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Educator benefits move in Legislature

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

New Mexico needs more teachers. And we want them to stay around so our schools can benefit as their experience increases.

This year we’re finding at least one new way to pay them more.

One bill has school districts paying all or most of the health insurance for all education employees. HB102 sailed through its first two committees with only two members voting no.

In its analysis, the Legislative Education Study Committee argues with itself about whether this subsidy is a more effective way to keep employees happy, compared to simply raising their salaries by an equivalent amount.

“While requiring employers to cover a larger share of health insurance premiums will help to increase take-home pay for school …employees, there is little evidence that an increase (in) compensation related to health insurance plans is more effective than providing an equivalent increase in employee salary,” says the analysis.

One possible advantage of this method, however, compared to salary, is that it might encourage school employees who haven’t enrolled to do so or to opt for higher value coverage, ensuring that health care can be funded, which in turn might possibly have a beneficial effect on the health care system as a whole.

Another bill acknowledges that teachers are not the only vital employees in schools. HB127 proposes to increase the pay of teaching assistants, from the current statutory minimum of $12,000 to a new minimum of $25,000.

This bill passed the same two committees with zero negative votes.

There are roughly 5,400 educational assistants in public schools in New Mexico. LESC analysis says most of them earn well above that $12,000 statutory minimum but less than the proposed $25,000. The analysis said there were 446 educational assistant vacancies as of September 2022, representing 33.2 percent of all educator vacancies.

If HB127 is enacted but HB102 isn’t, some of those assistants will pay more for health insurance because they will move to a category that receives a smaller subsidy. I’m betting HB102 will pass and the assistants won’t have that worry.

And thank goodness, somebody is paying attention to health insurance for these workers after they retire.

Retired state and local government employees (including me), as well as education employees, are eligible to participate in the Retiree Health Care Authority (RHCA), which offers several group health options and provides insurance at subsidized rates. Active employees and their employers pay for this subsidy through a small payroll deduction. There are currently 65,000 participating members and 90,000 contributing employees.

HB150 proposes to increase the payroll deduction for employees and the matching contribution for employers. For most employees the proposed increase is one-third of one percent.

RHCA has been underfunded from its inception. When it was created, in 1990, it was required to start providing benefits almost immediately but was not given seed money or time to build up its fund first. There has always been a struggle to maintain long-term solvency.

As of June 30, 2022, according to LFC analysis, total liabilities were $3.5 billion, while assets were $1.2 billion, for a 33.3% funded ratio. Precarious as that ratio is, it’s a big improvement over past years and represents years of effort by RHCA’s board.

HB 150 also passed its first committee with zero negative votes.

All three bills were sent to the House Appropriation and Finance Committee. They probably will sit for a time while the staff number-crunchers do the arithmetic of figuring the total costs of the entire budget. Then they likely will be merged into the big budget bills, and large numbers of New Mexico workers will be a little bit better off.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Malpractice insurance is driving doctors away

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The first time I was lobbied, it was by a doctor, while I was in his office as a patient. It was about medical malpractice. He said New Mexico was having a crisis because the cost was unacceptable. He knew I was a reporter.

This was the 1970s. New Mexico would soon pass a law regulating malpractice insurance. That law included a cap on how much money the injured patient could collect from the doctor. Only with a cap on benefits could the cost of malpractice insurance premiums be contained.

I was lobbied again last year, also by a doctor in his office. Again, it was about malpractice.

Doctors are leaving New Mexico, he said, because malpractice insurance is so expensive here, and it’s much cheaper in nearby states.

I keep hearing stories from friends who can’t get an appointment because there are no doctors available.

Annie Jung, executive director of the New Mexico Medical Society, offered this example. For one particular specialty, she said, the base rate in New Mexico for an individual doctor is $106,000 a year. For the same specialty, she said, the base rate is $58,000 in Texas, $46,000 in Colorado, and $59,000 in Arizona.

A recent report from Gallagher Healthcare says nationally 34% of physicians have experienced a lawsuit for malpractice and 16.8% have been the subject of multiple cases. Malpractice litigation is unfortunately common, so let’s not assume doctors are careless or inept. Why it’s common is the subject for another day.

For most of us, what concerns us is not how much money we might recover in a malpractice case. The issue is whether we can get medical care at all when we need it. New Mexico has had a shortage of doctors for as long as I can remember, but things got rapidly worse after the legislature amended the malpractice law in 2021.

