Carter Bundy

During her Republican primary, Susana Martinez unequivocally advocated shifting public money from public education to private schools. The common term is “vouchers.”

She now claims to only want private money to go to private schools, but YouTube doesn’t lie. The key line is “the dollars that are set aside for that child should follow that child.” Susana’s been caught in one big whopper, but in a bizarre showing of chutzpah, seems to be doubling down on it.

Her running mate says that he and Susana support “vouchers.” Whoops. In every state in America, “voucher” doesn’t mean a private donor giving money, it means taking tax dollars away from public schools and giving them to private schools.

Republican Susana has been, until recently, an unabashed supporter of defunding public schools to boost private schools. Period.

How vouchers hurt

Don’t vouchers all equal out? If a kid is no longer in public school, and the public school loses, say, $7,000 for the year, doesn’t the school save all that money anyway?

Absolutely not. Things economists call “fixed costs” don’t go away when one, or 10, or 50 kids leave a school. Electricity, heating, cooling, landscaping, maintenance, libraries, sports equipment, athletic fields, travel for bands and teams, coaches, janitors, educational assistants, principals, secretaries, school busses, computers, chalk, white boards, cafeterias and cafeteria staff, and, of course, teachers all stay at the school.

If enough kids leave, maybe 100, you might be able to lay off a teacher or two (as if that’s a good thing), and maybe an educational assistant, and maybe you’ll purchase one or two fewer computers. But the vast majority of the public school’s costs will remain and the school — and its kids — lose big.

Left behind

In the meantime, you’ve left behind all the other kids whose parents don’t want to or can’t get their kids into private school. Only now, the left-behind kids have even fewer resources. Susana talks about not wanting to “trap” kids in failing schools. Well why is it OK to use tax dollars to help a private school do better and strip the public schools of their resources, making the trap even worse for those left behind?

She seems very comfortable with leaving everyone but a handful of privileged kids trapped in failing schools. Why not invest in the public schools — or even propose non-monetary solutions — to ensure every kid has a great opportunity?

What about the kids with special needs? Think they’re going to be getting into all the best private schools? What about kids who don’t quite have the grades to get into private schools near their house? What about the kids with learning disabilities or who need better social skills? What about single parents who rely on public school busses to get their kids to and from school? What about two-parent families who both work and can’t transport their kid to and from the private school?

Is Susana giving them a voucher too? Of course not — the private schools, by and large, aren’t going to take many of those kids. Even if they did, vouchers often aren’t enough to pay for the entire cost of private school, and most New Mexico families can’t afford thousands of extra dollars.

Public schools in small towns will be especially hard hit. Even freshman economics students know fixed costs are a bigger part of the budget in smaller schools. Vouchers will either make small schools unsustainable, the costs per student will go up significantly and require higher taxes just to stay at the same level of operations, or the left behind small town kids will face even more cuts.

There’s almost no single proposal that will exacerbate the state’s achievement gap more than vouchers. Public schools are America’s great equalizer, but if Susana supports gutting them by using public school tax dollars to prop up private schools, she should simply say so. Which is what she did, just a few months ago.

New Mexico is a state where most parents can’t afford to send their kids to private schools, and where most people believe that all kids should have a shot at a good education.

Given that, it makes sense that her pro-voucher position wouldn’t be popular (it’s not), so politically I don’t blame her for adopting a shiny new position in favor of public education now that she’s survived the Republican primary.

If parents want to send their kids to a private school, they absolutely have that right. But it shouldn’t come at the expense of the other kids remaining in public schools.

Integrity matters

Susana’s new position is against taking money from public schools. If she’s changed her mind, she should say so, and I (and most of New Mexico) welcome her to the pro-public education side.

But acting as if she never supported taking public school money and giving it to private schools? Stunning. Calling her opponent a liar for pointing out the flip-flop when her opponent was telling the complete truth? Galling. The fact that it’s all on video and yet she continues to seek a fight about it? That’s just not terribly good judgment.

It’ll be interesting to see if she keeps doubling down on a whopper, or if she comes clean and says she’s simply changed her mind about vouchers (which might antagonize her fellow Republicans). The latter might make her a flip-flopper, but at least there’d be integrity to it.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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Carter Bundy

While there are signs that Washington’s stimulus policies have helped us end our downward slide toward depression, we’re far from out of the woods. Tea party ideological rants about government being evil don’t provide any guidance for how to improve our economy.

The rants often don’t even make sense: “keep the government out of my Medicare” and “don’t fill out the census — the government already has too much information like your Social Security number” are two of my favorites.

Instead, now is the time to have a real debate, and a specific, detailed discussion about how to help the private sector rebound and how to improve the public sector.

Slashing services does what?

One of the biggest cries from the far-right, anti-government folks at the Rio Grande Foundation and their tea party followers is that because the private sector has had a tough time, we should de-fund the public sector.

Several problems with that line of thinking:  First, when the private sector activity is shrinking, demand for many public services actually goes up. As a general rule, for example, the worse the private sector economy, the higher the crime rate. Do tea partiers really want fewer police, fewer corrections officers, fewer courts, fewer prosecutors, fewer 911 dispatchers, and more dangerous streets? If so, be honest and say it up front, because that’s what is being asked for.

