer funds like their own personal piggy banks,” says Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the Liberty Justice Center. “Albuquerque’s grant to Planned Parenthood is pure politics, and the state constitution prevents that kind of abuse of taxpayer dollars.”  

“Taxpayers should not be compelled to subsidize Planned Parenthood or any other private group,” said Gessing, who is president of the free-market Rio Grande Foundation. “The anti-donation clause of New Mexico’s constitution is a bulwark for taxpayers against politically motivated earmarks just like this one.”  

Sadly, Albuquerque’s City Council seems to have ignored New Mexico law which clearly states that “Neither the state, nor any county, school district, or municipality … shall directly or indirectly lend or pledge its credit, or make any donation to or in aid of any person, association, or public or private corporation …”

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Health Care Legislature Notable News Top Issues

Release: RGF digs into medical provider shortage in Part 1 of two part series

In a new policy brief which explores the shortage of medical providers in the State of New Mexico, the Rio Grande Foundation digs into an analysis of which areas of medical practice face the most acute shortages and compares New Mexico counties, New Mexico with its neighbors, and also looks at geographical trends regarding the availability of medical providers nationwide.

Forming part one of a two part series on the topic, the document titled, “The Existence and Extent of a Medical Provider Shortage in New Mexico” is an attempt to gain a foothold when it comes to the statistics behind the medical provider shortage.

Among the findings:

  1. New Mexico is not alone in the Southwest in having a relative shortage of medical professionals. Compared to the Northeast and Midwest, there is already a shortage of healthcare workers in states in the South and West. Interestingly, the region where doctors are paid the least in nation is the Southwest, where many older adults who require healthcare services choose to retire.
  2. Physicians in the north central part of the nation average pay of $319,000 per year. In the southeast, however, physician salaries are more than $40,000 a year less, running at around $277,000 a year. New Mexico’s average physician salary was even less, ranking third from the bottom of lowest-earning states with an average annual physician compensation rate of $261,000.

  3. Our research does indicate that New Mexico has a serious shortage of health care workers in a variety of medical fields. These especially include primary care physicians, surgeons, registered nurses, OB-GYN’s, pharmacists and EMT’s. Fortunately, the state currently appears to have an adequate number of physician assistants, dentists, and nurse practitioners.

In a follow-up report Rio Grande Foundation will provide specific ideas on how policymakers, especially those here in New Mexico, can address the State’s medical provider shortage.

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Economy Legislature Notable News Open Government Tax and Budget Top Issues Videos

MLG delays bringing state employees back to the office: RGF comments on KOAT Channel 7

In the wake of an LFC report stating that New Mexico taxpayers are spending $18 million annually on unused office space, Gov. Lujan Grisham (after the election) decided to require that all state employees return to their offices by the star of 2023.

According to news reports, however, the Gov. has rescinded that requirement. Employees will be required to return NEXT month at the start of February. This is another case of poor leadership from the Gov. COVID (and remote work) has been going on for nearly 3 years now. The Gov. and her team should have figured out who needs to be in the office 5 days a week and who doesn’t (and how to manage them effectively) by now.

Could some state buildings be shuttered and sold off? Should the locations of gov’t buildings be shifted to reduce commute times? How can we make sure remote employees are actually doing their work?

These aren’t easy questions, but they should have been answered long ago. RGF’s Paul Gessing appeared in a story on KOAT Channel 7 to discuss the issue. You can find his segment here and below and the first portion here.

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Education Notable News Oil & Gas Tax and Budget Top Issues

National Review column: Educational Improvement Is Not about Spending More Money

The following appeared in National Review’s Capital Matters on December 28, 2022.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is known as “the Nation’s Report Card.” Sadly, the most recent “report card” represented failure for many states, not the least of which is my home state of New Mexico, which came in dead-last in all categories studied: fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading and math.

Sadly, especially for New Mexico kids, the additional tax dollars being spent by the state’s education system have not moved the needle. If anything, the needle has moved in the wrong direction.

