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From Governing’s New Mexico
Capital planning is a virtual oxymoron in New Mexico. It would be hard to figure out a more fractious approach to making long-term public investments, even if you spent a lot of time thinking about it. What the state does is this: The governor, the House and the Senate each get an equal piece of the capital-funding pie. Those monies then are spent to garner political goodwill, with no coordination or statewide blueprint. The result is that many capital projects are chronically underfunded, leading to construction delays or the abandonment of projects altogether. 
“There are a number of areas without basic infrastructure needs: toilets, running water, electricity,” says Robert Apodaca, director of the state’s new Capital Projects Division. “If that’s a problem in one legislator’s district, he’s going to say, ‘I’m just one legislator, and there’s just no way I can fund that on my own.’ ” State leaders aren’t oblivious to the problem, and some positive, if relatively minor, efforts are being made. Last May, a Capital Projects Division was finally created in the Department of Finance. Apodaca, who heads that office, says his goal is at least to get the governor and legislators to agree on what New Mexico’s capital priorities are. “We hope that a portion of these funds can be used for statewide projects,” he says. “That would be more of a coordinated approach to how this money is allocated.”
A similar lack of organization plagues the state’s personnel office, where poor HR systems software has thwarted any possibility of statewide workforce planning. “We have trouble getting even the most basic information out of our system,” says Dianna DeJarnette in the State Personnel Office. Some workforce reports, she says, “are done by hand, literally, or they just use their best guess.” The state has approved funding for a new HR information system, but it won’t be brought on line until July 2006. Until it is, says DeJarnette, any statewide workforce planning efforts will just have to wait. Given so many serious obstacles, New Mexico’s recent efforts to develop a statewide focus on agency performance and accountability are all the more impressive. In 2003, Governor Bill Richardson initiated a top-to-bottom performance review of state programs; all agencies are now expected to report their performance on an annual basis, and 15 have been singled out for quarterly reporting. A new database now being implemented will track developments on a continual basis. Each performance measure is flagged as green, blue or red, indicating that progress on that measure is either on target, completed or deficient. “On any given day, you can see what’s going on in regards to performance,” says state budget director Dona Wilpolt-Cook. Richardson is the head cheerleader for performance measurement in his state, and he brandishes his performance pom-pons at every opportunity. Last year, he personally developed goals for the Tourism Department that included measures for boosting international tourism, increasing rural marketing, and creating a state film museum. “It’s very unusual for a governor to be so involved,” says Wilpolt-Cook. “This governor is very performance-driven.” Unlike most states, New Mexico has the luxury of instituting these accountability changes in a time of fiscal bounty: Oil and natural gas taxes are keeping the treasury so flush that taxes have been cut in each of the past two years. Of course, those tax cuts may be difficult to support when mineral prices decline and revenues follow. Even with its relatively broad sales tax — which applies to many services as well as goods — the state is one of the poorest in the nation, and it supports standard services at only modest levels. But that’s all the more reason to cheer on the governor and his performance-based efforts. When the time does come to cut budgets, the information now being gathered will prove its importance.
Copyright © 2005, Congressional Quarterly, Inc. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Governing, City & State and Governing.com are registered trademarks of Congressional Quarterly, Inc. |
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