New Mexico in Focus; State of the State; New Mexico State of the State Address to the 44th Legislative Session by Governor Gary Johnson

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. . . . . . Mr. Mr. President? Mr. President? Honorable justices of the

Supreme Court, members of the 44th legislature. Distinguished guests, my fellow New Mexicans. Our state constitution has set aside this time each year for your public servants to come together. Assess the condition of our state and present their findings to the citizens to whom they are accountable. In a moment I'm going to talk about things we as a state have accomplished over the last four years. Things we will need to be finishing this year. And new initiatives we need to undertake to keep pace with the times. But before I do, I want to reflect for a moment on what I believe the people of New Mexico want from those of us who serve in Santa Fe. As I traveled the state last year, talking with the people, there were three things that became clear to me. First, there is a strong agreement

that the road to New Mexico's future is the road that we are on. The people want increased accountability, lower taxes, and greater wisdom regarding the bills we passed. In the town of Locris, in ancient Greece, a man who proposed a law in the popular assembly did so on a platform with a rope around his neck. If the law passed, they removed the rope, and if it failed, they removed the platform. I bet it made those folks think twice before proposing new laws for the land. Second, New Mexicans want to see free expression of ideas, even disagreement, but they want it done in a spirit of cooperation by the executive, legislative, and judicial arms of government.

And third, they want all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to put aside our egos and our pettiness so that we can work together to do what's truly best for the people of this great state. With these observations as a backdrop, I'd like to discuss some of the things I believe are accomplishments for the people of New Mexico. Many important things have been achieved to make New Mexico a better place to live. Taxes were lowered by $100 million. We're now out from under 13 of 14 provisions of the Duran consent decree. That means that the federal government will be stepping away from our prisons, and Medicaid has been saved.

The new managed care program is working, and it offers more and better services to New Mexicans who need medical care assistance. Other programs that were initiated need to be finished. We need to complete the massive 500 miles of new highway program. When completed, many more New Mexican communities will be able to grow and expand. Our new welfare program is on target, but it does need some minor adjustments to make it work as good as it should. This also needs to be addressed. The Hobbes Prison is 100 % online. The Santa Rosa Prison will be accepting prisoners this month. We now have a place to put criminals behind bars instead of releasing them because there's no place to house them. We have an acting chief information officer,

but this is not a cabinet position. Nor is such a position required by law in our state. With the rapid expansion of computers and other communication technologies, we need to make this a required position with cabinet accountability. As to new things that need to be done, we must look at each one very carefully. We need to continue to prioritize our want list so that we do not increase the budget. We must be willing to bypass some possibly good ideas to keep New Mexico fiscally sound. We must be mature enough to realize we can't have everything that we want. So we must prioritize and make sure we take care of the most important things. Some wit once

said, always put off until tomorrow, that's that which shouldn't be done at all. I think there's some wisdom hidden in that remark. Now here's some of the things I believe we should concentrate on during 1999. In the case of crime, not only do we need to eliminate our current good time policy and make sure most violent criminals stay behind bars for at least 85 % of their sentence, but we need to streamline the death penalty appeals so that justice can be served swiftly and surely. Punishment is a deterrent to crime if the punishment is swift and sure. We need to crack down on uninsured motorists. At

least three things should happen here. One is limit uninsured motorist ability to collect damages. Two, change the law so insurance companies can offer policy limits which will lower the cost of auto insurance. California has minimum policy limits of $15 ,000. New Mexico has $25 ,000 limits. California's average insurance costs have been dropping since reforms were enacted in 1997. And three, fund a motor vehicle division whose sole function is to enforce the law. And we need to get even tougher with individuals who are unwilling to drink responsibly, but are willing to risk their life and the lives of others while driving under the influence. On a different note, New Mexico is one of the most

beautiful states in the nation. I'd like all of us to become more aware of the first visual impression people receive when they come to our state, whether they're looking for a place to set up a new business or searching for a vacation spot, appearance matters, litter free roads and highways matter. We will step up our efforts to prevent and clean up litter throughout the land of Enchantment. My plan calls for the use of state of art, state of the art machinery, a cutting edge public awareness campaign, an increased inmate labor force, and enforcement of penalties for those who litter. We will keep New Mexico beautiful. Cleaning up New Mexico will continue to be a personal priority and a priority of this administration. The last two things I want to talk about before addressing education initiatives