Part of the 2021 legislation was a requirement to clear up the deficit in the Patient Compensation Fund or PCF. The PCF is a state fund that supplements physicians’ private insurance. It helps to limit the doctor’s cost while protecting the recovery of injured patients.

The deficit is somewhere around $88 million, according to Russell Toal, outgoing Superintendent of Insurance. Last year the Legislature appropriated $30 million. This year the request is for another $32.5 million.

If the taxpayers don’t help pay off this deficit, doctors, hospitals and other medical facilities will have to pay it through even higher premiums. Or they can avoid the expense by moving to Texas. Theoretically, we taxpayers could object to paying for doctors’ errors. If we did and they had to pay more, they would have to charge more and we’d be paying higher health insurance premiums. Then more of us would be unable to afford health insurance and would have to switch to Medicaid.

Medicaid covers almost half of New Mexicans and, I’ve been told many times, pays doctors less than their costs of doing business. The low Medicaid rates are another reason doctors leave New Mexico.

The Patient Compensation Fund deficit is just one piece of the malpractice puzzle. Among other pieces, the 2021 legislation changed the definition of hospital to include outpatient surgical centers, such as the place you might go for a routine colonoscopy. Those facilities are saying they might have to close because they can’t get coverage at any price. So that must be fixed this legislative session. Some people get injured by medical errors, and for them, this system is valuable and necessary. But it’s way too unaffordable for the rest of us.

Legislation this session will probably curb the emergency, but we need a lot more.Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

A great New Mexican named Jeep

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Everybody knew Jeep. At least, everybody in organized labor in New Mexico. And almost everybody in the web of multilayered relationships that is the political and policy community of our state.

George “Jeep” Gilliland died a few weeks ago and is justly celebrated for his rich contributions to New Mexico.

When I met him, Jeep – as he was universally known – was the business representative of the Sheet Metal Workers union. Shortly after the workers' compensation reform was enacted, he was elected president of the New Mexico Federation of Labor AFL-CIO. Workers' comp is my connection to him.

There is an obscure public body called the Advisory Council on Workers' Compensation and Occupational Disease Disablement, whose task is to initiate legislative proposals and make recommendations on legislation introduced by others. By law, its members are appointed by the governor: three representing employers and three representing workers. By law, the members representing employers have to be actual employers and not lawyers, insurance execs or others who make their living from workers' compensation.

By precedent established in 1991, the members representing workers are labor leaders. Jeep had the tedious job of recruiting the labor members.

Prior to the reform, advocacy for the pro-worker side of workers' compensation was done not by the unions but by their lawyers. The lawyers understood the intricacies of the system as well as their business-side counterparts. Labor leaders did not. The reform led to a split between labor and the lawyers and forced the labor people to represent themselves.

Behind the Advisory Council, there used to be a private group called the Business and Labor Coalition, where the business leaders and insurance people could talk frankly without the pesky intrusion of the Open Meetings Law.

For several years Jeep was the sole labor representative in that group, holding up labor’s side by himself.

It was helpful that Jeep’s background was construction. In construction, business and labor are not antagonists but have to be partners, however reluctantly, because everybody understands that workers only have jobs if business has the money to build.

Construction industry labor leaders were largely responsible for dragging the rest of organized labor into supporting the 1990 workers' compensation reform that saved our state’s economy. Keeping that coalition together was the task Jeep inherited.

The reform was needed to tame out-of-control costs, partly driven by excessive litigation. It was largely aimed at reducing that litigation and related costs. It also affected the benefits paid to injured workers.

During Jeep’s tenure on the Business and Labor Coalition, a few amendments were enacted. Most of them were targeted improvements in benefits for injured workers. None of those improvements have been rolled back.

Thanks to Jeep’s daughter Ronda, he is making one final contribution to New Mexico. Ronda has asked that donations in his honor be made to the Toby Wright Scholarship at the Workers’ Compensation Association of New Mexico Foundation.

The scholarship pays for complete college expenses for a young person whose parent was permanently or catastrophically injured or killed in an employment-related accident, resulting in a New Mexico workers’ compensation claim. The student must attend a New Mexico college.

Since its inception in 1996, the Foundation has assisted 52 students with more than $800,000 in scholarship funds.