Let’s compare New Mexico with lower-spending, reform-minded states, such as Arizona and Mississippi. Arizona neighbors New Mexico and has a similar demographic profile, including large Native American communities and a large Hispanic population. Mississippi has poverty challenges similar to New Mexico’s and has also struggled with poor education outcomes for decades. A common saying in New Mexico for years was, “Thank God for Mississippi,” as it was often the only state doing worse than New Mexico on many lists of social well-being and economic outcomes.

But Arizona and Mississippi have enacted serious reforms while New Mexico has not. Using NAEP test scores, it is easy to see which states have improved their education systems and which haven’t. We’ll use fourth-grade reading scores to make the comparison. Many education analysts argue that fourth-grade reading is especially critical because up until fourth grade, much of education involves learning to read. After fourth grade, it is difficult or even impossible to succeed in school without being able to read well.

In 2005, New Mexico outperformed Mississippi on fourth-grade reading and was tied with Arizona, with a score of 207. By 2022, Arizona outperformed New Mexico 215 to 202 while Mississippi outperformed both states with a score of 216.

Neither Arizona nor Mississippi dramatically increased K–12 spending. According to data from Statista, in FY 2022 Mississippi spent $10,089 per-student, while Arizona spent $10,639. That places them as the third- and fifth-lowest-spending states in the nation. The U.S. average is $15,047.

New Mexico, on the other hand, has increased education spending over the past 15 years or so. In 2005, New Mexico spent far less than the national average and was twelfth-lowest among U.S. states. That was more than either Arizona or Mississippi, but still low.

Today, New Mexico ranks 19th among states at, considering its dismal educational record, an astonishing $15,338 per student. That is higher than the national average despite other states’ having also increased spending over those years.

What happened? Arizona and Mississippi embarked on serious (albeit different) education-policy reforms while New Mexico did relatively little other than increase spending.

Arizona has had a charter-school law since the mid 1990s and continues to see charter schools grow in terms of options and students. It is ranked as the second-best charter law in the nation, according to the Center for Education Reform.

A system of tax credits to be used for private school choice has been in place and growing since 1997, and various specialty programs as well as narrowly targeted vouchers have also made Arizona a school-choice leader. That’s even before the program of universal education savings accounts approved in early 2022 fully takes effect.

Mississippi, on the other hand, focuses less on choice (they have a small charter-school footprint). Instead, it has focused resources on improving early-childhood reading. Starting in 2013, with passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, Mississippi started to require third-grade students to demonstrate basic reading proficiency levels to progress to fourth grade. The state also focused on teaching teachers how to use phonics-based reading instruction.

New Mexico, despite having had charter schools since 1992, has not enacted much in the way of additional reforms, whether those be choice or an early reading focus. Instead, New Mexico has used resources to increase teacher pay.

It will be interesting to see if Arizona (especially with its new choice law) and Mississippi can keep or accelerate the momentum. Sadly, New Mexico is one poorly performing state that has not gotten serious about either approach. The children in my state have suffered despite a large increase in government education spending. Better results are possible without breaking the bank, as Arizona and Mississippi have proven.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation.

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Economy Legislature Notable News Oil & Gas Tax and Budget Taxes Top Issues

Published opinion piece: Use surplus strategically to solve long-term problems

The following appeared in the Santa Fe New Mexican on December 24, 2022 and in numerous other news sources.

As the State’s Permian oil production boom continues in New Mexico the budget surpluses available to legislators each session grow as well. The latest announced budget surplus is $3.6 billion which is a positively mind-blowing 43 percent. This surplus is on top of already dramatic spending growth of 30 percent during the first four years of the Lujan Grisham Administration.

More spending growth this year is to be expected, but the capacity for government to continue expanding after years of rapid growth is somewhat limited by the ability of government to manage existing resources available to it. This is not surprising since New Mexico’s state and local government is already among the very largest in the nation.

