Report from Santa Fe; Toney Anaya

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant 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. And by a grant from the Healy Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is former Governor Tony and I. Thank you for joining us. Lorraine, thank you very much for having me. I always enjoyed coming by and I appreciate your having me back. Well, it's been a little while, but you are so in the news now because Governor Richardson has named you to oversee the federal stimulus program. And in other things, you've also been very visionary in terms of the repeal of the death penalty and in terms of the

train. So let's go back to the beginning a little bit and talk about your background. You were the 7th of 10 kids born in Moriarty, raised rural. I think the governor, when he dedicated your building, Tony and I, a building in 2004, he said you epitomized rural in Mexico. Yeah, he was very kind, but I did come from, in those days Moriarty, it's grown some, but still small. And those days Moriarty, I think, had a population of about 200 people, so they really was small. Yes, yes. And you went to law school and in 1975, you were in New Mexico's Attorney General and you really were very active, very dynamic Attorney General. And then in 1983 to 1986, you were the governor of the great state of New Mexico. Well, New Mexicans were very, did meet the honor of letting me serve in two very important positions and I truly appreciated that. You were at that time, New Mexico's first Hispanic governor, weren't you? A second, Jerry Apodaca.

Oh, yes, of course. I don't know where I got that fact, but OK, I've been wrong. Now you have come into play now as many of the issues and agendas that you first introduced back in 1983, have finally 25 years later come to pass. And one of them is your position on the death penalty, and your session, Governor Richardson has now signed the repeal of the death penalty, but you early on had commuted this sentence of the inmates on death row. Can you give us a little background on that issue and how you feel now that the states come around? Well, when I ran for Governor in 1982, I made it very plain at the time. There were eight candidates running four Republicans, four Democrats, and I was the only one of the eight that was opposed to the death penalty. So New Mexicans knew there was no secret when I was ready to leave the office of governor. For a lot of reasons, I pondered long and hard and felt that I simply could not, given the environment at the time, there was a tremendous amount of it was a hot topic in the gubernatorial

race of those days. In fact, as I commented at the time, the two, the Republican and Democrat gubernatorial candidates in my judgment were spending more time talking about who was going to be the toughest on the death penalty issue, and not enough time talking about education and jobs and all the other issues that the state was facing, that I was tempted during the campaign to simply commute the sentences at that time of, there were five individuals on death rule, but felt that that would create such a huge uproar in the election, that it would probably catch a lot of innocent candidates in the crossfire, candidates running for the legislature, for judgeships, and so on. So I waited till after the election, hoping that the anger that had been generated by the candidates would kind of temper down a little bit, and it didn't. After the election, it was obvious that the individual who had won the election for governor was going to be very forceful in trying to enforce the death penalty, and I felt

I could not in good conscience. I didn't think he would have the chance to put anybody to death because of the appeal process, but I didn't want that on my conscience. So I did commute the death sentences of the five individuals that were on death rule at the time, knowing that none of them would ever see the lie of the day, none of them would ever be back on the streets, and frankly, knowing that probably in the minds of some of them, life imprisonment for the rest of their lives was probably a worse punishment than death, but it was the death issue that I could not walk away from. So in the ensuing years, we've had a lot of progress in the science. So there's so much work with DNA now, and I remember a few years ago, the Innocence Project out of Northwestern University found that half of the people on Illinois's death row, the DNA exonerated them, half of the people were wrongfully convicted. At the time I commuted the sentences and took my position, we didn't have the science

available, but it was evident even then that innocent people were being put to death, and once DNA was became an invoke, if you wish, and other progress in other areas made, and we were shown that not only were innocent people being put to death, but there were so many other ways that we could deal with in the criminal justice system that it was good to see the incremental changes in attitudes. In those days, Lorraine, I think, is probably an eight to two. Folks were in favor of the death penalty today in this environment. When Governor Richardson finally did sign the repeal, the vast majority of New Mexicans had indicated they were opposed to the deaths. So we've come a long ways, and it really gratifies me to see that we've become more humane. Well, one of the agents for change has been representative