Every year at the association’s annual conference, those students line up on stage and talk about their accomplishments. The audience consists of workers' comp professionals, some of whom might have worked with the students’ parents. I have seen at least a dozen of those presentations and it is a proud accomplishment.

Donations can be mailed to the Workers’ Compensation Association of New Mexico Foundation at 2900 Wellesley Dr. NE, Albuquerque, NM 87107.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

It’s not just CYFD

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The latest headline is a little girl who was not allowed on an Albuquerque city bus with her father because he was too drunk. Later the father showed up in the city shelter, having forgotten where he left her. Fortunately she was found safe the next day.

Why on earth did the state allow this child to be left with her parents? Their irresponsible behavior had already come to the attention of the Children, Youth and Families Department. Wasn’t that enough?

New Mexicans have been raising that question for years. We remember the tragedies of Omaree Varela and other children who were brutalized, possibly for years, before they were killed, or eventually removed, who had been left with their parents after previous investigations by CYFD.

The idea of leaving the child in the custody of a violent or incompetent parent is outrageous to many of us. But it’s been found that taking the child away from the parents can be worse. It’s considered one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a child. Keeping families together to the extent possible is a priority.

This is not just a theory. It’s a policy. It does not originate with CYFD. It comes from the federal government, which is usually not mentioned when these incidents are reported. Federal law says state agencies are required to make reasonable efforts to keep children with their parents.

A friend of mine, retired head of a social services agency, says there’s another component to that policy. The family should receive supervision and services until the parents’ bad habits have been corrected. The theory is, says my friend, “whatever it takes for as long as it takes.”

But we never allocate enough money, and we don’t have enough professionals to finish the job of curing lifelong alcoholism or drug addiction or whatever the problem is. We also don’t have enough safe places to put all those children if they were removed from their parents.

According to New Mexico Child First Network, there are 2,000 to 2,600 children in foster care in New Mexico at any time. Recent statistics show there were 850 foster families in 2017. Is that enough? My expert friend says no. How well the foster parents took care of those kids is not measured. Federal Health and Human Services Department statistics showed that in New Mexico only one quarter of one percent were maltreated in foster care. Let’s hope that’s accurate.

But my friend says most children who spent significant time in foster care will end up in prison, homeless or dead. That’s not much of an endorsement of this system.

In recent years the emphasis has been, if a child must be removed, find relatives to be the foster parents. And consider the removal temporary.Foster parents (now renamed “resource parents” to emphasize that the role is temporary) are paid by the state. In 2021 there was an increase in the monthly stipend, but the payment is still well below the real cost of a child. The basic rate – that is, for a child with no special challenges – is $20.91 per day for the youngest and $22.95 for the oldest. The increase is an improvement but not a solution.

New Mexico is pinning its future on the new state Early Childhood Education and Care Department and the influx of new money, approved by the voters in November, from the Land Grant Permanent Fund. The money still has to be approved by Congress.

Meanwhile, it seems every time we talk about CYFD, it’s about another failure. I wonder what it feels like to work for a government agency that is doomed to so much heartbreak.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Reviewing our progress on crime law

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

As the 2023 legislative session begins to loom, I’m wondering if we are going to hear more outraged rhetoric about getting tough on crime.I myself prefer to be tough on crime prevention. I prefer laws that stop crimes before they happen.

Increasing prison sentences, for example, does not deter anybody from committing a violent crime. So says the U.S. Department of Justice, according to its Office of Justice Programs. Or, as a Legislative Finance Committee analysis stated, “the certainty of punishment is a significantly more effective deterrent to criminal behavior than the severity of punishment.”

Prison is the only way to keep the public safe from some perpetrators, but in many cases it just destroys lives while costing us huge sums of tax dollars. Before we look for more opportunities to show how tough we are, let’s check back at what we did in 2022.

In 2022 legislators introduced lots of bills related to crime. Several were consolidated into one omnibus bill, House Bill 68, which passed. Some things this bill does:

It creates five new crimes, including the crime of operating a chop shop. A chop shop is a place where stolen vehicles are dismantled so that parts can be sold or used to repair other stolen vehicles. Making it a crime to operate one could be an effective deterrent because it’s a crime that requires thought and planning.

The law makes a few criminal penalties more severe, including those for crimes involving use of a firearm.

It prohibits the use of a criminal defense strategy called “gay panic” or “trans panic.” This is the claim that the defendant believed they had been propositioned in a nonthreatening, nonviolent manner by someone thought or known to be gay, bisexual, or transgender.

