Report from Santa Fe; Joseph Carraro

A report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education. For bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-T-E-C-H. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to welcome you to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Senator Joe Carrero, a Republican from Brunelio in San DeVal County, but more specifically representing... The west side of Albuquerque in Rio Rancho. And we have a lot to talk about today. I'm very glad you took the time to be with us. You certainly were a dominant force in this last session, so I'd like to talk about the last legislature. And how is it different under the new leadership? Yeah, it is different, of course. Leadership of the Senate was very, very different because we had Manny Aragon there for years, who was an extremely great floor leader who had all different kinds of capabilities to

debate and whatever. And with him gone, we really don't have. It's not that he's exciting. I found myself just debating with myself most of the time, but certainly Manny is missed and there's a difference. It seems to be that the governor has more influence in the Senate than I would like and many other Republicans and Democrats would like. I think that he certainly is influencing the legislature. And it's unfortunate because we need to be the appropriating body and we need to be distinguished, I think, from the administration. And unfortunately, I think he's got more influence than a governor should. And how did that play out in terms of getting his agenda accomplished this session and the Republican, since you're one of the most articulate Republican spokespeople, how did the Republican agenda fare? Well, the Republican agenda that agreed with the governor's agenda fare very well. But unfortunately, the rest of it didn't do so good. For example, I passed a number of really good bills that got through the Senate and went over to the House.

One in particular was a Senate Bill 410 that just talked about having kids learn about the effects of tobacco, illegal drugs, and alcohol on themselves as well as society. Talking about how that behavior affects society as well. And really geared toward what grade level they're in and bringing advocates from mad and other groups in to talk about the effects. And the bill passed, I think the past almost unanimously and the Senate passed unanimously in the House. Great debate. I mean, had people with the public department of education and really great issues brought up and saw that we need to go somewhere other than just punishment. As I was always advocating, put these people away and keep them away until they sober up kind of thing, keep them out of, so we're kept out of harm's way. But then I thought, well, we need to go look at the other end of the spectrum. We need to teach the kids. So the kids go home and talk to their parents about, hey, dad, how come you smoke and how come you drink and how come you smoke and drink and when you're driving kind of thing. And we thought that this would be a great idea. Well, the first bill, if you noticed, was vetoed, was Senate bill 410, that particular

bill. So by my talking out about, you know, are we ready for free K? Should we look at, you know, doing that before we even have full day kindergarten in effect because there's not enough schools and there's not enough teachers when I complained about having a tax cut when we still had maybe a Republican complained about a tax cut. But talking about, we still have so many needs to be made in the state if we, and the tax cut was really going to be a tax increase, as a matter of fact, I told the government of Richardson in the private conversation that, you know, with his last tax cut we had, we actually had an increase of $174 million going into state government. I told him that my constituents can't afford another tax cut. So, but those sort of comments have caused, caused me to, I guess, lose my, my, my, my fair statute. The most favored nation status with the governor and he, he vetoed that first bill and I didn't see any reason, also took away some of my capital outlay. So it's kind of was very punitive as well. So it was difficult.

So the Republicans didn't, didn't fare as well unless, unless you agree with the governor all the time, you're not going to fare very well. You, one of the other issues that I've been so pleased that you've done so much work with is about our permanent fund structures. Yes. I know that you were in some ways a disciple of the famous Senator Eddie Lopez who was in a financial genius. Absolutely. And so tell me about your work in the permanent funds and how did they fare in this atmosphere? Well, first of all, those of us that are serving today shouldn't get any credit at all for what's, what's happened with the permanent funds. Those folks way back when had the insight and the courage to put together those permanent funds that now fund so much of state government, what an idea, but it was difficult to pass back then. So now we see the fruits of the permanent fund. Now over the past few years, the corpus of the Furniture Funds, the investments made by the permanent fund are a roading away. We had a constitutional amendment that passed that's going to increase the salaries of teachers and do other things in education, but clearly is going to affect permanent funds in down

years, in years when the market is not performing. We decided, I was chairman of the permanent fund oversight committee this past year and we decided to go ahead and pass some legislation that kind of opened it up, that opened up the investment so they were able to compete with other funds around the country. So in a down market, so that they'd be able to actually not lose as much, but even possibly make some money as well. And to look at procurement and other areas that, so they're able to hire investment managers easier and things of that nature. So we passed the legislation, we were excited about it. We think the permanent funds are terrific for a state. We certainly, I recognize what's happened in the past, but want to make sure we keep the impact for the future of those funds. And then we just found out yesterday I'm no longer chairman of that committee. I was taken off and another senator who has more favorable, I guess, favorite nation status with the governor was appointed chairman. We need to always watch those permanent funds.