Another example: Applications for unemployment and Medicaid go up dramatically in a recession. Is the RGF advocating day-long lines for people who are simultaneously trying to get jobs? How does that help employment?

Second, it’s basic economics that when the private sector is in freefall, if the public sector doesn’t step up and at least maintain some economic activity, we’ll spiral into a depression. How many private sector jobs in Albuquerque are saved because the military still has a steady presence in the state? If it were up to most tea partiers and conservative think tanks, we’d slash government across the board, and we’d be kissing even more private sector jobs goodbye as well.

Third, in New Mexico there’s been a major omission from the far right on a central fact in this debate: Government has downsized, and to a greater level than the private sector. Classified state employees are more than 10 percent lower per capita than at the end of Gary Johnson’s administration. Meanwhile, the private sector unemployment rate has gone from about 5 percent to about 9 percent in New Mexico (which is also, of course, a per capita measure) — about 4 percent more unemployed.

In other words, state classified employment has dropped about 250 percent more than private sector employment. In addition to doing more work with less staff, most public employees are taking home less pay than they did last year or two years ago.

The reason you don’t see screaming headlines about the reduction in public sector employment and pay is that most municipalities – and certainly the state – are large enough organizations with sufficient turnover that they can cut workforce through attrition. There is also something of a lag between private downturns and public impact, meaning that public employers often have more time to anticipate and manage budget problems than private employers, and have done so effectively.

Join the real discussion

There’s a very legitimate debate to be had about which programs are vital and which can be trimmed back. There are real discussions about merging departments and making government more efficient, and Diane Denish, for one, has proposed an additional $450 million in state budget cuts.

My union doesn’t agree with all of those cuts, but at least the proposals are by and large detailed, thoughtful ideas about where to save money.

Productive ideas don’t just come from one party. Republican Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones has been supportive of some specific ideas to help citizens track government spending and tax breaks, and generally has taken the approach that while more efficiency is needed, government isn’t always the enemy. She’s also called for an end to abusive corporate giveaways and has shown a consistency in her approach to fiscal responsibility.debate

While Arnold-Jones is not an ideal candidate for public employees, her candor, understanding of the importance of many government programs including public safety and education, and her willingness to work for pragmatic solutions across party lines led AFSCME’s member-run political program to recommend her to our Republican members in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

Arnold-Jones and Denish are each engaged in a productive conversation about how we can make government better, save taxpayers money, and still deliver the services we need.

The Rio Grande Foundation’s Jim Scarantino and Paul Gessing are bright guys. Very bright, and very likable. I believe they’re also genuinely concerned with the well-being of New Mexico.

I respectfully invite them to join the real discussion going on about how to make our government more efficient while leaving the political rhetoric behind. The “government is the problem” stuff makes for good tea party agitation and may be marginally helpful in November. But such rhetoric is neither accurate nor helpful in advancing ideas for how to make both government and the private sector more effective in New Mexico.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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When Jim Villanucci was kind enough to invite me on to KKOB for a few hours last week, I was expecting the usual tea party accusations that health-care reform is a government takeover of 1/6 of the economy.

What I wasn’t expecting was to hear such a high percentage of callers admit that they, or someone in their family, receives some kind of taxpayer-subsidized health care.

They uniformly said current government health programs were working just fine. Strangely, though, many callers claim that the newly passed reform is a socialist government takeover.

Beyond the hypocrisy of enjoying government health care while trying to deny it to others, the tea partiers have missed the biggest story about reform:  It is the furthest thing imaginable from a government takeover of health care.

All health-care reform does is take the current private system and ensure access to care for sick people. That’s it. That one basic principle of guaranteed issue requires three follow-ups: community rating, full participation and some subsidies, but those are simply necessary components to enforce the idea that pre-existing conditions shouldn’t stop you from getting care, whether you currently have insurance or not.

How else?

Seems pretty common sense that a health-care system should cover sick people. In order for sick people to get care, the first thing you have to have is “guaranteed issue.” That just means that insurance companies have to offer coverage to everyone, and they can’t kick you off if you get sick or if your illness is an expensive one.

But, of course, that means nothing if the insurance company smiles at you and says “sure, we’ll cover you. For $5,000 a month.” There have to be caps on what the premiums are, or there’s not even a chance of covering pre-existing conditions.

Caps are called “community rating,” and the new reform has a weak version of community rating. The new law doesn’t require everyone to pay the same thing – insurance companies can charge healthier people as little as 1/3 of what sick people pay. But at least there is some community rating.

Guaranteed issue and some community rating are necessary elements to covering people when they get sick, but they’re not sufficient. If you know you can buy insurance even after you get sick, don’t you have a strong incentive to not pay anything until then? Yes.

That’s where the “individual mandate” comes in. If you did everything else right, but didn’t require everyone to participate, existing insurance pools would suffer from “adverse selection” – only the sick would be in the pools.

After all, why would you ever pay a dime into the system if you knew you could get coverage if you became sick? The real term that ought to be used is “full participation,” because that’s all it is. Without full participation, the system collapses.

