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.
A debate has erupted in Maryland over higher taxes levied against the state’s wealthiest residents, according to Stateline.org. It’s of interest here in New Mexico because raising income tax rates on the state’s wealthiest residents will be a major issue in the coming January legislative session in Santa Fe as state lawmakers wrestle with a projected $1 billion budget shortfall for next year.
At issue in Maryland: Where did 2,000 residents with taxable income over $1 million go in the space of a year.
The debate was ignited after the Maryland state comptroller found that the number of state residents with net taxable income of $1 million or more declined from 7,067 in 2007 to 4,910 last year — the lowest number in four years, Stateline says, quoting from a Baltimore Sun story.
Maryland Republicans have responded by theorizing that the missing millionaires fled the state to escape its high tax rates, saying this is what happens when you tax the wealthy.
Here’s an excerpt from the Stateline article:
While the Maryland comptroller’s analysis makes no conclusions about the reasons behind the sharp drop in millionaires — though everyone acknowledges that the recession played a big role — it does note that 542 millionaires who filed returns in Maryland in 2007 did not do so last year. “That means they either died, left the state or didn’t file a return,”
Others, however, have come to a different conclusion, Stateline notes.
At least one study, however, has concluded that there is no evidence that Maryland’s millionaires are leaving because of higher taxes. “Where have all of Maryland’s millionaires gone?” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy asked in May. “Nowhere — they’re probably just not millionaires anymore.”
Maryland, it’s interesting to note, had the highest median household income of all states in 2008, at $70,500, nearly $30,000 more than New Mexico’s $41,500 median household income.
In Arizona, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio leads a field of potential GOP gubernatorial candidates, reports the East Valley Tribune. The paper, quoting from a Rasmussen Reports poll, says a head-to-head race between incumbent Republican Gov. Jan Brewer and presumptive Democratic nominee Terry Goddard would result in her ouster. But Arpaio has more support among Arizoans.
Arpaio, as you may recall, has garnered international media attention for his aggressive efforts against illegal immigration. The East Valley Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s highest honor, for its five-part series in 2008 that examined how Arpaio’s concentrated campaign against illegal immigration affected overall public safety. The report found slower response times, a declining arrest rate and excessive overtime costs, among other things.
The Tribune addresses that issue in the story about the governor’s race, saying:
Arpaio has gained statewide attention for his high-profile “crime suppression sweeps,” sweeps the sheriff has acknowledged have as at least part of their goal to apprehend those not in the country legally. And Arpaio has continued those sweeps even after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security rescinded the agreement it had with him to let his deputies check the legal status of those they contact.
That stance has not hurt his popularity: 64 percent of those questioned said they back Arpaio’s efforts to “work around federal law” about who is empowered to detain illegal immigrants.
Jumping to my native state, state prisoners in Georgia are clogging local jails, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The number of state-sentenced prisoners being housed in county jails across the state jumped from 3,278 in January 2008 to 5,277 a year later, according to a report issued by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, the paper reports.
New Mexico knows something about this issue.
Officials from Bernalillo County, New Mexico’s largest lobbied state lawmakers last year and earlier this year in the hopes of expanding the county’s taxing authority to help raise millions of dollars for the Metropolitan Detention Center. The jail houses 2,700 inmates, 400 of whom were state prisoners in November 2008.
The efforts by Bernalillo county officials highlight a perennial struggle at the New Mexico Legislature that pits counties against the state in funding operations of local jails. Funding local jails is made all the more expensive because the local detention centers often warehouse state prisoners, county advocates say. Estimates have put the costs to counties at $26 million to warehouse state prisoners. In 2007 a bill that would have given counties across the state the ability to expand taxing authority to pay for jail operations failed.
Meanwhile in the Midwest, home sales surged in Ohio, and nationwide, in October — signs of a big-time recovery? Not so much, say realtors, who attribute the surge to a federal tax credit for first-time home buyers, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