It provides several benefit enhancements for law enforcement, which could help make law enforcement jobs more attractive.

It creates new judgeships in three judicial districts, perhaps making it possible for cases to move faster in these districts. The districts are the 2nd (Bernalillo County); 5th (Chaves, Eddy and Lea); and the 13th (Cibola, Sandoval, Valencia).

The bill also contains provisions that could lead to preventing crimes, but it looks like the results will take quite a while to manifest.

It creates the Violence Intervention Program Act, setting up a fund to be administered by the Department of Health. DOH can award violence intervention program grants to eligible state agencies, counties, municipalities, or tribal governments.

Those agencies have to invent the programs to implement, apply for grants and get the programs running before any crime is prevented. Ultimately these local programs could be exactly what we need to save lives while encouraging young people into productive life directions. The problem is, as this description shows, getting them started will be slow and tedious.

Similarly, the law expands the options available to Criminal Justice Coordinating Councils, which we are supposed to have in every judicial district. The expansion allows these councils to apply for Crime Reduction Grants for several purposes. One specified crime prevention measure is coordinating access to services for individuals released from incarceration; in plain language, helping people who get out of prison so they don’t return to crime. Again, bureaucratic measures are required before anyone is helped.

In 2022 we did not pass a proposed law to fix the confusion over who gets out of jail pending trial and who doesn’t.

And we missed the chance to pass one surefire way to prevent some crimes before they have a chance to happen. There was a bill to make adults responsible for locking their guns away from minors. I hope we consider that one again.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Counting votes

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

On the night of Nov. 8, New Mexicans could curl up in bed knowing that our election was mostly over. Whether we liked the results or not, we knew what most of them were. We had survived the day without violence or major threats to disrupt election results.

Congressional District 2 remained uncertain for a couple of days, but when the totals were in, the losing candidate conceded with dignity.

Some other states did not finish so promptly. As you know, vote counting in several states went on for days. It took eight days to confirm the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Political observers held their breath waiting to see what kinds of challenges – evidence-based or otherwise – might be mounted against the results.

Though voters are tired of thinking about the election, maybe a few points should be noted before we put this election finally to bed. It’s important to know that all those delays were not irregularities but the result of careful counting in close races, especially in states that have extended deadlines.

In New Mexico, we have procedures that help the count go quickly. Other states have different rules.

One of our rules is that mail-in ballots can in some cases be opened even before Election Day. Not tallied, however! Nobody gets an advance peek at the results.

Mail-in ballots require handling that takes time. Remember, there are two envelopes, outer and inner. Participants from both major parties have to be present to open the outer envelope, confirm that the ballot is legitimate, and then separate the envelopes so the voter’s confidentiality is preserved.

In New Mexico the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received is 7 p.m. on Election Day. That makes the voter responsible to mail the ballot at least a few days early or to hand-deliver it to a voting location. A few days before the election, there were reminders on local TV that it’s too late to mail, so if you have a ballot, you should drop it off in person. A New Mexico resident voting from out of state has to mail it early enough to meet the deadline.Military and overseas voters have special status. They can choose to receive their ballots by email, print the ballot, fill it out, scan it, and send it back by email. They must sign a waiver giving up confidentiality, because someone must handle that ballot directly. Again, New Mexico requires the ballot to be returned by Election Day.

Other states have different rules and varying deadlines.

According to the National Council of State Legislatures, 30 states require absentee/mail ballots returned by mail to be received on or before Election Day. Nineteen states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C., will accept and count a mailed ballot if it is received several days after Election Day as long as it’s postmarked on or before (in some states, only before) Election Day. So if the count in a particular race is close, and the number of ballots not yet counted could make a difference in the result, it’s easy to see why some races remained undecided for more than a week. California had several Congressional seats that took more than a week to determine. California’s deadline for receiving ballots is seven days after the election, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.

New Mexico’s Election Day deadline makes it easier and less suspenseful for our county clerks, their staffs, volunteers, anxious candidates and all the citizens who want to go to sleep. Our deadline is more difficult for out-of-state and overseas voters including New Mexicans serving in the military. The fact that other states have chosen a more generous deadline doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Amendment 3: Another tweak of judicial selection

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Judges in New Mexico have a quaint custom. They retire at any old time they decide. Then the state has to fill the position with a new judge.

