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Budget fix should not endanger environment, public health
Sandy Buffett
The recent special session of the state Legislature was challenging for everyone, and the outcome will affect all New Mexicans. The budget crisis we face is severe, and advocacy organizations — including environmental groups — are working hard to be constructive partners in finding solutions.
However, those solutions should not endanger public and environmental health. The core functions of environmental agencies are meant to protect precious water and the air that our children breathe. These functions must remain intact.
Any efforts to balance the budget by compromising environmental protection will only create long-term problems that are prohibitively expensive, or impossible, to fix. Once an aquifer is contaminated by toxic waste, for example, it can rarely be reclaimed.
This does not mean that savings and efficiencies in agencies can’t be realized. As we look for those savings, though, we must recognize the cutbacks that environmental agencies have already faced. In the current fiscal year, these agencies were already subject to budget cuts of close to 7 percent imposed by the Legislature in the regular session. Moreover, during the 2008 session, the departments of Environment (ED) and Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources (EMNRD) were targeted for individual baseline cuts of more than $1 million.
In combination with the drastic 7.6 percent cuts proposed by the Legislature during the special session, these agencies would be forced to absorb budget rollbacks in excess of 15 percent within the past year and a half.
Prior cuts are already coming dangerously close to jeopardizing the core functions of these agencies. Vacancy rates in some divisions – Water Quality, for example – already reach or exceed 25 percent. Budget cuts of the magnitude proposed by the Legislature will certainly affect inspections and enforcement of environmental statutes, including the safe operation of restaurants, public pools, septic tanks, hazardous waste disposal, polluting facilities and oil and gas companies, to name just a few.
According to the EMNRD, this level of cutting will result in a 66 percent reduction in field inspections at oil and gas facilities, placing our groundwater and environment at risk. The threats to New Mexicans of the proposed budget cuts are serious and very, very real.
A 7.6 percent cut is simply too large
The state’s situation is dire, and legislators’ efforts to spare education and other worthy causes are noble. However, a 7.6 percent cut is simply too large. Agencies will be unable to carry out their mandates to protect the environment and public health. There are other ways to patch the budget gap until January, when revenue enhancement options will be considered.
As critically important as both education and health care are, a clean environment ensures that a child has the opportunity to be healthy and well-educated. For example, we know that air pollutants and ozone increase childhood asthma, and children with asthma are more likely to suffer more extreme symptoms of the H1N1 flu virus. A clean environment, our children’s health and the opportunity to learn are all inextricably linked.
Imposing reasonable budget cuts on agencies is both wise and necessary under the circumstances. However, budget cuts to agencies under Governor Richardson should be comparable to the cuts proposed by the Legislature to agencies under the control of other elected officials (such as the attorney general, land commissioner, secretary of state and legislative agencies and services).
It is not fair or realistic for agencies under executive control to suffer cuts disproportionate to those faced by other state officials. Legislators have frequently argued that everyone needs to share the sacrifice; if they believe that, then they should adhere to that maxim in their budget decisions.
Longer-term solutions are needed
It was disappointing that revenue enhancements were not considered during the special session, but we commend the governor’s recent statements about the need for new revenue enhancement options as we approach the January 2010 session. We acknowledge that longer-term solutions are needed for the recurring shortfall, and these can and should be addressed in January, when the Legislature will be looking at both sides of the ledger.
Until then, we must not allow the agencies charged with protecting public health and safety to shoulder the burden of disproportionate cuts that could result in far greater long-term and prohibitive costs to our air, water and children’s health.
Buffett is executive director of Conservation Voters New Mexico.
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Sorry to burst your bubble Matt (and Ms. Buffett’s here too), but the cost of pollution, regulations for same, etc. ARE ALWAYS born by the public consumer. If you think you can charge those evil energy companies for externalities and it stays on their balance sheet as a cost without being offset by increased prices (revenues offsets) to the customer for their goods and services you are uninformed and/or naive about business. If the cost of increased taxes to fund bloated regulatory agencies with thousands of unnecessary employees is born by the public, the handywork of these bureaucrats gets charged back to the public as well from the companies they attack. There is no free lunch, businesses are in business to make a profit, they are not like government agencies with no accountability or professionalism.
