The Week in Review

In an article that ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican we learned that the twenty-four positions in the “Public Relations” department of the governor’s office have been eliminated. Apparently, unlike her predecessor, Martinez is more confident her constituents will know whether or not she is doing her job without employing an army of fifty-one people on the payroll to explain things to them.

With a strong consensus in Santa Fe that the Special Session is slow moving, Representative Brian Egolf decided to offer his views on the process. It would seem tht Egolf resents the fact that most of the GOP was growing tired of standing around while Ben Lujan and Michael Sanchez bottled up all legislation and dominated re-districting. Accordingly, Egolf decided to quote from the book of Matthew in the Bible on the floor of the House. We actually think the Book of Job would have been more appropriate for the GOP, but what the hell.

Several news stories exposing the horrific operating record of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions surfaced this week. First, Senate Democrats accused Governor Martinez of engaging in “risky business” because she wants to tap into state reserves to replenish the funds the Workforce Solutions Department uses to pay unemployment claims. While the addition of new money is going to have to come from somewhere, apparently some Senators in the Democratic Party find it to be a much less “risky” proposition to simply reach into employer’s reserves rather than those held in Santa Fe by state government.

And it was with a great sense of irony that we ran across a U.S. Department of Labor report on Thursday that showed that New Mexico ranks 3rd amongst all states in improper payments of unemployment claims. According the federal government findings, New Mexico’s Department of Workforce Solutions shells out more than $60 million a year for bogus claims. And of course this gaudy total does not include a claim being paid to a disgraced former state Corrections Department employee who plead guilty to 30 counts of taking bribes. It would seem under current laws in the state if you lose your job because you were stealing from the government, you can simply go to the Department of Work Solutions and get your replacement cash there. Thus far we have not seen a single politician on either side of the aisle call for an immediate and complete overhaul of a state department that discourages work, rewards idleness, and punishes every employer and working person in the entire state. Workforce Solutions? Hardly.

In a story that illustrates why the incentive structures for schools and teachers should be taken away from the government monopoly and put into the hands of the consumers, the state announced plans to check for possible cheating by teachers. It seems that some teachers may be changing student test scores. The state says it will now spend about $70,000 on an "erasure-analysis program" to check for suspiciously high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. Adjusted for inflation, we spend three times as much on the government run education monopoly as we did a few decades ago. And of course we get less for more. Read rest of column here: News New Mexico

The Week in Review