are both high priorities for this administration. First, I want to strive to achieve a $100 million personal income tax reduction over the next three years. Second, I've talked about how important it is to set priorities for new programs. I want to suggest it is just as important to set priorities for eliminating rules and regulations, boards and commissions, programs and agencies. To that end, I'm proposing a sunset commission. Review every rule and regulation, every board and commission, and every program and agency for consideration for elimination. Every year,

every year we pass more and more things into law, but it is rare that we ever clean up the books and subtract anything. Thomas Jefferson once said, as government grows, freedom recedes. The truth of these words is self -evident. Therefore, in the name of greater freedom for New Mexicans, it is incumbent upon us to eliminate laws and programs that are no longer needed. Education continues to be my top priority, so at this time I'd like to address some of our educational needs. In H .G. Wells' outline of history, he said, human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. I believe this quote is one of the clearest statements ever made about the importance of

education. I was very pleased a month ago when Senator Aragon announced that education was going to be his top priority as well. I believe the legislature and I can work together to really start moving New Mexico up from the low rankings it now has. Our young people deserve more. They deserve the best we can give them. Here are eight educational initiatives I'd like to see us work on together. First, let's really consider a school voucher program. By bringing... By bringing competition for the educational dollar into the marketplace, I believe education will begin to rapidly improve. It certainly works

with higher education. Why not have New Mexico attract educational entrepreneurs from all over the country ready to prove that there is a better way? We would lead the country in educational improvement with the simple passage of a voucher bill. A good example of how well competition works is the U .S. Postal Service. When the Postal Service had to contend with FedEx and United Parcel Service, they suddenly got competitive. The U .S. Postal Service is now faster and more efficient than it ever was. In fact, it often outperforms its competitors. Second, with respect to public school capital outlay, we need to repeal Little Davis Bacon. This law makes every

kind of physical improvement to the schools cost about 15 % more than it would without this law. It's not just sensible to throw educational dollars away because of a law that none of our surrounding states have to contend with. All of our surrounding states are building six schools instead of five. Third, I'd like to see us establish more charter schools. Such schools have great latitude in designing programs that best suit the students attending their school. Fourth, we need to ensure a minimum level of teaching competence that's acceptable for our schools. We should also consider various kinds of alternative certification. There are many people with solid professional experience who could make great contributions to our schools but do not have degrees in education. For

example, a retired PhD in physics from Los Alamos could not teach a basic science course in our middle schools. A certified public accountant couldn't teach a business class in our high schools. Nor could a medical doctor specializing in internal medicine teach a ninth grade health course. Wouldn't it be great to have one of these people as a teacher? Fifth, we should test every child every year so that we can better evaluate which programs and styles of teaching are most effective. It would also allow us to quickly see which young people need more or a different kind of help. Sixth, we should take it upon ourselves to make sure that all children are ready to read by the third grade. First. First, second and third grade testing is a

critical component of this goal. Simply put, if you're not reading by the end of the third grade, you don't go to the fourth grade. Seventh along the same lines, we should bring additional accountability to the schools themselves by improving our methods of evaluating and ranking our schools. An eighth prior to 1958, public education in New Mexico was a responsibility of the governor. The governor appointed the members of the state school board and the governor was also an ex officio member of the board. As such, the governor was accountable to the people of New Mexico for public education. Today, the state school board is autonomous and has state level responsibility for all public education. It's true that the board members are elected by the people, but it's also true that it is quite difficult for the voters to really know much about those who run the state school

board. Therefore, I believe it's critical to our overall program of improving education in New Mexico to establish a cabinet position for the Secretary of Education. In addition, I'd like to abolish the state school board, or make it so the governor appoints the state school board members. I thank you for your patience in listening to my words. I ask for all men and women of good will to work with the legislature and my administration to make this an even greater state. In closing, I find no better statement of what constitutes good government than the words of Ezra Taft Benson.

