The numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau and are compiled by the Tax Foundation, a Washington D.C. think tank that calls for “fundamental tax reform and restoring America’s global tax competitiveness” and is considered right of center politically.New Mexico saw a 41.8 percent increase in direct state spending in real dollars per capita from 2001 to 2011.
Only Louisiana, Wyoming, New Jersey, Arizona and New Hampshire saw bigger increases. Every state saw escalations and only one — Alaska (at 8.9 percent) — saw its spending numbers go up less than 10 percent.
New Mexico’s numbers did not surprise Paul Gessing, the president of the Rio Grande Foundation, the free-market think tank based in Albuquerque that champions low tax rates. “Spending really exploded during the heyday of the Richardson Administration (when the national and state economies were strong prior to 2008),” Gessing said in an e-mail. “And, while Richardson really opened the taps to bigger spending, that overspending ended in New Mexico and elsewhere in the economic downturn.”
Bill Jordan of New Mexico Voices for Children, a nonprofit in based in Albuquerque considered left of center, said of the map, “The real question is not whether spending is growing or not, but whether it is meeting basic needs. More
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