Archive for March, 2010

Four months into his tenure as Albuquerque’s mayor, Richard Berry spoke today to around 600 people at the monthly meeting of NAIOP New Mexico, the New Mexico chapter of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. The audience was happy. Standing ovations came at both the start and end of Berry’s presentation.

The occasion was billed as Berry rolling out his economic development pan for Albuquerque. That wasn’t quite the case. He began by saying, “In four months you don’t have the opportunity to do a complete plan.”

After a quick introduction, Berry did a quick hit on the bad news, the money. He entered office with the understanding that the revenue shortage for FY10, the current budget year, was $12 million. The FY10 figure is now $25 million. The FY 11 projection now is for a $66 million deficit. That’s up from $55 million, relatively recently. The upgrading of the shortfall figure results from new state revenue projections, Berry said. That new state forecasts force Albuquerque to reduce revenue estimates suggests that the state’s six percent forecast revenue increase may well be the fantasy suggested by some legislators.

Berry’s offerings mostly seem characterized by good sense, even obviousness. He talked of easing the process for business to become city suppliers, creating an expedited plan review process for a higher price and, eventually, of submitting construction plans electronically.

Step one in all this is a buy-local initiative called Albuquerque First! (Note the exclamation point. The parts of the program came with lots of exclamation points!) Somehow, for Berry, its okay to pay a bit more if something might be purchased locally. In effect Berry, a Republican if apparently not exactly a conservative, has bought the assertion of the left that government spending is good for the economy. That there might be a disconnect between paying higher prices and having less money has slipped notice.

Berry’s example of the virtues of paying higher prices came with police cars, which are not, please note, made in Albuquerque. Some cars were needed, so Berry’s administration arranged to buy them through a local dealer (at a higher prices, yes, only slightly higher, but how much higher not the point) and then to have the police gear added to the cars here.

Berry also endorsed the film subsidies. State money for Albuquerque jobs is good, I guess. For sure on one is perfect. A decent start, though, however cluttered by exclamation points.

The 2009 personal income for each New Mexican, called per capita income, was $32,992. This was a $397, or 1.2%, drop from $33,389 in 2008.  The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which produces the estimates, reminds us, “Per capita personal income is total personal income divided by total midyear population.” The BEA released the income estimates yesterday.

The per capita income ranked 42^nd nationally in 2009 and 43^rd in 2008. Falling below New Mexico in the income rankings are southern states—the usual suspects—and Utah and Idaho. Arizona is a new entrant in the set of states below New Mexico. Arizona’s $32,935 per capita income for 2009 is 43^rd.

 Doing the math backwards and multiplying by the state’s population about around two million leads to an estimated total personal income of 66,336,940 for 2008.

 For 2009, total personal income was 66,304,015. This was a drop of less than one percent from 2008.

Sandoval County was the nation’s 60^th fastest growing county between 2000 and 2009, according to Census Bureau estimates release yesterday. Sandoval County had a population of 125,988 people on July 1, 2009, up 39.1% or 35,404 from the April 1, 2000 population of 90,584. The nation’s fastest growing county, Kendall County in Illinois, nearly doubled its population to 104,821 over the nine years. Pinal County in Arizona was the nation’s second fastest growing county with an 89.7% increase to just over 340,000. Pinal County includes southwest Phoenix and, it seems reasonable to suppose, hordes of foreclosed and half-built homes.

The top six population gainers are six of the seven “urban” counties (urban as in a metro area). The seventh “urban” county, Torrance, lost population as did 16 other counties. The total population of the 17 losers is 306,888, or about 15% of New Mexico’s two million+ population. These 17 concentrate on the east side and in the southwest. To over-generalize about the group, they are agricultural (ranching especially) and resource (mining and forestry) based.

Between 2008 and 2009, four counties had what the bean counters call “negative natural increase,” meaning more people died than were born: Catron, Colfax, Quay and Sierra. For the nine-year period it was six counties with negative natural increase: Catron, De Baca, Harding, Quay, Sierra and Union.

New Metro Area Population figures were released today by the Bureau of Census. About 56% of Albuquerque’s one year growth came from “natural increase,” the excess in the number of births over deaths. About 5,000 people moved to Albuquerque between 2008 and 2009 with about 60% coming from within the United States and the rest from another country.

Las Cruces’ one-year growth was 44% natural increase. Of the 2,807 people who moved to Las Cruces last year, more than three quarters came from within the U.S.

More than 1.3 million people live in the state’s four metro areas. That’s about two thirds of our total population.

In the spirit of the best stuff being at the bottom of the story, here is a paragraph from

a Cibola Beacon (http://cibolabeacon.com) story of March 11.

