An overwhelming majority [80-88 percent] in the poll said lawmakers must not cut education funding, in order to balance the budget deficit.

Voters [43 percent] also said they would LIKELY NOT VOTE for any lawmaker who votes to cut education funding again.

In the poll, voters said lawmakers should roll back the 2003 state income tax cuts for the wealthiest New Mexicans [$250K or more], and lawmakers should close tax loopholes for out-of-state corporations [Wal Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes don't pay state income taxes on profits earned in NM] in order to balance the budget deficit.

Polled voters also signaled what “revenue generators” they want their lawmakers to pass.

You can read this poll for yourself and draw your own conclusions: http://nm.aft.org/aeaa/index.cfm?action=article…

Unfortunately, the ABQ Journal refused to print the poll results last Oct, even though the Journal owns Research and Polling, Inc. [editors said Journal has policy which doesn't allow it to print other organization's polls].

Had the newspaper been more responsible in reporting the poll findings, lawmakers like Rep. Varela would not be so clueless about what the public wants them to do about the budget deficit [see ABQ Sunday Journal front page story wherein Rep. Varela is quoted].

The Sanderoff poll demonstrates that New Mexico's registered voters aren't as stupid as some think. They know what needs to be done. But, the richest New Mexicans, out-of-state corporations, the Association of Commerce and Industry, ABQ Chamber of Commerce, and ABQ Journal [Journal is exempted by lawmakers from paying taxes on the sale of its newspaper] are stupid to the extreme in their constant pounding for more cuts in public spending. They actually believe more cuts will benefit corporate interests. How foolish.

Corporate/capitalist interests will fight “revenue generating” solutions to the death, as will those lawmakers who represent these interests [specifically, Reps. Varela, Saavedra, Lujan, other leaders of the House, as well as Sens. Jennings, M. Sanchez, John A. Smith and other conservatives in the Senate].

If our lawmakers cut education and public spending again, it will result in more unemployment [last October before they cut spending, 31,000 New Mexicans were unemployed. There are 41,000 New Mexicans out-of-work today]. If they cut spending again, there will be less revenues, and more deficits.

The only hope left to avert continued deficits, cuts, increased unemployment, and economic disaster is the VOTE.

If registered voters will elect new, young, progressive lawmakers who aren't tied to the past, or tied to the richest New Mexicans and corporate interests, then we might be able to jump-start the economic recovery which is so elusive today.

Maybe voters will do what Sanderoff's poll discovered: maybe they will not vote for lawmakers who voted to cut education.

Maybe they will elect new lawmakers come Nov 2010.

All we have left is hope and the VOTE, and that Nov 2010 won't be too late.

JA Ingram, NM Progressive Action

I guess my short-term memory processing wasn't quite as snappy as it could have been. ;-)

Of course the main problem is the over employment and over compensation of state and local government workers in New Mexico. New Mexico employs approximately 26 state and local government employees for every 100 private sector employees. The national average is about 17, that's more than 50% higher. Considering the payroll of all those workers is over $8 BILLION. It seems like a pretty good place to start cutting. The average worker receives about $50,000 in compensation between salary and benefits. Plus the present value of their pension and retiree health benefits is almost $300,000. Since liabilities exceed assets by over $4.5 BILLION in the pension system (not even counting the retiree health care benefits) we need to be cutting down those unfunded liabilities as soon as possible.

A good place to start is higher education. We have 7 public 4 year colleges with 22 campuses by my count. It seems like every city with more than 30,000 people has a college or unviersity. Every one of those means more overhead, more duplication of effort, and more wasted resources.

The Rio Grande Foundation has written several reports on this subject: http://www.riograndefoundation.org/new/articles… This is the elephant in the room that no one is talking about. Billions and Billions in unfunded liabilities that are growing larger all the time.

I agree with legalizing it, but if you think this will solve the budget crisis then you must be smoking, ……. well you know what I am going to say.