What I’d love to hear from opponents of full participation is how else the system can take people with pre-existing conditions without collapsing from adverse selection. How do they avoid people dropping out and free-riding until they’re sick?

Finally, if you’re going to require full participation, you also have to make sure that no one’s budget gets busted in the process – whether individuals or small business – so there have to be subsidies for lower-income people. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees aren’t required to buy insurance at all, but if they want to (and many do) they’ll get help as well.

Who pays for those subsidies? The short version is that unless you’re a millionaire or run a private company that scams profits off of taxpayers and seniors in Medicare Advantage, it’s not you.

What’s so scary?

That really is the bulk of health care reform. Insurance companies have to offer coverage within a range of prices, they can’t cut you off, everyone has to participate, and there will be subsidies for those who can’t afford it and for small businesses.

We’re using the same system we’ve had for a century, we’re using the same private providers, and we’re using the same private insurance companies. The only difference is now insurance companies can’t exclude or kick people out for being sick. That’s socialist in what way?

If anything, the 2010 version of health care reform is timid. After all, it’s nothing more than the 1994 Republican alternative to the Clintons’ proposals, and even as recently as 2006 Republican superstar Mitt Romney was defending Massachusetts’ individual mandate – the one he signed into law as the Republican governor of Massachusetts.

So let’s not pretend that the health-care reform that just passed is some socialist plot, or government takeover, or the end of freedom as we know it. Only two types of people make those claims: those ignorant of what’s in the bill, and those who know better but who are hoping for political gain based on fear.

Conservatives will talk of “repeal and replace,” but not a single conservative alternative passes the first principle of any health reform: ensuring coverage if you get sick.

While there is some merit in some of the conservative ideas that didn’t make it into this year’s reform, particularly on some cost issues, their plans ultimately boil down to “don’t get sick.” That’s not reform, and it’s certainly not health care. All they’re left with is pretending that health care reform is scary, when the truth is it’s anything but.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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Carter Bundy

Following the health-care debate is nearly a full-time job. The minutiae of health-care policy is overwhelming.

Lost in the whole health-care debate, though, are simple questions, like what kind of system creates the best incentives for people to stay healthy.

The answer to that question was made clear to me this week by CIGNA. I’m lucky enough that my mom is taking our whole family on a trip to the Dominican Republic, but part of that kind of travel involves precautions against malaria.

I was stunned when CIGNA emphatically and repeatedly denied a claim for relatively inexpensive anti-malaria pills -classic preventative medicine.

Bending the cost curve – up

The CATO Institute and Sarah Palin will tell you that having the consumer pay for medicine, even preventative medicine, “bends the cost curve.” No es verdad. Only one of three things happens when insurance denies coverage for preventative care:

• I buy the medication anyhow, which is still a systemic health-care cost, and probably more expensive because it’s not covered in a group plan.

• I don’t buy the medication, I get malaria, it’s covered, and the insurance company (read: other premium payers and myself) pay much, much more to treat me for the rest of my life (oh, and by the way, I would have malaria and be less productive, further hurting the economy).

• I don’t buy the medication, I get malaria, it’s not covered, and I end up sticking the taxpayer with a big bill for treatment in emergency rooms the rest of my life (oh, and by the way, I would still have malaria, miss work and hurt the economy).

Fortunately, I’m pretty responsible and I can afford the $72, so I’m going to pay and hopefully not get malaria.

But I guarantee you that there’s some young college student who is going to skip out on the $72 expense, thinking “I’m healthy, I have mosquito repellant, and I can’t really afford $72 right now.” Or, human nature being what it is, “I might be able to afford the $72, but I’d rather spend it on something else.”

I know what some curmudgeons are thinking right now: “Then it serves them right if they get malaria.” Well, that’s a shoddy response when you’ve just given a healthy young person an expensive disease for the rest of his or her life – that we’ll all end up paying for one way or another – simply because no one at the insurance company gives a damn about the actual health of their customers.

Even if only one in 100 people is irresponsible – and we all know that number is higher in real life – to have that one person get malaria is going to be far more expensive than covering preventative medication. The current system bends the cost curve, but in the wrong direction – up.

Even they know

It’s certainly not the fault of the nice woman at the CIGNA call center who could only say, “Sorry, it’s not covered,” so I politely asked to speak with a manager. When I finally talked to a manager, he agreed that it would make sense to have preventative medicine covered, but that “travel medication” wasn’t covered.

OK, I understand I’m not going to the Dominican for work, but if I snap my Achilles tendon playing hoops, it probably wasn’t for work, either. The point of health coverage isn’t just to keep people healthy on the job, it’s to keep people healthy regardless of where they are and to treat them if they become ill. And to incent good behavior like taking preventative medicine.

Refreshingly, the manager agreed with me, and said he’d already sent dozens of e-mails to “the powers that be” asking them to cover preventative medicines. But, he said, there was nothing he could do because it wasn’t covered and “the powers that be” weren’t going to change.

Which got me to thinking:  If the insurance company had any interest in my health, or in the health of any of its customers, or in long-term health costs, it would have gladly covered preventative care, and it would be a basic part of every plan.

