Last week, while sitting at the Sunport, I picked up a copy of The Economist, and in the United States section, an article leapt off of the page that was much closer to home: “Breaking, and Bad,” a piece about Albuquerque’s struggles with our police force and our floundering economy. As I read the article, I hoped that other readers would believe that these struggles are part of a recent one-off phenomenon that we will move past, because I love this state, where I was born and raised, and am grateful for the opportunity to raise my own family here.
But reflecting on the story, I couldn’t help but recognize that many of our current issues have been with us for a long time. Even preparing for debate tournaments in high school nearly twenty years ago, I remember discussing New Mexico’s low rankings in healthcare and family income. Our state, over the past several decades, can be likened to a slowing train – one that, without substantive intervention, will eventually grind to a halt.
The Department of Justice’s condemnation of Albuquerque’s police department will hopefully spurn long overdue action at the city level. But at the state level, much more needs to be done immediately to build out our mental and behavioral health system. Furthermore, big challenges continue to plague us, dire need for early childhood programs, poor performance and over-testing in our schools, a flat-lining economy and the lack of a legislative package to win the Tesla plant, and no policies to cope with the worst drought in a century; we need to figure out what path we need to take to ensure a sound future for our state.
All sorts of ideas have been discussed by community and business. But over the last decade or so, the biggest impediment to progress in New Mexico hasn’t been a lack of ideas; we have been crippled by our inability to actually take action on any game-changing idea. A tweak and minor revision here or a new program, albeit with a limited scope, there. While many leaders, in the public and private sector, shoot out one idea after another, at the end of the day, we have done very little to move the needle in recent years.
Consider the last legislative session. The Governor limited the agenda to little but criminal penalty increases and the state budget. Although legislators from both sides of aisle set out with the best of intentions, no sweeping job initiatives, no water policies, and no broad behavioral health and education reforms were permitted. As a result, we did produce a solid budget – and little else.
At the present, we cannot begin to address any issues until the 2015 legislative session. Most changes made during that session would not have impact until 2016. Two and half years is simply too long to wait for the changes that New Mexico needs now. If we are committed to building a sound future for New Mexico, it’s time we adopted a firm bias toward action.
To start, let’s take advantage of the process we have and ask our government to take action. The reality is that under our Constitution the Governor of New Mexico controls the pace of change in our state. The Governor can and should convene the legislature to address these issues head on. If the Governor leads by requiring policy makers to not just discuss, but to act on “big change” ideas this summer, think of what we can accomplish.
In a Special Session, effectively a summit on the future of New Mexico, we can develop post- performance job creation incentives and fund the needed rail spur to ensure we win the Tesla plant, similarly to what we did to get Intel to move here in the 1980s. We can reform our procedures for training police officers to deal with mental health issues. We can fund needed behavioral health facilities with existing revenue overruns. We can fix the challenges facing over-testing and fund special education programs in our schools. We can settle long-standing water governance issues to appropriately address the needs of wildlife and agriculture. We might even be able to put together a comprehensive strategic plan to finally put New Mexico on the path we all know is possible.
Business leaders, politicians and special interests might not agree on the particular policies, but at this point, a sense of urgency for action is better than the status quo of low-impact measures and temporary fixes. We can all agree on an overdue need for action.
It’ll be easy to make excuses – “special sessions cost money,” “we need more time,” or “wait till after the election,” – and I expect to hear them all. But these excuses represent our stagnant status quo – this is what perpetuates a government of incremental change, nibbling around the edges of the challenges facing our state. It’s the foundation for the kind of political ‘play it safe’ attitude that keeps us at the top of all the bad lists and bottom of all the good ones, and is really the easy way out for politicians, who can be more interested in scoring points rather than issues.
I say let’s try to take action. Let’s force our government to sit down and come up with meaningful solutions, not just rhetoric. Let’s actually give the public a set of policies, instead of sound bites, that they can hold us accountable for implementing, and let’s give New Mexicans something to celebrate and something to be proud of – a proactive government that jumps into action.
(Photo by David Bailey)
May 08, 2014