Think New Mexico is delighted to have six stellar students working with us (remotely) this summer!

Our 2020 Leadership Interns include Rohan Angadi, a former Valedictorian and Student Body President of Clovis High School who is now a junior at Yale studying economics and mathematics; Daniel Estupiñan, who grew up in Sunland Park, served on the Gadsden School Board while he was an undergraduate student at NMSU, and is now earning his Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School; Chloe Larkin, a junior at Wellesley College who was active in New Mexico Youth and Government and was elected Youth Governor for New Mexico in 2018; Kate Monahan, a Santa Fean who just graduated from the University of Southern California and previously interned with Senator Tom Udall and Fix It America; Raffaele Moore, an Albuquerque native who is a rising junior at Brown University and previously interned for Senator Martin Heinrich and Mayor Tim Keller; and Ariane Talou, a junior at UCLA who has interned with Emerge New Mexico and served as a Fellow on Representative Ben Ray Lujan’s 2018 congressional campaign. Read more about this year’s Leadership Interns.

Think New Mexico’s staff is currently working from home as we do our part to flatten the curve, but we are continuing our efforts to develop and advocate for policies that will improve New Mexico’s quality of life and help the state come back stronger than ever from this public health and financial crisis. If you are experiencing financial hardship or need information about coronavirus testing or the state’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we encourage you to visit NewMexico.gov.

Finally, if you’re able to able to support Think New Mexico’s work during these challenging times, we wanted to let you know that the federal government is offering an additional tax deduction incentive for up to $300 in charitable contributions made this year.

The New Mexico Work and Save Act (House Bill 44, sponsored by Rep. Tomas Salazar, Rep. Gail Armstrong, Rep. Christine Chandler, Sen. Bill Tallman & Sen. Michael Padilla) passed the House 62-1, the Senate 40-0, and was signed into law by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham! This law will dramatically expand access to retirement savings accounts for private sector workers in New Mexico. Read more about it here. 

Exciting news: Think New Mexico’s Field Director Othiamba Umi has been appointed to the board that oversees the New Mexico Lottery!

Think New Mexico has spent the past five years fighting to get the Lottery to focus on its mission of maximizing dollars for scholarships. Our biggest obstacle has been the Lottery’s leadership, which has repeatedly attempted to decrease the percentage of lottery revenues going to scholarships and has failed to put the interests of students first.

We saw yet another example of this behavior this past summer, when the Lottery board voted to raise the Lottery CEO’s salary by 26%, from $174,142 to $220,000, along with a car allowance and a golden parachute. (Othiamba learned of this development because for the past five years he has attended nearly all of the lottery’s public meetings to act as a watchdog for the public interest.) Every dollar spent on excessive administrative costs – like this extremely high salary – is a dollar less for student scholarships, as we explained to KRQE News.

Fortunately, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham shared our frustration with the Lottery board, and she just made a major upgrade, appointing five new members, including Othiamba!

Other new members include two Think New Mexico supporters: Leo Romero, former Dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, and Nina Thayer, who retired from the Biosciences Division of Los Alamos National Lab and is active with the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

Think New Mexico applauds the governor for taking this essential step to improve the accountability of the lottery. The governor’s new appointees form a majority of the seven-member oversight board, and we are excited about the difference they can make in re-focusing the lottery on its mission of serving New Mexico’s college students.

Think New Mexico has launched a new initiative to achieve retirement security for all New Mexicans by repealing the state’s income tax on Social Security benefits; ensuring that every private sector worker in the state has access to a retirement savings account that they can contribute to through automatic payroll deductions; and stabilizing New Mexico’s public pensions by consolidating their investment management, increasing the qualifications of pension board members, and using some of the current budget surplus to make a one-time, $700 million cash infusion or loan to the Public Employees Retirement Association pension fund. Learn more about our recommended reforms and contact your legislators and the governor!

Our 20th Anniversary Annual Report includes updates on our latest issues and a look back at the work we’ve done over the past two decades, from repealing the regressive food tax to reforming the New Mexico Lottery to send more dollars to student scholarships to creating a Strategic Water Reserve to keep more water in New Mexico’s rivers. Click here to download the annual report.