We need to see how the investments occur. We've had problems with the PERA and the ERA and whatever. Those folks are members of that committee. We ask them how we can help them, what the problems are, see if we can come up with some solutions. So it's a really important committee and I want to hope the whole legislature and certainly the taxpayers out there need to make sure that they impress upon their legislative representatives and senators, that they keep an eye on the permanent funds, because that was something like I said, it's such a good idea that people like Senator Lopez and others that really pushed forward and maintained their integrity and make sure that's not lost now in the future just because we decide to spend more than we're bringing in. And what I want our viewers to remember is that New Mexico is in such a blessed condition in terms of our permanent funds, because we have how many billion is it? 17 billion. Yeah, which puts us ahead of many nations. Absolutely. And so that we have this and that we're one of the only two states that don't operate

at a deficit ourselves and is it Wyoming? Yes. Yeah, that no one should miss with this. We are just blessed and it saves us taxpayers so much money. But it takes some courage and it takes some restraint to maintain a permanent fund and to also build it up. The whole idea behind the permanent fund is to continue having to build because there's going to be more and more of a population in New Mexico. It's going to be more and more needs and as time goes on, we're going to need more and more money and revenue. So once we stop the building of the permanent fund, then we're kind of limited to a certain amount of money that we can spend and I think we need to continue building it. Just one other financial note. One of the shocking things this session was the fact that the educational retirement fund we had to subsidize it with $200 million of taxpayer dollars. Could you explain just in brief about that and what can be done? Some people said it was mismanaged but something you had to do with the market, the stock

work, and Ron also that the contributions maybe from the educational employees are not the same as the contributions made by the public employees. It should be kind of the same across the board, I think. And so when we look at that, there's a number of different things that happen that all of a sudden a down market at one point, I think kind of crippled the fund. What it got out of hand was one of these things that I think if someone would have noticed, if somebody would have oversight over if the legislature was involved maybe five years ago, even five, six years ago, we wouldn't have the problems we have today. Now we're dipping into our general fund to come up with monies to take care of that, which means that monies have to come from or out of education, they have to come out of health care, they have to come out of somewhere else to go ahead and help make this fund once again solve it. Health care, you said it, I'm asking it. What can be done? You had many bills that addressed some of the issues in health care.

What passed and what are some solutions to the never ending problem of Medicaid and how it's bankrupting most states? What are your suggestions for the health care? Well, first of all, I said, Lorraine, when we were on your show last year, I think we're the year before or whatever, every year I've been on your show, I've said we need a summit on health care before we even attempted to do the budget. Why? Because Medicaid is driving our budget, and we're never going to be able to really get our budget under control and plan out unless we understand what Medicaid is all about, unless we get it under control. The bills I had, of course, were spending bills with regard to the health care, with some of them say, some might say, well, you know, that's not right, but it was bills looking to the future. For example, I had a bill that fronted a free mammogram test for every person, every woman in the state of Mexico. Why? Because we have so many young women and other women just dying of breast cancer when we think about it, it's also costing state a lot of money. So look at it from a personal point of view and from a state point of view. I put monies into, and we got monies passed, to go ahead and find equipment for stroke,

to detect strokes, very important. As a matter of fact, we've had people in the legislature and other people have had strokes. And we've seen not only their lives and activity be diminished, but we've seen really that it costs a lot of money. Some people have lost homes and over that. So it's a prevention. So I'm looking at prevention mostly. But as far as Medicaid goes, we're going to have some problems coming up in 2006, because Medicare now is, we have all different kinds of federal situations changing. The feds are cutting 10 billion in Medicaid. Which means we're going to get a lot of our monies cut. And yet we still refuse to deal with it. It's like the boogeyman, the seller kind of thing. You don't even want to think about it. You know, he's down there. But if you open up the seller and go down and confront it, it's going to cause you some grief. You have to make some really tough decisions. I think we need to make those decisions. And I think we can make them without adversely affecting too much of our population that's in need.