The process is confusing for voters. New Mexico has been tinkering with the process for a few decades, trying to make it fairer and less political, but it’s still confusing.

Voters have just approved Amendment 3 to the state constitution, the latest attempt at improving the process. Here’s how it will work.

When a judge steps down, a commission submits names to the governor, and the governor picks one. That person becomes judge until the next general election. The appointed judge must then run in a partisan race. I explained this in a previous column; see www.triplespacedagain.com, July 2022. The amendment has changed the timing.

The duration of the appointed period depends on when the previous judge resigned. If the old judge resigned in January right after a general election, the new judge will have almost two years. If the old judge resigned just a couple of months before an election, under the old law the new judge has to run for office almost immediately.

Judges tend to resign in the summer. That makes the replacement process a little less inconvenient because there are a few months before the next election. But maybe that’s not enough time.

Under the new amendment, the newly appointed judge will not have to run for office until he or she has been in the judgeship for a year. In other words, if the judge was appointed a short time before the general election, he or she gets to keep the job through the election, stay in place for a full year and run at the following general election. For example, a judge appointed in September 2022 would stay in office until the 2024 election.

Theoretically, this will give voters more time to observe the judge’s qualifications. But in reality that doesn’t mean much. Most of us know almost nothing about most judges because their activities are not public like executive branch officials.

Some of us learn about one particular judge the hard way, if we are personally affected in a messy divorce or an ugly lawsuit. Otherwise we only hear about judges through the news, and that is mostly limited to crime.

The current system limits the number of qualified lawyers who might be willing to serve as judges. A new judge must dismantle his or her private law practice, a financial sacrifice for a successful lawyer who might only hold office for a few months. The new amendment, giving new judges at least a year in office, makes that somewhat less unattractive.

The system gives the appointed judge an advantage over any challenger. The amendment will probably increase that advantage, giving the judge longer public exposure, as long as the judge does a decent job and avoids public controversy.

This hybrid system is awkward, and the amendment won’t change that. It reflects New Mexico’s stubborn determination to continue to require judges to be answerable to the voters, which I consider a laudable thing. We get the benefit of screening by a nominating committee to provide some assurance that new judges will understand the law and have an appropriate judicial temperament. Later, we voters can accept or reject that commission’s choice.

We never will know as much about how district judges use their authority as we do about legislators, county commissioners and other elected officials, whose activities are more visible to the public. In my opinion, any system of selecting judges has built-in obstacles and cannot be made perfect. With amendments like this, our legislators keep trying.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

The day after the election

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

The most difficult column to write, not just for me but for any columnist, is the one written right before an election. It’s likely that the election will be over by the time this column is published. Most of the results, for New Mexico and every other state, will have been decided.

Without knowing the outcome, I’m offering some hopes for what New Mexicans will find (or will have already found) on Wednesday.

I hope:

Every race will have been resolved without controversy; the losing candidates congratulated the winners, the winning candidates thanked their opponents for a race honorably run, and volunteers are already busy picking up their signs. (By the way, several years ago I discovered that yard signs made of plastic with air pockets can be used as insulation for the doghouse or tool shed.)

There will have been no reports of violence or hostility at any polling place in New Mexico or to any poll worker, election volunteer or voter.

Every election worker has been thanked by voters.

Every county commission in New Mexico is ready and willing to do the job of certifying the election results according to law.

If there are challenges to any election result, they are based upon specific evidence of a genuine malfunction and not any alleged “gut feeling” of someone who didn’t like the result.

After this election, politicians will stop using the term “flip-flop” to describe any other politician who has changed his or her position over time. People who are willing to change their opinions based on new or more complete information are to be admired, not mocked.

We will also stop hearing “defund the police.” Whoever invented that phrase was not a spokesperson for any major political party. Serious policy makers have never adopted it and should not have to defend themselves from it.

We will have elected lawmakers who are eager to solve problems by cooperation and compromise rather than using existing problems to browbeat the opposing party. First on my list at the national level is immigration and the border. We need updated immigration laws to address safety and economic concerns, especially of border communities, while recognizing the humanity of desperate refugees who are only seeking a chance in life.

Our New Mexico lawmakers will recognize that when any government program, from education to corrections, isn’t producing the results we want, we will not make it better by cutting its funding.

This year’s new leaders, regardless of what they said while campaigning, will recognize that when we insist on increased accountability of our public institutions, we force them to increase the staff that does the accounting.