“Eric Jantz, staff attorney of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center and lead attorney on the appeal, said, ‘So despite the Court’s decision, the people of Crownpoint and Churchrock will continue to resist any attempts to conduct uranium mining in their communities.’”

The story, headlined, “Court Rules in Favor of Uranium Mining,” was about the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upholding a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license for Hydro Resources, Inc., a subsidiary of Uranium Resources, Inc., to mine uranium in Churchrock and Crownpoint on the Navajo Nation in McKinley County.

URI’s planned mine will use in-situ recovery technology which involves injecting water into the rock on one side of the ore deposit and then drawing the water across the deposit where it picks up the uranium and out through wells on the other side of the deposit.

Another court case, at least one, remains outstanding before URI can start work. This case, also before the court of appeals turns on the issue of whether the mine site, a privately owned 160-acre tract, is “Indian country” or truly URI’s property in the sense most of us think about private land. The headline is, “Church Rock Uranium Mining Can’t Start Just Yet.”

According to the New Mexico Independent’s (http://newmexicoindependent.com) March 18 story, “Under U.S. statute, in order to be considered “Indian country,” land has to be included in an Indian reservation, a dependent Indian community or an allotment. In this case, the land is considered part of a dependent Indian community because it is wholly enclosed by the Church Rock Chapter of the Navajo Nation.”

This decision will determine “whether (URI’s) underground injection permit is subject to regulation by the EPA or the New Mexico Environment Department,” the Independent said.

What else, one wonders, does Mr. Jantz have up his sleeve?

The 2009 performance of the New Mexico economy, well publicized here as terrible, was worse than we thought, according to the new jobs report from the Department of Workforce Services. Every year, the estimates from the previous year are benchmarked and revised. “The revisions this year are large and in the downward direction, meaning that job growth was much weaker than originally measured by sample data,” says the DWS release dated today.

The state’s unemployment rate “may be set for further increases in 2010,” DWS says. Indeed. The NM unemployment rate for January, seasonally adjusted, was 8.5%, up from 8.2% in December. This 0.3% percentage point jump is the nation’s largest month-over-month “statistically significant” jump, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released yesterday.

Thus, it wouldn’t be entirely unfair to say that in January, New Mexico had the fastest deteriorating state economy in the nation.

The only good news from DWS is that the annual rate of job decline—3.3% from January 2009 through January 2010—has itself declined.

One other revision is the disappearance from the DWS monthly report of that statement that the state labor picture reached a low point in August and seemed poised for eventual improvement.

In Albuquerque, due to the semester break at the University of New Mexico, state government lost 2,200 jobs from December to January. Las Cruces lost 2,100 state government jobs because of New Mexico State University. These “losses” will be cancelled by “gains” next month.

The year over year figures are what counts. For the four metro areas, the annual government (federal, state, and local) job change picture is: Albuquerque (+700); Las Cruces (+100); Santa Fe and Farmington, both no change.

Eight counties had a not-seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate of more than 10% in January: Luna (an amazing 21.3%); Mora (15.6%); Grant (13%); Torrance (11.3%); Catron (11.3%); San Juan (10.4%), Guadalupe (10.3%); Valencia (10.1%).

Across the state, an estimated 84,855 people were unemployed during January with 56,392 (66% of the total) unemployed in the four metros.

A Democratic senator told me this afternoon that he thought the plan for the day was that the senate would come in, vote for the house stuff, and the house would come in and vote for the senate stuff. Any details would be reconciled and that would be that for the special session.

Every time a party would have a caucus (A caucus is a meeting of the members of one party from either the house or senate), things seemed to unravel even more, I was told. This was about ten hours after the house had worked until 3 AM this morning.

The comments seem to explain my sense, developed from watching the house for an hour around noon today, that no commitment existed to getting the job done. But then why break precedent. After all, it’s been five or six sessions, regular and special, since the legislature got the job done.

The debate I watched was about the general obligation bond measure to be considered by the voters this fall. The matters were trivial, consuming time as the state’s massive deficit continues.

One legislator asked about an Eastern New Mexico University project being moved from to G.O. bond slate from severance tax financing in order to entice more people from Curry County to support the G.O. bond. Apparently this move hadn’t been executed and the legislator asked that it be done.

The second topic was even less important on the scale of things. It had to do with bumping the allocation for a project back to $1.5 million from $350,000. A amendment was proposed. Then Rep. Keith Gardner, Roswell Republican, initiated a discussion about whether the amendment was amending an amendment. (Don’t ask.)

Mostly I celebrate our citizen legislature. Not today.