He was in the Eisenhower cabinet. He said since God created man with certain inalienable rights and man in turn created government to help secure those rights, it follows that man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around. Thank you very much. That's my dream for New Mexico. May God bless our state and all of us who live here

and all of us work together to ensure a rich quality of life for ourselves and our children. Thank you very, very much. There you have it, the governor Gary Johnson addressing the joint session of the House and Senate at the beginning of the long 1999 legislative session. And first of all, why is this a long legislative session? Well, we have a structure in New Mexico where the legislature meets every other year, either in a 30 -day session or in a 60 -day session. In the 30 -day sessions, we're supposed to consider only budgetary issues and any other issue that the governor would put on his call. In the long session, the 60 -day session, anything can be on the agenda. I see. So this year because it isn't an odd numbered session, we have odd

year. Right. We have a 60 -day long session. And everything's up for grabs. So any comments? What did you think about the tone of his speech? Any surprises? Anybody want to take that one? This was a 15 -minute speech. It seemed to go very fast. It was quite brief. There wasn't too much in it that we hadn't heard before. As a dream for the state, it seemed to me fairly routine. If part of his dream is cleaning up later on the highways. I was surprised about that. You know, I was. He talked about a Sunset Commission to review existing programs. I would suggest that we have a Sunset Commission to review existing programs. It's called the legislature and the budget process. That's something that pops up in various political speeches from time to time. His comments on education are things that pretty much we have heard before, maybe in a little bit more detail. Probably the proposal to have every student in New Mexico read by grade three, or they don't pass, will be popular.

People will go on to that. I'll go ahead. I think in many respects, this did come across a little bit as if it was state of the state light. He began his remarks by putting a spin on them by saying that he'd been out amongst the people, and he felt confident that he had public support for what he was proposing. And one might have thought from that that he was going to propose perhaps an ambitious agenda to deal with some of the pressing problems facing the state. Problems relating to economic development are ranking consistently around 49th and income near the top in poverty. The fact that we have are the state that has the largest number of people without health insurance coverage. And instead, other than his education proposals, which it would be good to perhaps get into later in some detail, there wasn't very much in the speech. I mean, when he talked about his accomplishments, two of the six accomplishments had to do with prisons. And the first thing

that he mentioned as a new position before he got to his education priority was in fact crime. And that's kind of a little bit about outdated because we're already in a circumstance in which crime rates are actually falling in the state as they are throughout the country. And it seems to me that a lot of us are looking for more than simply building more prisons in terms of a future for New Mexico. I was very surprised that he did not talk more about economic development and the economy of this state at a time when the state gets a big slug of its revenues from oil and gas royalties. And as we all know, the oil and gas business is declining and prices are very low and seem headed to stay that way for many years to come, which is going to cut the revenue from that source. The government is proposing a tax cut and he really has very little to say about it. And he really has very little to say about creating jobs and bringing high -priced jobs. He proposes the end of Davis, Little Davis Bacon, which automatically,

for him to his figures, gives everybody who builds schools of 15 % pay cut, lowering wages at a time when, as Max says, the state was already quite poor. And I was just surprised at a lack of grappling with economic development and growth issues. Well, I was just surprised at the tone, I think, that listening to Raymond Sanchez earlier, and he talked about the spirit of cooperation. He touched a little bit on that, but do you expect that there is going to be what people described in the 1997 legislative session that it was, I think it was dubbed the session from Hell because of the partisan... Well, you know, the governor was clearly, I thought, friendly in his demeanor and approach. And he did actually have a nice thing to say about one of the people with whom he contests a lot Senate leader, Manierega. Raymond was more friendly, but what I was going to say, Raymond, in fact, did seem like he was more searching for ways to

find cooperation. And what I don't find in here is, is any indication that the governor is, in fact, searching for ways to find cooperation. He didn't, for example, on the Sunset Commission say something like, why don't we work together, governor and legislature to solve this problem that he says, perhaps there's too many boards and commissions. And I think there might be a certain amount of audience for that. But instead of his solution is to propose yet another commission. I didn't hear the Sunset Commission. I didn't hear the word bipartisan once in this speech. No. You know, a coming together of both parties. He didn't really talk like that. Well, he did say he wanted more tranquility and less greed. That he did mention. Well, and in many respects, I mean, what's interesting about the speech is much more, I think, what is not in it than what, in fact, is in it. Although the education pieces are interesting. I mean, he identified eight goals. And I would suggest that the first two goals are fairly close to non -starters with the legislature. First, he mentioned school vouchers, and then he