The New Mexico constitution says:

“Every person elected or appointed to any office shall, before entering upon his duties, take and subscribe to an oath or affirmation that he will support the Constitution of the United States and the constitution and laws of this state, and that he will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of his office to the best of his ability.”

I hope every officer who will soon be taking that oath intends to live up to every word of it.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Securing the voting machines

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

In Bernalillo County there are 77 different ballots. The ballots account for all the district boundaries – legislative and county commission districts and bond issues for special districts like a flood control district.

This is not a problem. The system is designed to handle it. The process is the same in other counties, except most counties have fewer districts and so fewer different ballots.

As you probably recall, when you vote in person you give your name and few details, and the correct ballot for your address is printed. It’s a miracle of modern election systems.

Testing the voting machines is an exhaustive process. It’s open to the public, and it probably is open in your county also.

Every machine has to be capable of reading all the possible combinations. So each machine is tested 77 times four, or 308 times. Specially prepared packets of sample ballots are used. An employee inserts a ballot into the first machine, then passes it to another employee who inserts it into the second machine, and so on. The first employee flips some of the ballots around, to make sure they can be read whether they are fed in right side up or upside down.

A row of 10 employees stands in front of 10 voting machines. They pass ballots along until all 308 have been fed through every machine. This might take half a day. Then there will be a tally to make sure the results are perfectly accurate. Any imperfections will be addressed, and if necessary the faulty machine will be culled out of the herd.

This will go on until all voting machines, about 340, have been tested. It takes a couple of weeks. The machines detect certain errors. For example, if you accidentally mark both candidates for the same position, the machine will detect that and spit the ballot out. Then you can receive a new ballot, and your spoiled ballot will be saved because every ballot must be accounted for.

The deputy county clerk who explained this to me mentioned that the county paid extra for good quality rubber mats for those employees, who are standing on the concrete floor all that time.

Similar activities have been happening in every county. All of our counties use Dominion voting machines. That’s the brand that was maligned by election deniers and now is pursuing billions of dollars in lawsuits.

I went to watch hoping to see the inside of the voting machines so I could confirm to readers that there is no transmitter inside those machines. They cannot communicate with extraterrestrials, international satellites or anyone else. These machines do not communicate.

I cannot prove this because, theoretically, someone could claim that any tiny little gear could be a transmitter. But that would be nonsense, so let’s not dwell on it. That is why our system has paper ballots. The machine cannot erase the mark you make in ink, replace it with a different mark and make the alteration undetectable. (The deputy clerk advised that if you vote in person, it is best to use the pen provided. These pens have ink that dries quickly, so your ballot will not smear the inside of the machine.)

Elsewhere I have written about the security measures in our voter registration system that prevent anyone from voting who is not legally registered. I have also looked at of the double checks and audits that follow the election. Anyone who is concerned has the same access to the information. If you are nervous about the integrity of our elections, and you want to start from scratch designing an end-to-end election system that would be secure and honest, I suspect you would eventually design something very close to what New Mexico already has in place.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Voter initiatives are expensive, ineffective avenues to pass laws

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

In New Mexico we do not have “initiatives” on the statewide ballot.

Thank heaven.

By “initiatives” I mean the ability to make laws by popular vote, initiated by petitions from voters. New Mexico does not have such a provision in its Constitution.

We vote on constitutional amendments, which must be approved by the Legislature before they can be submitted to the voters. This occasional need to have voter approval for constitutional changes is one reason why our state Constitution is long and cumbersome. That’s inconvenient but okay.

We also have a provision allowing the people, by referendum, “to disapprove, suspend and annul any law enacted by the Legislature, except …” followed by a list of exceptions. The exceptions are quite broad, including “public peace, health and safety” and anything regarding the budget or debt, making this provision very difficult to implement. I am told it has never been used successfully. Again, thank heaven.

In New Mexico you can’t simply decide you want to get a law passed by direct vote of the people, run around collecting petition signatures and get it on the ballot.

Of all the reasons why I am grateful we don’t have such a provision, here is the top one. Elections these days are, unfortunately, too much influenced by big, unseen, monied interests from who knows where, but definitely not from here.

If you think a ballot initiative is a grassroots expression of the will of the citizens, you are behind the times. Even if it starts that way, commercial forces will pile on, advocating for the cause or organized to oppose it. Vast sums will be spent on advertising and other persuasion. You might feel pressured to donate, and your money will go to out-of-state consulting firms.