Different, in a bad way

In any other developed country in the world, and even some less-developed countries, plans would have covered preventative medicine because it helps keep citizens healthier and keeps long-term costs down.

The people who run the health systems in other countries actually have an incentive to have their people be healthy and to bend the long-term cost curve downward. That’s because, ultimately, the people elect the leaders of those health-care systems.

When you put the bulk of the power and decision-making in the hands of for-profit insurance companies that don’t care a whit about the health of their customers or about long-term financial health of the entire system (beyond their next quarterly reports), you get a sicker population and higher costs. That’s exactly what for-profit insurance has given America. Talking to CIGNA this week, that big picture has never been clearer.

I just hope Representatives Teague, Heinrich and Luján decide to stand for smart, cost-effective, commonsense health care instead of propping up the current, broken system.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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Carter Bundy

One part of our state budget negotiations that has drawn almost no attention from the media or from advocates is that the bulk of revenues being discussed are scheduled to be phased out. They’re being called “temporary.”

Keeping that “T” word in revenue legislation would be an enormous mistake, both fiscally and politically.

Why box ourselves in now?

Even if we want to end some of the revenue enhancements once the economy picks up – and I think there’s a very strong case for doing so for less progressive taxes like GRT or reinstatement of the food tax – why would anyone lock it in now?

Remember, we’re going to be losing hundreds of millions in federal stimulus money during the next two years. Ending revenues automatically without any real-world circuit-breaker is going to make that cliff insurmountably high and requiring at least a partial re-raising of the revenues they called “temporary.”

Setting themselves up

There’s a good chance they wouldn’t be able to re-raise revenue, leading to a further decimation of our state services, health care, public safety and education. Even if they could re-raise revenue, imagine the political blowback from reneging on their pledge of “temporary.”

Politically, it’s especially short-sighted for the Senate to make revenue “temporary.” They’re not up for election this cycle, but if the sunset of revenues puts them in a position of having to re-raise revenue or make even deeper cuts in ’11 and ’12, they’re unnecessarily putting themselves at political risk.

It’s going to get partisan

Let’s face it:  Ideological considerations aside, the state Republican Party has decided to follow a combined legislative/electoral strategy of opposing virtually every single new revenue source available.

And it’s not because government is more bloated than it used to be. Remember, we’ve already lopped $700 million off the state budget and have fewer employees per capita than at any time in at least the last 16 years – and that includes all of the GOP Johnson administration. That’s pretty damn lean, but there are as yet no Republicans voting for a balanced approach of roughly equal revenues to match our $700 million worth of cuts.

The House Republicans even voted in lockstep against the simplest of proposals: to collect taxes already due to the state from out-of-staters. I mean, whatever happened to the idea of enforcing current laws? (To their credit, Senate Republicans realized what a no-brainer this was and voted for it).

So Dems have to govern responsibly and alone, with a mix of cuts and revenues. The GOP will come after them this November whether the increases are temporary or not, and their political allies will mock Dems for calling the revenue “temporary.” It’s already happening every day on talk radio and in conservative columns.

A defense that works

The Dems’ best defense is going to be that we needed a balanced approach, because our necessary, basic services were already cut to the leanest levels in 16 years and a cuts-only approach unfairly hurt kids, seniors and public safety.

As polls and two referenda in Oregon show, if given a choice between progressive revenue enhancements and further cuts to Medicaid, education, public safety and other core services, voters are supportive of more revenue.

One of those polls showed that by a 65 percent to 31 percent margin, voters in New Mexico favor increasing the marginal rate on income over $250,000.

Interestingly, when one tells the voter that the increase is only temporary, the numbers move only by the tiniest amount: 65 percent in favor to 30 percent opposed. Why doesn’t “temporary” help?

Those who favor adding some progressivity to our income tax for fairness argue that “fair” should never be temporary. Opponents of the tax are opposed to any increase, and don’t believe that it will be temporary anyhow. “Temporary” is not a defense.

What reason is left?

If there’s no political advantage to calling something “temporary,” and there is a significant chance (read: virtual certainty) that we won’t have enough of an economic recovery to make up for both the disappearing federal funds and a phase out of this new revenue, why on earth would anyone make any of these increases temporary?

It’s not just fiscally irresponsible to sunset revenue, it’s a big political blunder: Politicians will get zero credit – none – from voters for making revenue temporary.

By contrast, if the taxes are not temporary, then when the economy does turn around, the Legislature will be in a position to take political credit for passing tax cuts, just like they did in 2003.

Hopefully Democratic strategists will point out the no-win nature of making the revenues temporary, and economists will point out the danger of boxing the state into more deficits. Sound fiscal policy and smart political strategy are aligned here, and House and Senate Dems alike would serve the public and themselves well by eliminating the “T” word during the special session.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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Carter Bundy

What an amazing Super Sunday… underdogs, fighting against the odds, finally getting the praise and recognition they deserve. A nation rooting for blue-collar guys working their hearts out.

Of course, I could be talking about the New Orleans Saints, but the above applies equally to the superb new CBS show “Undercover Boss.” A COO or CEO goes undercover to find out how his front-line workers perform, what their working conditions and pay are like, and what it’s like to work for the company.