mentioned repealing little Davis Bacon. And we need to talk about that for just a minute, because a lot of people have no idea what he's talking about what that is. And that's essentially a provision that requires a certain standard of what's called prevailing wages to be paid to construction workers. And you're talking about little Davis Bacon. Yes. And then he says it's going to save us 15%. In fact, the cost of school construction or other state government construction that's attributable to labor costs is, in fact, less than 50 % of the total construction. So if he says it's going to save us 15 % of the total cost, then he's assuming we're going to get at least a 30 % cut in what we pay construction workers. And construction workers are not amongst the highly paid people. Little Davis Bacon does require them to get a fairly decent way. It guarantees union wages, right? But to reduce someone from being paid

$15 an hour to $10 an hour is not a good way to deal with low wages in New Mexico. It perpetuates our low wages. It's also not a good way to get superior construction in our schools. Well, do you know how the other parties feel about it? Do you know how Raymond and Raymond Sanchez or Manietta go and feel about it? I would think, as I said, I think his first two proposals are essentially non -starters. And I can't imagine the democratic majorities in either house letting repeal of Little Davis Bacon go anywhere. It runs against too many of their constituents or low income people. And to take money out of the hands of low income people to put it into the public schools isn't, you know, I mean, it is a little bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul. And there's much better things that we could do. I mean, we have, for example, a huge amounts of corporate welfare that go on in this state. It's time magazine talked about nationally just a few months ago. And what we have done with industrial revenue bonds in this state offers an opportunity to save much more money. And we are around 49 in the states in terms of income

levels and economy. But we are first, not per capita, but we are first in raw dollars in industrial revenue bonds that have been issued. I want to introduce you again, just in case folks are just joining us. This is Steve Laurence's editor of Crosswinds Weekly. And also joining us is Max Bartlett, executive director of Revisioning New Mexico. Max also wanted to ask you, what is the agenda of Revisioning New Mexico? Why do you keep such a close tab on the legislature? Well, the interest of Revisioning New Mexico is to enable folks from low and average levels of income, who are often cut out of the power systems in this country, economic, political, to have a way of having our voices heard as well. And so we work through a number of programs throughout all parts of the state to do that. From things to providing lobbying, training for folks to actually working on certain issue areas. And the issue areas that we

are primarily working on are economic development and tax issues, health and welfare issues, campaign finance reform, environmental justice issues. Steve, I also want to ask you, you keep a close tab on the legislature's what thread. Tell me a little bit about Crosswinds and your approach to covering the legislature. Well, our approach is to concentrate mainly on issues. Crosswinds circulates throughout Albuquerque and Santa Fe, more than 650 locations every week or out every Thursday. And we emphasize issues, political issues, environmental issues, consumer issues. It's a newspaper that's aimed at intelligent adults who we feel are interested in these sorts of things. So what we'll do through the session is concentrate on some of these issues and try to explicate them better for our readers. After listening to the governor speak to any issues that come to mind that you think you'll be focusing on? Well, we are going to do, we will concentrate on economic growth. There will be several things that he didn't talk about at all, deregulation of public utilities, for example, which is sort of waiting in the wings out there for

a court decision toward the end of the session, which is going to affect the pocketbook of everyone who pays an electric bill. I want to just back to education for just a second. The collective bargaining agreement with state employees is expiring this year. It expires in July unless the legislature and the governor renew it. So the governor is not only proposing, he is not only advocating a pay cut for construction workers in schools, but also to eliminate teachers' ability to collect a bargain as well, which would eliminate their leverage in terms of bargaining and possibly reduce the result in a pay cut as well. That's liable to be something we're going to be paying attention to. Do you expect that to be a hot debate this year? Well, it's going to be a hot debate and the legislature will probably vote to renew the collective bargaining agreement and the governor has said flat out that he's going to veto it. He did last year. So the collective bargaining, well, I'm pretty comfortable in predicting it will die. Max, that's something that you're also looking at. Well, yes, it is an issue of very concern to ours and it's difficult. I mean, just as I said, it's difficult to see where school vouchers or repealing little Davis Bacon were going to wear because it's hard to see