As I've always said, the purpose of government needs to be there to help people who can't help themselves. It can't be there to help all of us do everything. And so if we get to the point where we're able to actually define those people and those problems that we have that have to be taken care of by government and then go ahead and be committed totally to that. Like I said, when you have 3,000 kids on development disabled waiting list and you have single moms at home who can't take care of those kids who can barely take care of those kids who can't get out to go shopping, who can't go to get an education, who can't get a job, all of a sudden that's just a disaster waiting to happen. It's not good for them. It's not good for the state. And I think that we as taxpayers and as legislators have a moral responsibility to take care of that. My taxpayers know that I support that and yet they don't tell me, hey, you know, we don't want to spend our tax money on that. They're willing to do it. There are people out there and the Mexicans are great for helping people that are in desperate need. But let's not go ahead and help everybody with everything.

Now one of the ways to fund that, I know we were discussing this earlier, the issue of Otero Mesa, oil and gas drilling on Otero Mesa, and I think that it's, most people don't realize that what the state proposes is much less severe than what the Feds are proposing. And yet, you know, the land office tells us that on the Texas side of that border they're drilling slunch wise into what is our oil reserves and they're taking it out because we're keeping it all pristine, your views. Technology has allowed states that are joining us as we've seen in other countries, adjoining other countries to go ahead and take away all their natural resources. I shouldn't say all, typically mining, it's more difficult. But still they can get in there and do a lot of different things. But oil and gas are two of the things that we have in our state, especially right now with the price of oil, the price of gas, all the money we can be making. And yet it seems like the environmentalists have taken control of this issue. And I say the extreme environmentalists, we're all environmentalists, we're all concerned

about the environment. But extreme environmentalists have actually conned the liberals, the people of liberal thinking in social issues to go ahead and follow them and say, we can't drill. But if we could drill in Otero Mesa, and I'm not, I'm going to use it as an example, but do things like that and minimize and really make sure that there's no danger to wildlife that we go ahead and we put restrictions in that are going to allow reclamation in certain areas or whatever, where we just maybe have just a little pipe coming out of the ground. Those things are so important, it brings so much money and we can do away with the waiting list for developing disabled kids. We can do away with poverty, kids going to bed hungry as we read in Parade magazine and in what galloping grants. We can fix so many of the problems of health care, the Navajo's and the Navajo reservation. There's so much we can do with that money. And yet we hear that it's going to be destructive in Mexico. Well, but those same people are talking about that also are in favor of building wind farms. Now, I think wind farms are terrific, but if you go to a wind farm what you see is you don't see any animals, you don't see any birds for sure because they're all dead and they're killed.

But the animals are not attracted to the noise of the wind farm or the wind that's generated by the turbines. So I mean, let's be consistent and if we're consistent we have to go in and say a little pipe coming out of the ground, a few little pipes coming out of the ground, I'm going to bring so much to this state and allow for us to handle so much of the misery that's occurring to those people that are desperate need, that we need to consider that and consider like I said, consider who's against it and what their motivations really are. Well, let's look at some of your other bills because they weren't all quite so serious. I took issue with you on the state motto. You wanted to change the state motto and I want to keep it. The state motto is Cresquit Ayundo, which means in Latin, roughly translated, it grows as it goes. My feeling is that it's an expression of the manifest destiny of the 1850s which brought New Mexico into the union so that it grows as the countryside, as the nation expands, so does our well-being. Now you wanted to change it too.

To respect the past embrace the future. Latin? I don't know what the Latin is. Okay. I think we're going to have Latin. Anyway, just do it in English. Maybe do it in Italian. Okay. So that everybody understands it. You know, when you look at that Cresquit Ayundo, when you look at that, everybody says, oh, wow, that's Latin. It must be mean something really important and it does, according to Lorraine Mills. And it's certainly, I mean, I look at it and say, well, where did that come from? And when the school children came up and we'd ask questions, what's the state bird, what's this thing? And what's the state motto? And they'd say it and I said, okay, what does that mean? And they said, we don't know. Why do we have that as a state motto? But I think that I like the respect, the past, embrace the future because we have such a wonderful culture in the past, the multicultural, the tri-cultures and the future, the technology of Los Alamos and San Dia and where we're going with that biotech and all this other stuff. It kind of gives us, it's good economic development tool. Now maybe if we had Lorraine Mills out there explaining her interpretation of the motto,