I watched “Undercover Boss” with an outspoken, unabashed conservative and two middle-of-the-road friends. Each of us was moved by the stories of the workers being understaffed, underpaid, and facing inflexible workplace mandates.

Conservative, liberal, moderate – all of us – and even the COO on TV, saw value in watching front-line workers up close. Everyone had a better appreciation of just how hard most Americans work every day, and how meager the rewards are for those on the front lines. The COO concluded that he needed to change the way WMI does business, from workplace rules to compensation to getting ideas from the front lines.

Some cabinet secretaries go out into the field and try to learn from the workers on the front lines. I’m sure many good secretaries do this, but I know for certain that CYFD Secretary Dorian Dodson goes the extra mile to understand the day-to-day conditions at her facilities and to learn from her employees. Her only advice was that it be done for a full day, not an hour-long drop-by.

Shrunken government

The main question this legislative session is how much of our deficit should be remedied by cuts, and how much should be solved with revenues. Understanding our current levels of government is critical to answering that question.

Here’s a shocking stat that can be garnered by doing a Freedom of Information Act Request: On Dec. 31, 2002 — the last day of libertarian Gov. Gary Johnson’s eight-year run — there were 22,933 employees in all branches of state government (excluding education). As of Feb. 1, 2010, that total number of employees had grown to 24,715. Big increase, right? Not when you consider our population growth.

According to the U.S. Census and UNM’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, we will have grown from about 1.86 million residents on January 1, 2003 (Census data) to 2.16 million residents on July 1, 2010 (from BBER — the Census hasn’t done a 2010 projection recently that I could find) — an increase of about 16.3 percent over a 7.5-year period.

The state now has one employee for every 87 residents. Under libertarian Gary Johnson? One employee for every 81 residents. The current state government is leaner than it was eight years ago, and if you look at classified, front-line employees, the difference is even more dramatic — classified employees are about 15 percent lower per capita than they were at the end of Johnson’s term.

Anti-government zealots who recently penned a study for the Rio Grande Foundation noted that New Mexico is 5th in public employees per private employee. How is that a relevant measure? It’s precisely because New Mexico is a poor state that there are fewer private-sector jobs, and also a higher demand for government services.

But let’s humor Grover Norquist’s acolytes and ignore, for a moment, the fallacy of their measurements. Who else is in the top 10 states in public employees per private employees?

In order, with dominant party (by last three presidential elections): South Dakota (Republican); North Dakota (Republican); Wyoming (Republican); Montana (Republican, mixed at state level); Idaho (Republican); Utah (Republican); Kansas (Republican); and Washington (Democratic).

What do they all have in common, other than 8 of the 10 are Republican bastions? They’re all western and rural. Is it a coincidence? Of course not. Does it mean Republicans are all about big government? No. Does it mean rural people believe in waste? Nope. Is there something in the water west of the Mississippi that makes legislators and governors over-grow government? Not at all.

Still think there’s meaning? California is lowest in state employees per capita. Does that make California a smaller government state than Utah or Idaho or Wyoming? No. It means they have economies of scale by being both highly populated, dense, and with good concentrations.

Lean

New Mexico has a low population, large land mass, and also has low concentrations of population. Even Nevada, with a similar population and land mass, has far more “efficient” concentrations than New Mexico because about 95 percent of Nevadans live in two metro areas: Las Vegas and Reno/Sparks.

We’re as lean as we’ve been in a long, long time. The private sector’s demands on state government are as big as they’ve been in decades. We’ve cut thousands of positions and are smaller than under even a libertarian administration.

I hope legislators on both sides of the aisle start to acknowledge how trim our state government has become and work toward a balanced approach to filling our budget gap.

If they don’t believe the numbers, maybe they’ll consider putting a request in to a cabinet secretary to be an undercover worker, or at least to shadow workers, for a day. Just like the COO of WMI, my guess is they’ll be surprised at just how lean and hard-working our state employees are.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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The Roundhouse in Santa Fe (Photo by Peter St. Cyr)

While there will be disagreements over how to close the budget gap in the next few weeks, that gap can be made considerably smaller just by enforcing existing laws and closing loopholes

Despite population growth of over 10 percent, the State of New Mexico has fewer classified state employees than at the end of libertarian Gary Johnson’s last term as governor. Not just per capita, but in raw numbers.

Presumably, a good libertarian like Johnson wouldn’t grow government faster than the population, so assuming he didn’t, that means classified state employment is at its lowest level in at least 16 years.

Are there more exempt employees than before? Yes. But there’s a way to thin that herd without layoffs, which I’ll discuss below.

The big point is that, for the vast majority of state government, we’re lean. Leaner than under the Johnson years. We’ve already cut $700 million from state government, and state employees have already given up about three weeks’ worth of pay. That’s a big deal to people with an average income of just over $30,000 per year.

There’s no way — none — to continue using a cuts-only approach without directly hurting New Mexicans even further. The good news is that there are a variety of sensible revenue ideas that don’t hurt economic recovery. The bad news is that there’s substantial disagreement between representatives, senators, and the administration on which ones are best.