the legislature taking action. It's also hard to see the governor in fact not exercising his threat to you. You don't think they take those issues seriously? Is that what you're saying? Oh, it's not that they don't take them seriously. I think they understand them fairly well. If you take school vouchers, for example, we spend, well, we spend more than this, but let's say we spend $1 billion a year on the public schools here. It's where we invest the largest amount of our money. If you take that billion dollars and you take the school kids who are in the current school system and you start providing vouchers to students who are in private schools, the very first thing you have to deal with are those several tens of thousands of schools who are currently in private schools who would start getting those vouchers. So the net effect of this is before anything else happens, is you pull a significant chunk of money out of that pot that's going to our public schools. And I think a lot of us feel that the way to build excellence in education in the public school system, which has been part and parcel of our democracy since at least Thomas Jefferson, whom he quoted so favorably in

one case and who felt it was more important Jefferson did to be labeled on his tombstone as founder of the University of Virginia than as president of the United States. He considered that a bigger accomplishment. To suggest that the first thing you're going to do to the public schools is withdraw a huge amount of money from them to make them better, you know, is I think misconstrued and I think most people who've looked at it are. Interestingly, there's no indication around the country from many people who have explored the voucher system in experimental ways that it's actually produced any positive result. I mean, there are some ways of doing competition within the public school system so that you can have schools competing with one another. And that seems to make a lot of sense. But the notion that we're somehow going to invest twice in infrastructure and build new school plans and all the money that that takes to improve education is it seems to be wrong headed.

Many of his other programs perhaps point in some positive ways to go. Well, let me ask you the question about the vouchers. Why then do you think that he is pushing it so strongly? He has been for many years from what I understand. Why does he see this as a positive thing? Well, I think it has to do with his philosophical position. I mean, he seems to come from what is generally considered a rather strong libertarian background that sees government as essentially a bad thing, not a good thing. He's very clear on wanting to privatize as much government service as possible. And I think he has it in the back of his mind that a voucher system would do that. It would take public money and put it into private institutions. There's no indication, by the way, that any of the private schools in this state are equipped to handle any kind of an influx of students from any source. I mean, most of them are operating to capacity. And it's not certainly not clear to me how you improve public education by walking away from it or really by ignoring it. The other thing the governor didn't mention in this speech is that he's

apparently holding for hostage a 1 .3... The school construction budget, which is 1 .3 billion? 1 .3 billion, yes. He has said that if he can't repeal a little Davis -Bacon, he's going to do something unmentionable with that, you know, perhaps not approve it or cut it back or not approve as much money. There's a crying need in this state for new public school construction. I mean, literally, roofs are leaking and plumbing is leaking and wiring is outdated. And this is a crying need and it would seem to me that a governor who was running on an education platform would be extremely concerned to do as much as possible to improve the physical plan of our public schools. And also the situation now with teacher pay raises is that going to come back up this year, too? Well, it comes up essentially every year. I mean, there was a time, not in the two distant past, when New Mexico paid its teachers around average for the 50 states. We were 24th, 25th, as a matter of fact, I remember former governor Bruce King mentioning that when

he left office, not his last time, but the time before that, that's about where teacher salaries were. And he was rather shocked to find that they had moved down into the low 40s since it. So we are capable of doing this. And there's a lot that needs to be done in the public schools that isn't going to be solved just with money. I mean, if you look at the dropout problem that we have here in Albuquerque alone, it's a criminal situation that this should go on. We're talking about one out of every three students in the city of Albuquerque who starts high school does not finish high school. And we need to address that. I mean, it's as big a crisis as when we thought we were losing Portland Air Force Base. And we need to address it in that kind of a mode. But you're not going to address it, I think Steve is right, by not spending money to build new schools or repair old ones. You're not going to be able to address it by a voucher system, the immediate effect of which is to withdraw money from the schools. Nor are you going to get anywhere in terms of the little Davis -Bacon like. The charter schools that he mentioned is his third point does, I think, offer a way to get there.