okay. I think it's a few people. It's a good idea. But I think you're the only one that I've actually heard come up with a good explanation. Well, now speaking of cultural heritage, one of your other wonderful bills was Italian American Day. Of course. You saying? Yes. We sang on the floor of the Senate. We had an Italian American party that was second to none afterwards. We just have so many, so many great cultures here and the Italian Americans, I guess, were feeling kind of slided by everybody else. And they said, you know, we came here. We bought the first shoe store, the first restaurant, pizza, the pizza delivery. We've done so much, but so I decided being of Italian heritage that we'd go ahead and just present like a brief couple of hours about what the Italians did bring. And we brought people in from the opera who sang beautiful songs. And I got to sing and later that night at the party, I sang a little Frank Sinatra and whatever. It was just a wonderful time for us to, it was the Italian American party that we have

every year. It's a time when we get so busy and as tensions are really getting on people's nerves. And we kind of, I always looked at the Italians as being in between all the cultures that we kind of, remember we talked about in the history in Mexico that the Italians were really came here as mediators. They came here to mediate between the Native Americans and the Spaniards and whatever. They spoke the languages, they were very good linguists. And so when I look at it, I said, this would be a great time, a great theme, to bring everybody together and say, listen, we're not Democrats or Republicans. This one night was one day, we're all going to be Italian Americans singing and enjoying life and making love, not war. Well, it did come at a kind of prickly time of the session. And I want to talk a little about the civility and other issues this session. We mentioned before that there was some level of maybe vituperation in terms of bill signed or not.

Tell us a story about the brain injury bill and your vow of silence for 45 minutes. What happened with that was that, you know, I'm always of the thinking that the more I talk and the louder I get, the more I get. And that if I have to get a point across, I just have to be really loud and I have to make my point. Sometimes it takes a couple of hours to do that. And I've done that, but I don't really gain that many votes, but sometimes I pass things. Well, this one time was at the end of the session, as you remember, and I think it was about 8.15 that I started debating bills and debating issues. And I really had a lot to say. And every time I debated bill no matter what it was on, I'd always mentioned that about the people in need, the people on the waiting list, the development of disabled kids, but also the brain injury people who, so many people out there who are suffering and needed $2 million. And the bill was vetoed by the governor last year and they had no chance of passing this year. And so I kept bringing that up and saying, you know, every bill here that we're passing seems so important to everyone on the floor.

But what about those people? Put yourself in the shoes of someone that's developed me disabled, who has a child that developed me disabled. Put yourself in the shoes who's someone that's brain injured and you realize that no one even thinks about you or wants to deal with your issue, that you have no hope. As I kept mentioning that, every bill I debated, and I kept debating these bills long and hard, but I did always bring that up. And finally, at about, was it your bill, by the way? No, it wasn't even my bill. It was a bill that was submitted by Gayle Beam in the House. And I think if I were to submit the bill, I don't even think it would have been around the Senate that I could have kind of snatched it. But I saw that bill and it was a bill that we didn't really think had much of a chance. The brain injury people had me with every day, and I tried to give them some hope. And that's why I would always mention in every speech, mention them, because I saw them up in the gallery every single day with red eyes and saying, well, it doesn't look good or whatever. And I said, don't worry, we're going to keep plugging away. And I'm going to show you a different way to get things maybe in politics. And so, at about 20 after 9, I received a phone call and it was from one of the leaders who had talked to another leader and said, okay, we'll go ahead if you'll keep quiet.