Citizens might have control of the subject matter the first time around. But out-of-state advocates will start coming in to push agendas that are not even relevant to New Mexico, such as banning the teaching of subjects that are not taught here.

My prediction is that if New Mexico were ever to allow initiatives, within three election cycles there would be an initiative to privatize our water. I’ll repeat that. Water.

That could possibly be followed by other referenda to exploit our natural resources to benefit outside commercial interests. I fear New Mexico may be seen by outsiders as vulnerable. New Mexico is already the only state that has voluntarily taken other states’ nuclear waste.

The question of referenda arose because of Mark Ronchetti’s breathtakingly irresponsible suggestion that a statewide decision on abortion should be submitted to the voters.

In his TV commercial he did not say technically how this would be done. His website mentions two alternative methods but is still not clear.

Aside from the abortion issue, if we were to open that Pandora’s box as a way of deciding critical matters of public policy, we would never be able to close it again. So I wonder how Ronchetti explains his abortion proposal in the context of that concern.

In California, there are multiple voter initiatives in every election. My California friends tell me they cannot inform themselves adequately about all of them so they don’t know how to vote. If they do understand, they feel pressured to donate to the some of these causes.

Ballotpedia reports that in California in 2022, the average cost to get an initiative on the ballot was $16.18 per voter signature, a 124.1% increase from 2020. That is just to get enough petition signatures. Then the advertising starts.

Kansas held a referendum on abortion in August. The two opposing campaigns reportedly raised and spent more than $11 million.

Is that how you want to spend your money?

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

Cautious support for Amendment One

By Merilee Dannemann

Triple Spaced Again

Constitutional Amendment 1 on the ballot this November asks a simple question: Do you approve taking additional money out of the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund (LGPF) every year? The amendment earmarks the money for public schools and early childhood education programs.

If the voters pass it, the provision must be approved by Congress before we can do anything with it. This is because the LGPF was created as part of the deal that made New Mexico a state.

Our state budget for the current year (fiscal year 2023) totals nearly $8.5 billion in recurring general fund spending. A portion of that came from this fund. That’s what the LGPF does: The money sits in a lock box earning income and growing. It can’t be spent except as provided in the state Constitution. Every year the constitutionally allowed portion is moved to an account from which government can spend it.

Recently that portion has been 5% of the LGPF, calculated as an average from the last five years. For the coming year, it would be about $1.1 billion.

The state Constitution provides that 87% of the distribution goes to the “common schools.” The rest goes to a list of beneficiary institutions. The amendment proposes to distribute an additional 1.25% only from that 87%. According to Charles Wollman, communications director of the State Investment Council, in the fiscal year beginning next July that would be about $230 million.

At the end of August the fund was worth about $25 billion. Since the stock market has had a volatile month, it is probably worth less today and the exact value will continue to bounce around until the markets stabilize.

The income comes not only from investment earnings but from earnings of the land which is the basis of the fund – that is, land owned by the state which produces, among other things, oil and gas. The amendment specifies that 40% of the additional distribution is to go to public schools for at-risk students, extending the school year and teacher compensation, and the other 60% is to provide early childhood education.

Now, do you want to vote for it?

We have been trying for decades to fix New Mexico’s thoroughly documented education problem. An effective program of early childhood education, plus extra services for at-risk students, would very likely make a significant difference and raise us out of our perpetual position at the bottom of the rankings. The results will no doubt take several years to show up.

The standard argument to oppose taking more money from the permanent fund has always been that it will reduce the corpus and therefore reduce revenue for the long term. With the recent growth of the fund, that argument is not so compelling.

Another argument for voting no is fearing that the education initiative won’t work. I worry about that, but I am inclined to say at this moment it’s worth the risk.

One concern is that naysayers will demand accountability too quickly and declare failure if they don’t see measurable success right away. This project could take a long time to produce meaningful results and patience will be required.

Another concern comes from the opposite perspective. New Mexico is accustomed to mediocre performance from government, and one concern is that some in government could be willing to accept mediocrity in these programs.

This initiative is supposed to raise salaries for educators. We hope that will help ensure that well qualified professionals are hired, get continuous training and stay around for the long term. If the initiative passes, policy makers will have to maintain high expectations combined with patience, and so will the rest of us.

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.

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Merilee dannemann 10-10-22 on

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