And there are some other circumstances as well. And what most people say really needs to be done is to enhance the community participation in the schools and to have better parent teacher and parent teacher student communication. And there are ways to do that. There's some innovative things that have happened in some school districts in Texas and other places that we could look at and model to try to do that. But it takes public officials who are willing to get their hands dirty, who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work and get down in the nitty -gritty, mushy stuff of government, not stand aside from it. And I guess my biggest concern with our current governor is that he seems like he can sort of do that. That he can stand above the fray, above the contest, make pronouncements, but not get down into the nitty -gritty where the work is done. I mean, there are some imaginative education programs, some going on already. There's a Bernalio tutorial program in Bernalio County, which is privately funded and that pays

public school teachers to stay after class and give remedial education to students that's very, very successful. Dropout rates are dropping. So the other thing is that you talk to teachers about what they need, what they would like to see as a major improvement. They talk about class size. I think that's one of the things that private schools have going for them. It's small class sizes. And I didn't hear anything from the governor, and I don't hear too much being talked about, programs to reduce class size and to make education more individual. If he's counting on every third grader being able to read by the time he or she is ready to graduate, that's going to mean reducing, it's going to mean more individual attention. He wasn't very specific about how that would come about, but I think teachers would agree that that's the way you improve education is smaller classes, individual attention, certainly not by walking away from the public school system. Well, I think one important thing that I see or positive thing that I see, and this is that he did talk about education. And so we've spent quite a bit of time talking about education, whether his priorities

are going to work or not. I don't know at this point whether that matters. I think that public dialogue is going to help move education along. Don't you agree with that? Oh, I think that's clearly the case. And I think the fact that Senator Erragone thinks education is the top priority that Governor Johnson thinks education is the top priority, that if you go out and talk to most voters in polls, they indicated that they thought education was the top priority. I think that's all to the good. And to him to set out his ideas is also, I think, all to the good. The question is, how are we going to move from general proposals regardless of whoever they may be to real workable solutions? And I just might add, I mean, I happen to have my younger son is in the third grade in the Abokirku Public Schools, and he has been having difficulty reading. And I'm not sure that the best circumstances for him is to say that if he doesn't read by the end of this year, he has to repeat the third grade.

I think particularly in elementary school, the notion of social promotions were developed some number of years ago, because it, in fact, did make some sense. It would stay with your peer group. And I would argue that the reason he's not reading is not because he's a bad student. It's not because he doesn't try. He's in the middle of learning cursive writing. He's trying very hard at that. But he's having some difficulties with reading that a couple of very good teachers have still not been able to work out exactly where the problem is coming from. But the solution is more attention to the problem, not saying, oh, well, if you don't read by the end of the third grade, do the grade over again. That is kind of interesting. I mean, who gets punished if they can't read by the third grade? Really the student, not the teachers of the school. Yeah, it's a little bit of a team life. It's a little bit of the blaming the victim. Yeah, right. And it just, it happens to touch people. I really noticed that. Charter schools seem to be a big buzzword in the legislature, even with the governor. We have five charter schools in this state. And I'm not aware of what they are exactly doing. I

know a couple of the legislators on education committees have said, let's look at the charter schools we've got and see what they're doing. I mean, ideally a charter school would be set up with very specific purposes. I mean, that's the framework of it. There is some control over these schools. And they have to come up with very specific purposes. They could be, they could concentrate on science. They could concentrate on computers. They could concentrate on individual areas of science and seek to teach students in those areas. And that might work out. The governor seems to be. Alternative schools. That's right. Or are carefully focused schools. You know, maybe there would be remedial reading charter schools. They can be anything. And as Max said, they do require more parent involvement, which is generally agreed to be a positive thing. So I would look for some progress in the legislature in that area. In that area. Around the charter school area. And if you look around the country, you do find innovative programs that are really indicating that they're working to solve

specific problems. So in many respects, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We have to identify clearly what the problem is and decide to address it. And you know, I mean, that's one thing it does seem like the Albuquerque Public Schools have begun to move towards taking the dropout problem seriously. I mean, now at least they have a figure that they can put to it. A year and two ago, they couldn't even tell us precisely how many people were doing. Well, that is a very positive thing because in Louisiana, where I moved from, the charter school amendment did not get very far. None of the legislatures in the, even the governor didn't want charter schools. I don't know, they were afraid of something. So it's a very positive thing that here. Well, and one of the legislators in the State House of Representatives, Rick Miara, who's been addressing this issue a lot, has suggested that perhaps it is time to expand, perhaps even significantly, the number of charter schools we have. Because it does give us an opportunity to test these new programs and to see how they actually work out over time. And I don't think anyone would disagree with the governor that we don't want more accountability, that we don't want