Carter Bundy

Fortunately, because we haven’t paid much attention to revenue over the last few decades, there is some low-hanging fruit just waiting to be grabbed.

Revenue without taxes

Conservatives like to say that government should be run like a business. Leaving aside that government provides critical services that should never be designed to turn a profit, at a minimum we can all agree that any good business would first collect the revenues that are owed to it.

There are two bills that would enable us to collect revenues already owed: The first is Speaker Lujan’s bill to require withholding on out-of-state workers who earn their money in New Mexico.

Even the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and the Association of Commerce and Industry saw this as an obvious way to bring in more revenue without increasing taxes, and testified in support of House Bill 120.

And it has the added benefit of collecting revenue from out-of-staters who owe us the money and have been skipping out on their obligations.

Combined reporting is more complicated, but follows the same principle: if you make a profit in New Mexico, you have to pay taxes just like New Mexico businesses. It’s that simple.

Every other western state with a corporate tax has combined reporting, and the horror stories told by the talented, clever, powerhouse corporate lobbyists in those states never came true.

Legislators in every other western state succeeded in ending the corporate shell game and bringing tax fairness for in-state businesses. Why does New Mexico have to be the one state that gets trampled on?

A third way to generate revenue without raising any tax rates is to end the loophole that allows itemizers to pretend their income is lower this year simply because they paid their taxes last year.

Only four other states allow this fiction, and most of them are looking to end it. Why not us?

Triple play

The lowest of the low hanging fruit has bipartisan support: There is near universal agreement among Republicans and Democrats to end double dipping.

Done right, there will be three major benefits: The general fund may save about $40 million per year, PERA may save hundreds of millions in the next few years, and we can cut the size of the political appointments significantly without layoffs.

There are two ingredients in the recipe for a good double dipping bill:

First, ban all double dipping going forward. Period. If we need to hire someone, we can pay market rates, just like our state did successfully for almost all of its 98-year history.

Second, give current double dippers a year-long phase-out. Ending it immediately would be unfair to many of them, since they’ve planned their family budget for the year (and you can’t blame double dippers for taking advantage — they aren’t breaking the law).

They’ve been on notice for at least two years that double dipping might end. Many are at-will employees anyhow. Giving them until Jan. 1, 2011 to choose either retirement or full-time paychecks seems a pretty generous compromise. They don’t have to leave their jobs. They don’t have to give up their pension. They just can’t do have both simultaneously.

Sure, there will be lawsuits. But I can’t find anything in the federal or state constitution guaranteeing the right to get both checks at the same time.

The beauty of the phase-out for current double dippers is that it is fair and it will also lead many of the political exempt employees to choose retirement.

If half of the state’s 1,200 or so double dippers chose retirement, and even if we had to fill half of those positions, that would mean a reduction of 300 employees — many of them high- and mid-level political appointees.

That’s tens of millions of dollars in general fund savings without laying off a single worker. Further, most of the new vacancies would come at the upper levels of government, which wouldn’t hurt nearly as much as further cuts to already-depleted front-line services citizens expect.

While there will be disagreements over how to close the budget gap in the next few weeks, that gap can be made considerably smaller just by enforcing existing laws and closing loopholes.

Grab the low-hanging fruit first.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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Carter Bundy

The tragedy of the Haitian earthquake has generated a large outpouring of support from New Mexicans. If you’ve been thinking about doing something but haven’t had the chance yet, here’s another link to the Red Cross: redcross.org.

You can also simply text “Haiti” to 90999 and your phone company will donate $10 to the Red Cross and add it to your next bill (it’s not a scam — the Red Cross Web site asks people to do this). If you can afford more, of course, simply go to the site itself.

Beyond immediate monetary contributions, there are long-term changes that need to be made in Haiti, most of which involve a good, proactive government.

This is no time for politicking and proselytizing, and shame on Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson for their opportunistic, bizarre use of the catastrophe to bash Democrats and Catholics, respectively.

While politicking over Haiti is wrong, there’s nothing wrong with looking at why a 7.0 quake in Haiti kills 100,000 or more Haitians while a similar temblor in similarly dense Los Angeles kills only a handful of Americans.

Haiti: What government?

The main answer? Government regulation, government programs, government infrastructure and government employees.

In America, we have long valued the role of creating safety standards and enforcing them. Critics call these rules “anti-business” and they call the good people who enforce them “bureaucrats.”

Nonsense.

The efforts California has made in the last few decades to retrofit buildings have met with resistance and derision from right-wing ideologues and rich corporations who claim that that building codes are stifling.

In reality, that kind of pro-active government regulation is exactly what keeps millions of Angelinos safe every year, because you can be sure the developers and builders weren’t going to quake-proof buildings on their own.

It’s not just our legislators, planners and code enforcement officers who deserve our thanks. In America, we value other public services like 911, police, fire, National Guard and emergency medical care.

Those are all government programs staffed by government employees, and the lack of good public safety, law enforcement and public medical facilities in Haiti are another reason why a horrible tragedy turned catastrophic.