Gail Chasey, who year after year has brought this bill forth, and I think one of her more persuasive arguments was been the cost of the appeals. It cost much less to house someone for their entire life, even in total security, than it does to pay for these millions and millions of dollars in appeals. That's absolutely correct. And I have to represent, I have to compliment the representative because she has fought for at least 10 years and just simply has not given up. And it's because of her, almost her single handedly with the support of some coalitions across the state, but had she not been the one to continue to carry the battle, we would not have repeal today. And there are many, many issues, whether it's costs or whatever it may be, people are going to argue both sides of the issue. When it boils down to it, and Governor Richardson used, I think the key word in of everything else that he used, he said it was the humanitarian thing to do. It was a conscience,

and that's the key word he used, his conscience. And I think that's ultimately what it boils down to. Well, thank you for setting the template, for setting the pattern. And he did admit that it was the hardest decision of his entire political career. But it really put us in kind of in step with most of the nations in the world and most of the people in the world. So the people have come around to thinking that we don't should not presume. We work a life. We were in the category with the death penalty of being in the likes of Iraq and Iran, and that's not the company that I would want to keep. Now, you can tell us a little more about what it was like because when you became Governor in 1983, the world was in many ways economically in the same streets that we are. There was a recession. And here you come in and tell us, there's a quote that you had said that the more things changed, the more they remain the same. So what are the parallels and similarities between

when you took office in 1983 and what's happening now? It is true that the more things change, the more they remain the same. We seem to have come full circle. Certainly, the economic climate today is worse than any that I have ever experienced in my lifetime. But it's very similar to what we saw, the economic climate that I was elected, when I was elected governor existed at the time. Namely, as you say, we were in the recession. The state in New Mexico was basically bankrupt, and people may forget that. But I came in. We had a, at the time, we had a, by today's standards, a very small budget of around a billion dollars. The deficit was almost 300 million that we had to make up in six months because we're on a fiscal year that ends June 30. The price of oil was down to $8 a barrel. Today, we cry because it's down to $45 or $50 a barrel. I would have loved have had even $25 barrel oil because that's where we get our revenues. So we had banks for failing,

SNLs and loans. And there was a huge, huge problem across this country. Well, we stepped into that climate. And we were able to use, I hope that the administration would have gotten some credit for it at the time. We were able to step in and using some innovative approaches, using safely using our trust funds. We were able to safely invest in these banks and SNLs. We were able to keep all the banks safe. None of them failed in New Mexico. There was one SNL on the east side of the state that failed. And they were pretty much going under before we stepped in. But it's very similar in terms of the climate in New Mexico. And people were losing their jobs and businesses were shutting down. And again, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as we see today. But it was quite an indoctrination. And we tried not to scale back on all the commitments we had made in investing

in education. We laid the investments in infrastructure. We made the investments in infrastructure. And whether it be airports or roads or water and sewer, we progressively promoted tourism. We promoted the state all over the world. And in fact, I got criticized for traveling around the world to promote the state. We did a lot of things that we hope, in fact, kept the state from a worse economic decline. We reformed education. We're back to reformed education again. Under Governor Richardson. So, yeah, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Well, I need to speak a little bit about education because you had a lapel pin made up that was a penny for education because you felt that education was crucially underfunded and it was the kind of hinge for our economic development. And now in this last couple of sessions, Mimi Stewart and

the teachers unions and a lot of people have come up and said, we are still not providing a sufficient education. Let's do a 1% raise in the gross receipts tax that met with failure because of the recession people fell. We can't tax anyone anymore. So, what can be done? What do you think from your years of experience? Well, New Mexico, in fairness to the taxpayers of New Mexico and the legislature and other governors, New Mexico is very generous in funding education, but we don't fund it enough. Or we don't have enough reform built into the system. When I was governor, we were spending a little over 51% of our budget for public education. Today, I think it's down to 46 or 47%. We were spending another 16 or 17% for higher ed and that's probably remained fairly close to that, maybe 15, 16%. But it's more than just percentages which have declined. It's what have we done with that

money? That's why I supported the governor Richardson when he was working very hard and got past the legislation, the constitutional amendment to create a cabinet level public education. Well, you weren't you the chair of the task force looking to make that happen? I was involved in the public education reform and I chaired the task force that brought about reform and higher education that created the cabinet level department through legislation. But we're still a long ways away. Higher education is probably an easier area for me to speak about in terms of what can we do because it's all a very complicated process. But in higher education, we have way too many institutions and I know that's anathema to a lot of people. We have way too many programs. You know, we have almost 34 and two-year institutions in this state. Every one of

them buying to become the two years, many of them want to become four-year institutions. Every four-year institution wants to duplicate every program we have. We can't afford that. We're not that big estate and we need to frankly consolidate but politically we'll never consolidate institutions. We need to consolidate the management. Well, you were head of the Board of Regents at Highlands so you really do know wherever you speak. What would you recommend, you know, nobody's going to hold you to this but the issue of the College of Santa Fe was you live in Santa Fe. It's been very painful for a lot of New Mexicans. Do you see any solutions there for keeping it open? Well, what we should not do is simply buy another campus and build and open up another institution without some coordination. Again, we have too many institutions. One of the things that I had tried to do with the assistance of the then president of then Northern New Mexico Community College, we had agreed to merge Highlands and Northern New Mexico into one university and have one board of