But I’m not here to rail about the size of New Mexico government (at least not this time). Rather, I’m here to remind legislators of both parties that such massive surpluses present rare opportunities to lead our State to a better future.

Gov. Lujan Grisham has already proposed rebates of $750 or $1,500 for New Mexicans depending on marital status. Rebates are a bi-partisan idea, one supported in the recent campaign by her Republican opponent Mark Ronchetti, though details differed. To be clear the Rio Grande Foundation does not oppose tax rebates if they are not an excuse to (yet again) punt on long-overdue tax reform. Returning a portion of the budget surplus is not going to move New Mexico’s economy forward and diversify it in the same way as long-overdue tax reform would.

The same can be said for an idea that often garners bipartisan support in Santa Fe: that is bolstering various permanent and “rainy day” funds. Quite honestly, New Mexico has numerous big problems facing it. There is no better time to address these problems than right now. If policymakers use the surplus to diversify and improve the State’s economy in ways that will make it more competitive with its neighbors, the well-being of future New Mexicans won’t be so contingent on the vagaries of oil and gas.

New Mexico’s litany of current economic challenges includes:

  • A low workforce participation rate that has historically lagged behind our neighbors and remains well below pre-pandemic levels and has even dropped in recent months;
  • Poverty rates that are among the very highest in the nation;
  • A medical provider shortage that, while driven in part by regulations is worsened by gross receipts taxation of medical practitioners including Medicaid services;
  • Lack of economic diversity in a state that relies heavily on oil and gas for money and government (federal, state, and local) for employment opportunities;
  • Water and other infrastructure issues.

These problems (and more) can at least partially be solved by using New Mexico’s financial largesse wisely. New Mexico policymakers have long focused on government-driven approaches to these problems. State and local government spends a very high percentage of the economy.

Majority Democrats have an opportunity to not only pump more funding into their priorities, but they could show that they are pro-business and interested in using oil and gas revenues to diversify the State economy for a time when the oil and gas industry isn’t as bullish.

Republicans, rather than leaving the bold ideas to Democrats, should offer their own serious reform ideas and bills in the upcoming session. Ideally, the minority GOP could influence Democrats toward a more pro-growth agenda. Worst case, in two years they can point to their detailed policy ideas and use them to challenge Democrats for failing to take advantage of this unique opportunity.

Regardless of your political affiliation or beliefs we all must realize that 43 percent budget surpluses don’t come around often. We can’t solve all of New Mexico’s problems even with this massive surplus, but with strategic moves like those outlined here we can certainly move the needle.

Paul Gessing is president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is 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

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Economy Notable News Public Comments and Testimony Top Issues

RGF leads coalition in opposition to proposed Biden Administration Crew Size Rule

The Rio Grande Foundation recently led a diverse coalition of 19 state policy think tanks in submitting comments in opposition to the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) proposed Train Crew Size Safety Requirements Rule (Docket Number FRA–2021–0032;RIN 2130–AC88). You can find the comments here.

As employers across the nation struggle to find enough employees, the Biden Administration wishes to impose a 2 person crew size mandate on railroads. In 2016, the FRA stated that it could not “provide reliable or conclusive statistical data to suggest whether one–person crew operations are generally safer or less safe than multiple–person crew operations.” And, in 2019, the FRA concluded that, “Accident/incident data does not support a train crew staffing regulation.”

As the letter states:

The proposed rule also ignores technological advances in rail safety made in recent years, including Positive Train Control (PTC). PTC is now operating on tens of thousands of miles of rail line across the country, tracking speed restrictions on a given portion of track, as well as signals and communications, while preventing human error. PTC’s safety advances make it unnecessary for two crew members to be present in the cab of the train.

This proposed rule fails to account for these technological innovations, as well as the safety record of many railroads, including thousands of Amtrak and commuter passenger trains that operate with only one crew member in the train cab.