There’s more. Our public agencies and government employees guarantee clean water and efficient, safe waste disposal (solid waste and wastewater alike). The lack of these good government programs in Haiti is contributing to additional disease and death even after the earth has stopped moving.

What government does

Over the course of New Mexico’s upcoming 30-day legislative session , you’ll hear generic anti-government rants from corporations, ideologues and tea partiers, but you’ll almost never hear them say what programs need to be cut.

That’s because when you get into the specifics of what government does, people really like what they get for the money. Especially if there’s accountability and auditing, which there absolutely should be. Here’s where well over 90 percent of our state and local money goes:

• Creation and maintenance of infrastructure like roads, airports and power.

• Law enforcement, including police.

• Other public safety, like fire, emergency medical services and 911.

• The judicial system, including prosecutors, public defenders and judges.

• Corrections (which, with all due respect to the other public servants on this list, is the toughest job in America in my opinion).

• Commonsense regulation and enforcement that ensures safe food, strong buildings and safe roads.

• Clean water in every house in New Mexico.

• Sanitary wastewater and solid waste disposal.

• National Guard.

• Parks, recreation centers and open space.

• Enforcement of laws keeping our air, water and land clean.

• Health care for poor children and the elderly, neither of whom are in a position to pay the full actuarial value of their care by themselves.

• Preventing or stopping child abuse.

• Meager, temporary help to keep the poor or unemployed from becoming homeless or starving to death.

• K-12 education, community colleges, vocational training and universities.

America and New Mexico are much better off because of the things our taxes fund. We should be wary of people who make blanket statements bashing government or the revenue it requires.

God knows that both before and after the earthquake, Haiti would love to have had a generally good government like ours, and they wouldn’t complain about the necessary resources to make it happen.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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The U.S. Capitol building (Photo by Heath Haussamen)

In Washington, 2009 was the year of complicated legislative decisions. Preventing another Great Depression, regulating greenhouse gas emissions and reforming our complex health-care system are all difficult, often involving conflicting, complex policy concerns.

If 2009 was complicated, 2010 can and should be the year of the no-brainer. Here are four upcoming issues with relatively easy solutions, but with some tricky emotional or special interest opposition.

Reform immigration

Good reform punishes criminals, puts undocumented immigrants to the back of the line, brings an underground economy out of the shadows with earned citizenship (not amnesty), and enforces our immigration laws for the first time in decades. Doing so isn’t that complicated.

We also should require basic English proficiency, not because other languages aren’t great (my New Year’s resolution is to put in at least 10 minutes a day on Rosetta Stone Spanish). Rather, we should require basic English proficiency because we’re not doing anyone a favor, least of all immigrants, if we don’t.

The current system is bad for almost everyone, excepting race-baiters and the big agribusiness, construction and hospitality conglomerates.

It’s bad for honest businesses — including those in agriculture, construction and hospitality — because they can’t compete with the unscrupulous employers who prey on immigrants’ desperation by paying them a few bucks an hour.

Carter Bundy

It’s bad for citizens and other legal workers, because flooding the supply side of the labor market with people who will work for half the minimum wage and no benefits reduces everyone else’s compensation.

It’s bad for immigrants, who are far less likely to report things like domestic violence, and who are in no position to ask for help when their employers steal their meager wages.

It’s bad for taxpayers, because we’re not getting the full measure of taxes out of people who use some government-funded services, including water, sewer, roads and schools.

It’s bad for national security and domestic law enforcement, because our not knowing who is here is always an asset to terrorists and criminals.

If done right, immigration reform can end decades of illegal immigration and the nightmares created by our current system of an underground society.

End ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

You say you want to win the war on terror? How about starting by allowing good, patriotic Americans to serve their country with honor? We’ve discharged thousands of American servicemen and women merely for who they love. Many of them, by the way, were our best Arabic translators. Whoops.

This policy is cruel to those patriotic individuals, and also undermines our national security. We need to grow up as a nation and embrace the contributions of gays to our military.

This is a no-brainer. You can dislike gays in your personal and religious life all you want. We’re a free country and I’m not advocating silencing anti-gay thought or speech. Just don’t put our servicemen and women — and innocent civilians — at risk in furtherance of your own personal prejudices.

Allow the option of unions

Obviously this is near and dear to me, but it should be for every working American. Even if you never join a union or never want to, you should respect the rights of others to do so — especially since the benefits that union workers achieve often spill over into the non-unionized workforce.

The central element of any labor reform is to restore the rights of workers to join a union democratically without fear of losing their jobs. America was at its strongest when unions were at their strongest. At a minimum we should allow workers that choice again.

Revamp trade policies

Perhaps the single most important policy change we need is in trade. Creating a level playing field for American businesses and workers is another no-brainer to help our economy.

It’s hard for our home-grown companies and workers, union or not, to have a decent standard of living when we stack the deck against them by incenting those companies to move to places that readily abuse workers and the environment.

Our current trade agreements encourage (who’s kidding who — they virtually force) companies to move to countries that have no environmental standards, no consumer protections, no health and safety rules for workers, and no basic human rights (like a ban on child labor).

Trade has great potential to make everyone wealthier. But if trade agreements don’t set minimum standards, they actually lower the quality of life in both the developed and developing world.