Regents. That may not be and we were looking at setting up an administrative body in Santa Fe and moving four-year classes into Santa Fe as well as Espanola and Las Vegas. That kind of an approach while politically maybe not palatable right now is something I would highly recommend that they look at. Let's merge. Let's not just simply create another campus. Let's merge what we have into one coordinated system and we could have a system of higher education in Northern New Mexico. That doesn't mean that only Northern Mexicans could go there or that Northern New Mexicans could only go there. It means that we would have one system of higher education coordinated throughout Northern New Mexico instead of having a whole hodgepodge of institutions away we do now. Then maybe the idea would catch hold and we could do the same thing in other parts of the state. Well, you have been considered visionary by some in

terms of your work with the death penalty and with education, but there's another thing that delights us in Santa Fe and all over the state, the train. How many years ago did you envision a train between the major cities, certainly between Albuquerque and Santa Fe? Tell, give us your train background. Well, we started working on that when I first came into office and in fact I and some of my travels across the world in Japan and Europe particularly I went and looked at some of the trains that were that were being provided for there and was really intrigued with what I termed the bullet train, especially the one in Japan. So I came back to New Mexico and I said, we need a bullet train to really move people around New Mexico with our vast expanses here and propose that we start out with the bullet train between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Ultimately, look at connecting Las Cruces all the way up to Denver. It was an idea whose time had

not come and despite the lot of studies and justification, it was rejected at the time by the legislature and at the time what we were looking at was really a bullet train. It would have, if I memory serves correct, it would have traveled at speeds of roughly about 180 miles an hour. It would have been on elevated tracks. But again, some things take time and I was so pleased with the leadership that Governor Richardson provided. Nobody else could have gotten it done except him, frankly, with his persuasiveness and his ability to get things done and it made me feel great when when the first leg went in between Berlin and Albuquerque and then when it got extended to Santa Fe, it just made my heart leap. Well, a lot of people also recalled that it was your idea and that you really caught a lot of flack for it. People were absolutely not ready. But I think with the

green crisis and the wiser use, the importance of mass transit, I think finally people came around and I think it will prove to have been just the right thing at the right time in terms of our energy resources. Well, the timing was correct. It was certainly timely. It couldn't have waited any longer and I'm pleased that the Governor Richardson did take the leadership and got it done and some day, and he's also been able to buy up the right away significant portions of the right away going up to the Colorado border and who knows what the future will bring and looking at connecting some of the communities in northern New Mexico up to Espanola, Los Alamos, and so on. So who knows what will happen in the future, but it's good to see it. But again, thank you for setting that pattern for planning that scene, putting the idea out there. So what if it took 25 years? Now, you're back in the news again because Governor Richardson has named you as the person he chooses to oversee the $1.8 billion in stimulus money that's coming to the state from the feds. What is

the fancy title, the Office of Recovery and Reinvestment? Okay. Office of Recovery and Reinvestment. So you do have a degree in economics and when you were Governor, you knew exactly what was happening financially. So this was a very good choice. What are you going to do? Well, let me quickly explain what is there and maybe more importantly, what isn't there. Certainly, we're going to get probably at least $2 billion in stimulus funding to New Mexico. If we act correctly, if the agencies do everything that they're supposed to do state agencies, if we oversee it correctly and that's part of my responsibility, make sure we meet all of federal requirements, we'll probably get at least $2 billion, maybe a little bit more than that, of virtually guaranteed money if we live up to our end of it. Beyond that, there's also

another big pot of money with literally billions and billions of dollars that we can compete for and look forward to quickly chatting about those. So there's a lot of money that can come into New Mexico very, very quickly. Some of it has to be spent within 120 days of the signing of the legislation. That was a month and a half ago. So we're on a short stick there and some of it can be phased in over a period of 18 months. Some of the grants maybe would be over a period of three to four years. But it's very quick money that's coming in. What isn't there, though, and what there's been a lot of raised expectations that we need to kind of put a damper on, people assume that the governor's office and consequently the office he's asked me to oversee that somehow we have a blank check. Virtually all of this money, almost all of the money, is coming through existing federal programs down to existing state programs, meaning that state agencies have to