to have ways of evaluating better the performances of teachers, schools, and students. And there is, I mean, he addresses one problem. I'm not sure that he's got the right solution to it, but there is a certain amount of problem with lack of a citizen knowing who to hold accountable for the schools. Because if you go to the public school system, what they tell you is, well, the legislature appropriates the money. If you go to the legislature, they say, well, we appropriate enough money. It's the school districts that implement the programs. And you do have a certain sense that you get a little bit of a run -around there. And so, in that sense, the fact that he is willing to step forward and say, I would take this accountability, hold me responsible. I think that's an admirable approach. Unfortunately, the seven proposals that come before there don't lend me to have a lot of confidence that he's entirely on the right track on how to get us there. Well, we've talked a lot about education. Did you want to make more comment about education? I was just thinking about accountability. The notion of having local school districts with parent

participation was to increase accountability at a local level. It seems to me that to pull back and put that accountability in the state house is not the direction that we've been going. I mean, parents, at least, they can have PTAs. They know where to go to and their local districts to say what's going on in my schools. Once they start having to call the governor's office, I think that's distancing it in some way. Well, let's move on and talk about tax cuts. He talked about what was it a $100 million personal income tax? Yes, actually, he didn't talk very much about that. I was expecting a lot. I was really eager waiting for the details. And a 100 million personal income tax implemented over three years. Now, that's interesting because one of the things that people with long memories are remembering is when we had the Big Mac tax cut nearly 20 years ago because we were having what looked like a really good budget surplus that year. As $160 million this year, it looks very encouraging. And it

was only a couple years after that, that the bottom dropped out of the oil and gas market. And we hit 1983 and all of a sudden the state was in dire financial need. So I think the idea of looking at things in which you do the stages over time is interesting. But we do have a tax system that is in its overall impact on our public regressive. That is to say, it takes more from low income people as a percentage of their income than it does from high income people. And doing a $100 million cut in the personal income tax as a governor proposes, unfortunately, will only increase the regressivity of the system. So one proposal that I've also heard is floating around is to remove the sales tax, in New Mexico, from the sale of food. And that also would be about a $100 million buy. And it wouldn't have the regressivity problems. In either case, though, I think we do

have to watch very closely where we think revenues are going next year and the year after that. Because we don't want to put ourselves in a situation where we cut taxes down as we did 20 years ago. And then, literally, have to raise them a year or two later to keep the bare minimum programs of government running. Because if you talk to businesses about relocating or developing business, what they say is the most important thing to them about taxes is that they be stable, so that they are predictable, so that they know what to count on in the future. And you don't want that going up and down. That's one of the other things about agress receipts taxes. It's really very economically. It's subject to a lot of fluctuations. You don't have to look back 20 years to find governments that got in trouble. The city of Albuquerque just got in trouble in the last two years as the Chavez administration exited. They simply underestimated what was going to have or overestimated the money they were going to get from their share of the gross receipts tax. The economy dropped. The gross receipts tax revenue dropped. And all of a sudden, everybody is saying we're going to have to cut back city services.

I mean, this has happened in the last 12 months. With oil revenue dropping, with the economy slowing. The economy of this state have been perking along quite well, mainly because of the intel and intel construction and that sort of thing. But now that's not happening anymore. Clearly, we can't count on gambling revenues over a longer period of time. And I agree with Max. I think we really have to be very careful, especially in a state that's as poor as this, of looking at tax cuts and how we are going to tax them. This regressivity issue is pretty important. When you attack a 5 % sales tax onto everything, that means that if I'm earning $100 ,000 a year, I pay the 5%. If I'm earning $10 ,000 a year, I'm paying the same 5%. Clearly, that 5 % is a much bigger hit on poorer people than it is on rich people. And that's what Max was saying as well. And it seems to me that if we're looking for tax equity and ways to be fair

