I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Kate Nash of the Santa Fe New Mexican gives us a story today about another group — this time the American Federation of Teachers New Mexico — calling for a repeal of the 2003 income tax cuts to help the state balance its budget this year.
But Nash writes that Richardson is standing firm in his opposition, insisting the tax cuts are an economic development tool. The 2003 tax cuts lowered the top state income tax rate from 8.2 percent to 4.9 percent. The state phased in the reductions in over several years.
Richardson has basically held the line for weeks against repealing the 2003 tax cuts as a way to address what is projected to be a $441 million shortfall in the state’s budget for the year that ends June 30.
The governor told me the same thing two weeks ago, although he said he was open to looking at closing some tax credits and tax incentives. That openness didn’t extend to incentives the state offers the film industry, however.
“We need to take a look at them, to look to see if some may have outlived their usefulness,” Richardson told me then.
At the time Richardson didn’t specifically name any tax credits or incentives that he’d be open to closing.
Nash quotes a statement from Christine Trujillo in today’s story in which the AFT-NM president says “Personal income tax cuts for the wealthiest New Mexicans, (those with incomes of $295k or more) capital gains tax cuts, and tax loopholes for big out-of-state corporations are costing the state $1 billion a year in education funding. The governor must leave New Mexico with a better legacy and insist the state rid itself of tax breaks which have outgrown their usefulness. Additional tax revenues must be invested in schoolchildren,”
Richardson has said he does not want to cut public schools spending to make up this year’s budget shortfall, a goal some top lawmakers have questioned.
Nash reminds us that the teachers’ organization isn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last, group to call for the repeal of the 2003 tax cuts.
She writes:
New Mexico Voices for Children is among the groups calling for reversal of the tax cuts.
The group’s research director, Gerry Bradley, said those who make the most can most afford to sacrifice.
“Our lowest paid people are being asked, essentially, to make the largest sacrifice, while those who could most afford to sacrifice aren’t being asked to give up anything,” Bradley said last month.
In addition, Nash writes, several Democratic state lawmakers also have suggested Richardson make such a change.
Who knows if the move to repeal the tax cuts will gain momentum? We’ve still got a month or more before the special session scheduled to address this year’s budget shortfall is called into action. And politics, like much of life, is a balancing of competing interests.
So the answer given today by an elected official may change tomorrow, if there’s a dramatic change in the dynamics at play. But at this point the governor appears firm in his opposition to repealing the tax cuts. He likely derives some fortitude from the fact that some top lawmakers agree with him that repealing the 2003 income tax cuts may not make the most economic sense during the recession.
So the repeal of the income tax cuts appear unlikely this year. But politics is a strange, unpredictable business. Stay tuned.
