Notice the condition of New Mexico roads lately? Huge patches are suffering advanced deterioration. With the state awash in cash, when will truckers, ranchers, tourists, and the driving public at get relief?
A seasoned lobbyist told me the road budget has fallen far behind inflation, which is 19% higher today than it was four years ago. A legislator later told me that might have something to do with the relationship between Senate Finance and the Dept. of Transportation. Think about that next time you hit a pothole.
This legislative session began on opening day with a performative display from Sen. Cliff Pirtle, who was caught last year, by his wife, mother-in-law, and children, in bed with a member of the legislative staff. A pregnancy and divorce followed. Pirtle, ever the showman, doubled down by wearing loud-colored clothing and presenting his mistress and child to the large assembled audience.
What’s happening in higher ed? The president of Western, Joe Shepard, also President of the NM Council of University Presidents, was caught taking 47 international trips, often with members of his board of regents or accompanied by his wife and others, costing at least $100,000.
According to Searchlight NM, he also spent $111,000 on floral arrangements and $123,000 in checks made out to himself. He spent so much on cases of wine (some costing $800 per bottle) his workers were unable to fit them into his lavishly refurbished taxpayer-funded house on campus. Ignoring state policy and norms of responsibility expected of college presidents, he and his entourage sometimes traveled first class and his wife was unlawfully given a state credit card.
When the Higher Ed Department told Shepard to cease traveling until the investigation is finished, the sumptuously wined-and-dined board of regents simply flipped the Secretary a dismissive bird, muttering nonsense about the state constitution. Are we creating an eighteenth-century French aristocracy here in higher ed? Bread? Let them eat cake.
Shepard isn’t the only case of poor management. Only after lavishing millions on two incompatible, often incompetent, men sharing top executive duties at NMSU, and many embarrassments and scandals later, were they terminated, on generous terms. In truth, only a few higher ed institutions in NM would be able to withstand serious public scrutiny of their expenditures vs. achievements as measured against similar institutions throughout the nation. The Legislative Finance Committee staff does an excellent job of capturing all of this, so no one can say state government doesn’t know. But legislators fear the political clout of the higher ed lobby, and the steaks they offer at the Bullring are tempting, so nothing happens.
New Mexico remains 50th in the country in six-year graduation rates—a good measure of institutional efficiency — at four-year colleges, and the state scores poorly on many other indicators of higher ed achievement. Among all Western states expenditures as a proportion of the state budget is 7%; nationwide it stands at 9%. California, housing some of the finest public universities in the world, spends only 6%.
In New Mexico, the proportion is a lush 15%. But we are surrounded by states with better colleges, according to data from the National Academy of Sciences, or the rankings at US News and World Reports.
Then there is CYFD, an agency so riddled with scandals one ceases to be surprised at shocking news: a backlog of 2000 child abuse or neglect cases; children forced to sleep in CYFD offices or, worse, in cinderblock cells at an adolescent treatment center in Albuquerque. Sen. Crystal Diamond Brantley declared the agency “unfixable,” a view shared by many lawmakers, who nevertheless confirmed the appointment of Teresa Casados as Secretary of the Children, Youth, and Families Department. She has no professional training in child welfare.
Does anyone expect public education to move from 50th place despite smothering the system with money over the past few years? Does anyone expect the mental health system, destroyed in the last administration, to be rebuilt in short order? Does anyone believe life expectancy in New Mexico will begin going up instead of down, as access to quality health care becomes ever more problematic for the average patient? Does anyone believe the state will improve the investment climate enough to make a difference?
Facing deterioration in the quality of life in New Mexico, the New Mexico legislature seemed to proceed this session as though only marginal issues needed attention. Republicans, reduced by their small numbers to irrelevance, spent time railing against largely symbolic measures on gun control and carbon emissions. Predictably, they were outraged by a bill requiring a 14-day waiting period for gun purchases, and another forbidding guns to enter voting centers.
However you might feel about gun control, will these measures, if passed, significantly reduce the chances of another mass shooting in NM? Will they, if passed, seriously erode our constitutional rights to possess a gun or reduce the alarmingly high crime rate? Will the clean fuel standards bill, if passed into law, really raise gasoline prices 50 cents or cut carbon emissions enough to show up in national statistics?
Does it make a difference if a 180-day calendar for all school kids is mandated, instead of allowing rural communities to maintain the same total number of teaching hours on a four-day schedule? Will the 180-day mandate affect the achievement scores of students enough to lift the state from 50th?
This session the ship of state, viewed from the legislative deck, felt like the officers spent more time fixing leaky faucets than on the bridge. The dinner menu was upgraded, the railings were painted, the wine was tasty, and the flower arrangements looked great. But the hull kept taking on water and the ship continued to sink.
Dr. Jose Garcia is a former university professor, former New Mexico Secretary of Higher Education and a political analyst for the Rio Grande Sun. During the legislative session he stalks the Roundhouse halls looking for “light” in the darkness of policy making.