run it through their normal budgets through their normal programs. Almost 70% of it is going through programs like Medicaid and other financial assistance to individuals or to education. When you strip that away, you're down to a little under 30% of funding that then has to be parceled out for other things, whether it's roads or unemployment benefits or whatever. So you start whittling it away and there's not a lot of money but still it's still substantial. But the key for those who are watching in particularly rural New Mexico and small counties and cities and nonprofits who are hoping to be able to apply for some of this funding because of the fast pace in which these have to be funded. If they weren't already in the queue, if you wish, in the pipeline to be shovel ready, it's almost difficult. It's not impossible but it's virtually impossible to really get new

programs funded and that's the real challenge. We're trying to find, isolate the funding that realistically can get out into communities and then find a mechanism by which to communicate to the cities, the counties and other local units of government and to see how we can work with them. And we're trying to build up some grant writing capabilities for those that don't have it. I understand the lieutenant governor will be helping oversee the grant applications from rural communities so that they are able to access some of this money too. She has demonstrated her interest in rural New Mexico over her entire service as lieutenant governor. What we yet haven't been able to totally identify is what's going to be available and how do we tie in our respective efforts. And we've also been talking to the congressional delegation because they obviously have an interest as well. But again, all of us have to be careful because we're all out there delivering a message that may be misleading, namely that there's all this money available you

can apply for. There isn't all this money you can apply for. There is some money and a lot of that comes with strings attached that as potential recipients find out the strings that Washington has on them, they start backing up a little bit. Some states have refused this money. States with huge debt. Well, some of that I think is political and that's not what we're about in New Mexico. We're the governor, Governor Richardson has made a plane. He doesn't want any money left on the table. He wants us to apply for every single grant that we can apply for. There's some exciting things that are in the pipeline. For example, broadband. There's a team working on trying to make sure that every community in the state would be tied in through broadband. If we put an application together that qualifies for funding and we've got teams working together that involve telephone companies, universities, laboratories, communities. There's other teams that are working on multi-million

dollars in the tens of millions of dollars for energy, for the environment. What the governor wants us to do, Governor Richardson wants us to find ways to change the infrastructure of this state through technology and otherwise to basically change the economy for decades to come. This is one-shot opportunity, healthcare of trying to make sure that we bring telemedicine across the state that we are able to help healthcare providers modernize their record keeping and the equipment and software. There's so much potential. That's where the real excitement is. Where everybody is in rightfully so. Where everybody's kind of focused right now is the $20,000 grant or the $100,000

grant or the $2 million grant to accomplish a small but important project. We don't want to lose sight of what we could do to change this and transform this state with these tens of millions of dollars worth of grants if we qualify. You have always been one for transparency. I understand there's a website where people can go and follow what's happening to this money. Do you remember it offhand? I have it written here. It's recovery dot numexico dot nm. Let me back up recovery dot state dot nm dot us. And yes, we are trying to populate is the phrase I think they used that website to where individuals can actually go on and see what we're doing and what state agencies. We're asking the state agencies to link into it. We're going to try to link into what federal agencies are doing so that an individual can go there and find out what's going on. But probably importantly

as important as that as they can go on and they can use a form to apply and we'll feed that application into the appropriate state agency and see if we can get even though there's not a lot of money there see if we can get that considered and get it funded. But I think the two messages or the three messages one there's a lot of money coming down that we can use to transform your Mexico to despite that we got to be careful not to raise expectations too high in terms of what who can qualify for individual grants. And thirdly, there are strings attached. And you know, if some future program may we can talk about some of those strings this just this week we had a telephone telephone conference with education officials in Washington DC. And the president's requirements for anybody who wants to take advantage of the education money coming into public

schools is very specific. He wants it to be used for improving the quality of teachers for basically grading the quality of that teaching to make sure that quality teachers go into not just the the Northeast Heights the the more wealthy areas but into the less wealthy areas. Well, we'll have to leave that discussion for another show because we've run out of time. I'm so happy to have you here. Our guest today is former governor Tony Anaya who's been very just so visionary about so many areas. And so I'm happy to have you at the helm of this huge financial stimulus bill. And we will have another show and you'll tell us more about it. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I want to thank you our audience for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant 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. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. you you

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