in terms of tax cuts, you would want to go after those sales tax kinds of cuts. The other thing that no one is talking about is property taxes. Property taxes have been traditionally very low in this state. It takes a certain amount of political courage to propose that we rejigger the property tax scheme. But it seems about time that somebody started looking at that as well. Do you think that the governor's tax cut is going to move through the legislature this year? Well, it wouldn't surprise me to see some form of tax cut. I would just hope that people do not look at the $160 million and decide that we should spend it all this year and have nothing left to cover contingencies next year. And there are a number of other issues that are out there on the legislative agenda that the governor didn't even begin to touch on that are important. The tobacco settlement that is coming in,

campaign finance reform, issues around... There's an awful lot of healthcare issues that are percolating and... Single payer health plan? Single payer health plan, the fact that in developmental disabilities, we have a waiting list to, I believe, it's nearly 1 ,000 people who could be covered almost immediately, three quarters of the cost of it being picked up by the federal government if the state would simply put in its one -quarter matching share. He's going to be in court over that one, it looks like. Yeah, he'll get us out of the Duran consent decree and right into another one. There's a lawsuit, right? Yes, there is. There is. Being filed by disabled persons because the state's not holding up its end. Along health services, he's talking about having saved Medicare and that services were improving. I would challenge him to go out and to the Medicaid service agencies and find people who are happy with Medicaid in the state. I don't think there are too many of them, but healthcare, obviously, is a hot issue. And he didn't say anything about campaign finance reform, which actually didn't surprise me. Did you expect him

to? Because he said publicly that if any kind of campaign finance reform law had been an effect, he wouldn't have been able to run because he uses so much of his own money for it. And most campaign finance proposals are aimed at lowering the total amount of spending on campaigns and putting some sort of reasonable limits on this. So you don't have as filial expense $6 million, just something that I remember correctly on a congressional campaign. Things are so out of whack that it becomes a person who can buy the most TV times frequently that wins these elections. It would be nice to see some proposals from the legislature to try to even that out so that you don't have to be a rich individual in order to run for office successfully. Well, and then point of fact there is such a proposal, a clean money campaign finance reform that senators Richard Romero and D .D. Feldman are planning to introduce, that would do very much that and is designed in a way that it meets the US Supreme Court constitutionality test that were developed in the Buckley versus Baleo decision. And what it does very simply is that it says for candidates who agree to spending camps,

who agree to not take private money and who meet certain qualification requirements that they would receive in a fixed and equal amount of money from a publicly financed fund to run their office if they agree not to take any special money at all. And it's a voluntary system. So you can either do that or you can do what the governor and Phil Maloof chose to do or you can do the other standard way of going to big money donations and asking for contributions. But it does permit ordinary citizens who don't want to play the big money game or who don't have personal wealth to actually get into the table and run. Well Max, I know that that is a very big issue for revision in New Mexico. If we don't have campaign finance reform, how does New Mexico, what is the impact to New Mexico? Why should we even care about? Well, I think it impacts on almost every issue. I mean, it was very clear some years ago in trying to propose a major healthcare reform issue that as soon as it was on the table, those private interests who already were major donors to the political system had their opinions listened to very

closely and other people didn't. Many people say it's the reform that makes all other reforms possible. Because regardless of whether you're concerned about toxic pollution and environmental issues, regardless of whether you're concerned about healthcare, business development, economic development, everything else, as long as we have a system now where it's directly analogous to right before the court trial, people come up and give tips to the judges or right before the World Series baseball game, each team goes down and gives donations to the umpires. I mean, you know, that would seem reprehensible. But that's basically for our system of making laws what we do. Politicians are really forced to sell themselves to the highest bidders. And it's the only way to raise the amounts of money that they need to run successfully these days. Well, we're almost out of time. Any final words on the governor's speech? Two or three words were about 30 seconds. Well, I think we're in for another interesting legislative session and it will be interesting to see the state needs addressed to education. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I just like to say it doesn't seem to me that this legislature is structured for thoughtful lawmaking and I think that's regrettable at this point. All right. Thank you both for joining us. Thank you. And that's all the time we have. Join us this Friday for the Democrats' response to the governor's address in an interview with former governor Bruce King. Until then, thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank

you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Yeah. She got a lot of footage of this guy fishing, huh? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. It's close to me. Thank you very

much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank

you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank

you very much. Thank you very much. Thank

you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.