In other words, for the first time, if you'll keep quiet, not debating the bills, we'll go ahead and we'll allow you to then put on the brain injury bill and see if you could pass it. So I said, well, how long did it keep quiet for? They said, well, to the end of the session, which would have been a few hours. And I said, no, I'll keep quiet for 40 minutes, till 10 o'clock. So I did that. And to their word, they called me up and said, okay, it's time. They announced that I'll be put on the brain injury bill. I explained it, explained how important it was to these folks. I looked up in the audience and kind of pointed to them as to that they were there every day or knew who they were, that the bill was vetoed before by the governor. It's something that they desperately needed. It was $2 million, which was a lot of money, but you know, that's what government was about, as I said before, governments there to help those people who desperately needed and who can't help themselves, the bill passed unanimously in the Senate. And then the government signed it, which was great, terrific. And I actually, for the first time, I think in my career, let's say, I career. I actually was brought to tears putting on the bill because I started thinking about, you

know, I was all wrong all these years. Here I thought, you know, you had a yell and scream and talk for a long time, hey, just by being quiet got me what I wanted. So I was with those people desperately needed, so I was really neat. The price of silence. Yes. I'm glad that you were rewarded and lucky for them, too, that they had you as a spokesperson or as a... Well, they were there all the time, these people were just so dedicated. That's how you get things done. They were reminded. They became my conscience. Every time I was talking, I always look up and see them in the audience, when I was talking about it, I realized at some point, I had to mention them. So somehow I had to figure out, which was kind of a challenge some days, to figure out how to bring in brain injury to the conversation I was having. What would you be working on in the interim? Well, I'm on the permanent fund oversight committee, again, hopefully we'll be looking at that. The legislative finance committee is going to have some challenges. We have to figure out how we're going to pay our bills.

We really don't look good in the out years. In 2008, I think that people were talking about we're going to be out of money because we're spending money just much too quickly. When I say we, I think it was a majority of the Senate and House as well as the administration are encouraging and spending. We really have to deal with Medicaid, as you said. I mean, that's an issue that in the next year is going to affect this. The federal government is going to make some cuts, make some changes. We're going to have to deal with it. How are we going to deal with it? Who are we going to? I think we have to engage those folks that have really good ideas. And that means people that are advocates, sometimes not necessarily lobbyists, but advocates for children, for example. Advocates for cancer survivors. Advocates for development, people with developmental disabilities for retarded citizens. Each of those folks is okay, listen, this is the way it is, this is how much we have. We need your neediest. We need the people who can't help themselves. And then just dealing with other issues, I like talking about other federal issues, social

security is going to be a state concern too. My constituents have to deal with, they call me about it all the time. What are my opinions about it? Well, what I say is it has to be fixed. We can't let it go. So we have to figure out something. We have to engage Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives. We have to engage old people, young people. We have to engage everyone to make sure that we come up with a solution, realizing that not making a change is a decision in itself, is the wrong decision. Well, how do you see building some bridges, A, between the two sides or three sides, really of the Republicans, both in the state and nationally, and then from Republican to Democrat? How do you see like kind of putting oil on these troubled waters? It's become very difficult now in the state. Years ago, we had governors and leadership that, while always willing to engage in debate and argue, behind closed doors, we were able to gather and get things done and look at things from a legislative perspective, that this would be good from the state and look

at us as kind of the people closest to the people, the Senate and the House, whatever. Now it appears that we've lost our heart. And that's why it troubles me. If I were to know it was going to be like this to be quite honest, I hate to say it publicly, but I probably wouldn't have run, even though I had run on a pohose, because I had no idea that I would have such little influence with my fellow senators that listen to what the governor says and says, this has become our agenda, rather than having our own agenda. Not that the agendas don't have to meld and blend and be something that's good for the state, but I think it's really important that you always have the checks and balances, that you're always able to criticize without being punished. You're always able to go ahead and get involved in the debate or some sort of engage somebody in finding solutions without limiting yourself as to how big the box is and say, when we hear, well, don't talk about this because the governor doesn't want to hear this.

So don't talk about this because we know what we're going to do already. Well, it kind of disheartens those of us that are really concerned about what has to be done in the state to make it a better place to live. Well, please don't be disheartened because you contribute so much. Yes. Yes. And thank you for coming today to contribute to our statewide viewership. It's wonderful to be on the show, gosh, I'd love to talk to you. You know, you and Ernie over the years, I mean, think about the history there, too, and we talked about Daddy Lopez and the permanent fund. I mean, we all go back quite a ways, I don't go back quite so far, but think about the history that's been created in the contribution you guys have made. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. Our guest today is Senator Joe Carrero from Rio Rancho and kind of West Alvacurkey. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. And I want to thank you our viewers for joining us today on Report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education.

For bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-TECH. Thank you for joining us today on Report from Santa Fe in part by grants from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education.