The problem is not an issue of honesty or dishonesty, but of economics. Without proper regulations that are well enforced, then the cost of polluting is shifted from the polluter to
the community (the public). The community is then left to pay for the nuisance of the pollutant.
When regulation is lacking it may become tempting for any producer to bypass regulations
because if they do not do so they may lose out economically to those competitors that choose to cheat the system. It is a classic prisoner’s dilemma. Therefore by eliminating the government’s ability to conduct oversight, and shift the cost of polluting to the polluters, the temptation exists for companies to ignore the regulation, because to do otherwise would be economically disadvantageous to them and their shareholders in the short term. An analogy would be the
government as the referee in a football game, keeping an eye out for
any fouls or cheating by the opposing teams. In addition, by placing a cost on waste and pollution, the government can help spur companies to become more efficient and thus pollute less, benefiting both the company and the community in the long term simply by creating a price on the externalities via regulation.
The history of oil and gas, for example, is filled with attempts to curb waste and inefficiencies. The whole premise of correlative rights and spacing, as applied to oil and gas, not only served the purpose of protecting oil rights, but also prevented the problem of over pumping wells to the point where they became nonproductive. Thus, the regulations helped prevent economic inefficiencies and saved money. Similarly modern environmental regulations take into account that the public absorbs the costs of pollution via harm caused to the environment. Without well
enforced regulations, companies do not have to account for the harm to the environment in their profit margins. Those unaccounted costs are the externalities that regulators must be
empowered to account for, and by cutting the budget, those costs will just be shifted to the local communities in the form of cleanup and health
costs due to exposure to pollutants.Well done piece Sandy! Balancing the budget will be hard, and it is important to have you advocating for conservation just as forcefully as those advocating for other important issues.
Budget Hawk: my question remains. From where should the budget be cut? Ms. Buffett makes a passing reference to health care implying that the budget for environmental concerns are more necessary. Really? Thus health offices in remote parts of the state close so that those positioned in the high paying jobs you mention can retain their quality of life? Sounds a bit unfair to me. To be sure we must ensure health in terms of our natural resources, but I think that more than a passionate argument (which both Ms. Buffett and yourself make) is appropriate to stave off the legislators. The numbers she provides are too vague to be convincing: for all I know the cuts mentioned could include admin personnel and shifts from full-time to part time. As to the 66% reduction in field inspections: what is the leap suggesting that all in the oil industry are at their heart dishonest, and so will take advantage of fewer visits to begin wholesale drainage of contaminants into the groundwater? What is missing from every argument made by each of the offices is evidence that a reduction will truly turn out to be detrimental to the well-being of New Mexico.
Ms. Buffett is right. Without protecting our natural resources, particularly our water, we will have little to base future wealth on. Most people in New Mexico understand why we need clean water for a strong economy, but it also is worth reminding us that our other natural resources are key to wealth creation as well. Today’s high wage jobs are highly related to quality of life considerations that come along with healthy lands–particularly public lands that people can use and enjoy.It would be foolish to allow our “capital” of natural resources to be damaged in order to satisfy a short-term budget problem.
So where do the cuts take place? The schools? The state auditor? All report that no cuts can be made because New Mexico will be jeopardized in some form. Now the ED and EMNRD are threatening with the same “sky is falling” rhetoric. It seems that every agency is suddenly the most crucial piece of NM’s operations, and any cuts will cause our state to fall irreparably into the Dark Ages. Ms. Buffett implies that private industry–ever the villain–is waging a constant war with NM residents: just waiting for cuts to personnel so they can enact their schemes of dumping “toxic waste” into our aquifers, polluting the very water our children drink. How, may I ask, did we ever survive before the legislation almost doubled the size of our government between 2001-2008? In fact, every office has waste: redundant positions, unnecessary or outdated jobs, etc. Every office will furthermore fight tooth and nail to protect what they have: declaring that any cut at all would be too excessive. While waiting for these “revenue enhancements” (a euphemism if ever one existed) every office is going to paint their own portrait of the apocalypse should they lose any resources. However, I’m quite certain life will go on, Ms. Buffett: the sky will not fall, and seas will not turn to acid, and my precious child will be perfectly safe.
The first place a budget cutting meat cleaver should be utilized in NM is at EMNRD followed-up with a huge razor-edged butcher knife at NMDGF. Both of these bloated socialist agencies are serious threats to freedom and private sector jobs.