We’ve lost millions of good manufacturing jobs to China, creating misery here, but it’s miserable over there, too. They have skyrocketing cancer rates caused largely by Western factories and their byproducts. This link gives the visual evidence backing up what any economist will tell you was a natural outgrowth of unbalanced trade policies.

Setting minimum standards for trade is a populist, commonsense idea that should unite conservatives and liberals alike. With it, we can start to reverse our long-term economic slide.

All it takes

If Dems can find the backbone to support these reforms that benefit almost all Americans, and the GOP can find the decency to resist fear-mongering against workers, gays and immigrants, 2010 can be a golden year of bipartisan reform.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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Carter Bundy

As 40 Republicans and one Joe Lieberman dig in their heels to protect big insurance companies, it’s becoming clear that health reform is going to be watered down significantly.

There’s one major exception though, and it’s called “guaranteed issue.” If you’re uninsured, or are ill and can’t get the treatment you need now, in the future you will be able to get coverage and treatment.

Guaranteed issue victory

The House and Senate bills both have guaranteed issue, which goes a long way toward solving our national access problems.

Not only will almost all Americans have the security of coverage and treatment, but that security will enable people to pursue the jobs they want instead of being stuck in the job they have for fear of losing coverage.

That freedom means significant efficiency gains in the national labor market, something conservatives and business should embrace as enthusiastically as workers’ advocates.

There is a moral hazard problem associated with guaranteed issue, though. If people are guaranteed coverage even after they become sick, most rational consumers would never pay anything into the system until they become sick and are about to incur hefty bills.

That’s why the individual mandate is so important. Fortunately, the House and Senate bills do have an individual mandate, so the system won’t collapse when we guarantee insurance for all.

Paying for guaranteed issue

In turn, the individual mandate requires subsidies for lower-income and middle class Americans. One of the open questions about the current bills is whether we help make coverage affordable for the middle class by taxing, ironically, middle-class and lower-income workers with good benefits.

Most of these “Cadillac plan” workers make in the $20,000-$50,000 range, and many of them gave up raises to get decent coverage. Others fall into the Cadillac category simply because of a pre-existing condition, or because they work at a small company. Taxing the middle class and lower-income workers to subsidize other middle class and lower-income workers makes absolutely no sense.

The alternative is to apply a surtax to the millionaires who have gotten trillions in tax breaks over the last decade, almost all of whom have absurdly good health coverage. Seems like a pretty easy choice, both from a policy perspective and politically.

Setting standards

Minimum standards of coverage are an important aspect of guaranteed issue, and the House and Senate bills include them. By combining guaranteed issue and minimum standards, for the first time in American history, we’re poised to finally join the long list of countries whose citizens can get care when they’re sick.

By contrast, the libertarian proposal to allow cross-state shopping to increase “competition” merely means insurance companies will offer even less complete plans than they already do.

Blown chances on cost

Despite being on the verge of a major access victory with guaranteed issue and minimum standards, there are dozens of changes that should be made to our health care system that aren’t even on the table right now.

Here are four examples of how the obstructionist Republicans (plus Lieberman) and the often-too-timid Dems seem to have blown opportunities to start seriously containing costs:

• Delivery overhaul - The most glaring omissions from current proposals are systemic changes in how care is delivered. No one will entertain changes to our fee-for-service structure that often encourages costly treatment at the expense of cheaper (and less profitable) preventative care, early diagnosis or less costly treatment alternatives.

• Public option - Another opportunity to rein in costs is the public option, but that appears to be facing its own death panel in the Senate.

For all the Republican lip service about fiscal responsibility, they’ve consistently opposed the one piece of reform — a public option — that would have introduced real competition and lower prices in the private insurance market. But those private insurance company contributions don’t come without strings.

• Smart tort reform - Another critical cost-containment measure that is being left out is tort reform. Democrats won’t bring it up, and the Republicans’ simplistic approach of damages caps isn’t the answer. Caps haven’t been terribly effective in states like Texas, and caps remove an important incentive to practice safe medicine.

The tort changes we need give more protection to providers if they follow evidence-based standards of diagnosis and care. Dems should show leadership by forcing trail attorneys and providers to come together to fashion sensible reform to protect good-faith, talented providers while punishing negligent and reckless providers.

• The other elephant in the room - Beyond the obstructionist GOP, there’s another elephant in the room: No one is talking about real cost controls surrounding end-of-life care. That’s because proposals to do something about spending in the last six months of life (when about 2/3 of all health care costs are incurred) get called “death panels” by the same conservatives who hypocritically fight against Medicare.

We all know there’s wasteful end-of-life spending, but it’s untouchable. At a minimum, Congress should have the courage to make living wills mandatory.

Bottom lines

Don’t be fooled: Washington — especially Senate Republicans and Lieberman — punted on addressing the costs of health care.

The current watered-down Senate proposals do only one big thing: by including guaranteed issue, they solve most of the access problems facing the uninsured and the insured who get sick.

Despite the resistance to cost reforms by 40 Republican senators and one independent from Connecticut, guaranteed issue is still a major access victory worth keeping.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.

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