We are delighted to be joined this summer by Josue Gandarilla, a first-generation
college student from Sunland Park who just graduated from New Mexico State University; Rouzi Guo, who grew up in Albuquerque and is now a junior at Georgetown majoring in Political Economy; Natalie Longmire-Kulis, grew up in Santa Fe and is a sophomore at Stanford University; and Connor Schultz, who was raised in Los Alamos and just graduated from New Mexico State University! Rouzi and Connor are working with us June-July, and Josue and Natalie will be here July-August. Read more about this year’s Leadership Interns.

This year, Think New Mexico has an even more ambitious legislative agenda than usual. Here are brief summaries of the bills we are working on, with links to our Action Center so you can contact your legislators and the governor about any of these issues:

• Maximizing dollars to the classroom: we drafted and are advocating for House Bill 77. This bill would limit the growth of school district central administrative spending to no faster than the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the overall growth in the state education budget, whichever is lower, allowing more money to reach the classroom. Read more about it , and contact the governor!

• Making the infrastructure funding process transparent: we are supporting House Bill 262 and Senate Bill 144, both of which would require disclosure of the sponsors of appropriations for public works projects. This is one of the last pieces of the legislative process that is still conducted behind closed doors. Learn more about this issue.

• Restoring funding to the Strategic Water Reserve: House Bill 281 and Senate Bill 277 would restore $5 million in funding to the Strategic Water Reserve, an innovative water management tool that Think New Mexico led the effort to create in 2005. Read more about it and contact your the governor!

• Funding the creation of an All-Payer Claims Database: five years ago, we led a successful effort to create a health care transparency website. The website launched last year, but in order for it to include information about the average prices paid by people who are covered by individual or employer-based insurance policies, New Mexico needs to create an All-Payer Claims Database (APCD), similar to those in place in fifteen other states. Learn more and email the governor to sign the funding that was included in the budget!

• Maximizing dollars for lottery scholarships: we are supporting Senate Bill 80, and House Bill 441, both of which would transfer unclaimed prize money ($2-3 million a year) to the scholarship fund. We initially opposed Senate Bill 283, which would repeal the law guaranteeing 30% of lottery revenues to students, but we have worked with the sponsor to add amendments that protect the interests of students. We are opposing Senate Bill 598, which would repeal the 30% guarantee without including any protections for students. Learn more about these bills.

• Fighting the food tax: finally, we are opposing any legislation that reimposes the food tax, including Senate Bills 421, 584, and 585. Learn more about this issue here.

KRQE News 13 investigative reporter Larry Barker has released a riveting new report on the secret process by which legislators appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars to infrastructure projects every year.

As the report highlights, this is one of the last pieces of the legislative process that is conducted behind closed doors.

We are supporting Senate Bill 144 and House Bill 262 to bring transparency to New Mexico’s process for funding public works projects. Learn more about these bills and ask your legislators and the governor to support them!

A new analysis by Think New Mexico found that in 61 of New Mexico’s 89 school districts, administrative spending grew faster than classroom spending over the past decade. Similarly, administrative spending grew faster than classroom spending in 50 out of 89 charter schools for which data was available.

Statewide, New Mexico’s classroom spending grew by an average of 1.5% a year between 2006 and 2017. By contrast, administrative spending grew by an average of 2.1% a year over the same time period.

During the 2019 legislative session, Think New Mexico is advocating for House Bill 77, which would limit the annual growth of school district central administrative spending to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or the overall growth in the state education budget, whichever is lower. Classroom spending would not be limited. So, for example, if the governor and legislature were to pass a budget that increased overall education spending by 12%, and the CPI were 2%, school district and charter school administrative spending would be capped at 2% and all the rest of the new money would go to the classroom.

Read Think New Mexico’s full news release, and download the explanatory memo, classroom and administrative spending growth rates for school districts, for charter schools, and statewide (please email us if you would like the full Excel sheet of all data). You can also contact your legislators and the governor and encourage them to support House Bill 77.