Building a better future for New Mexico families

How is your family doing? Is it doing better than it was 30 years ago? You and I and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics know that compared to 30 years ago, the price of everything has more than doubled. Meanwhile, over that time, the recurring state budget has grown more than fivefold. I often hear state agencies say that we need to spend more to solve our problems. During my time in the Legislature, through increased spending, we have made college essentially free for most New Mexicans, expanded Medicaid so that more New Mexican’s have health care coverage, shifted to universal child care, and most recently, during two special sessions, dedicated hundreds of millions to our food support program SNAP to address federal changes coming out of Washington, D.C. Is your family doing five times better than it was 30 years ago? Neither is mine.

Why not? How can we lift up all New Mexicans to give them a fair start? How do we ensure the money intended to help those most in need is providing the right supports for them to be successful? These are the questions I am discussing with constituents, staff and other legislative members as we head into our next legislative session. On a per-person basis, New Mexico already spends more than just about any other state to support our families, including on income support, education, health care coverage, food security — the list goes on and on. 

Still, over the last few months, state agencies have been telling us that we need to put more even money into problems we are facing. Of course, funding is necessary, but government spending alone isn’t going to get us across the finish line. So what will? The keys to moving forward are going to be prioritization, coordination, outreach and accountability to ensure those most in need are getting the services taxpayers are funding.

Legislative Finance Committee staff have released research that put these keys more into focus. Prioritization: When looking at child care programming, staff found, as we have increased investment to expand enrollment, fewer of our poorest families are being served. We need to prioritize the families most in need. Coordination: LFC research has found it is just as hard to get a doctor’s appointment today as it was years ago despite increased pay for Medicaid providers intended to increase the number of providers available to everyone. Further, the companies hired by the state to manage care for Medicaid enrollees do not keep up-to-date lists of providers who serve Medicaid patients. Moreover, LFC has found people who are eligible for benefits often do not apply because they do not know about the program, do not know they qualify, or assume they are not eligible even though they are. We need to coordinate with state agencies to implement compacts that will allow more out-of-state doctors to operate in New Mexico and ensure agencies are providing accurate information to connect families to services. Accountability: The Legislature tracks agency performance on certain measures, but too often that information does not make it to the public. LFC staff is working to put these metrics into dashboards for better transparency, and we all need to hold agencies accountable for their performance. On that, our communities need to come together to determine their needs and communicate those needs to agencies. We need to find out the specifics on why our communities cannot connect to the services they need. And we all need to hold the government accountable for the taxpayer dollars they receive to make sure we are achieving the goals we are setting for healthy successful families.

As the Legislature prepares to build next year’s budget, we must make sure that we are uplifting the most in need and uplifting our local communities to give everyone the tools they need to access the services they need so that our families can do better in the coming years. The good news is that our state finances are in better shape than most other states, and for the most part, our local government agencies are doing better financially than they ever have. Even though our recent revenue projections have declined, we are still growing while other states are not, and they are scrambling to figure out how to prevent cutting budgets. But we won’t spend our way to victory; it will take all of us working together to make sure we are all doing better tomorrow and over the next 30 years.

Campos, a Democrat from Las Vegas who holds a doctorate in educational leadership and a master’s in guidance and counseling, has been a member of the Senate since 1991 and a member of the Senate Finance Committee since 1997. Campos is also a member of the Legislative Finance, Revenue Stabilization and Tax Policy, and Water and Natural Resources committees. He has served as the senator from District 8 in northern New Mexico since 1991 and has served as president of Luna Community College, superintendent of the Las Vegas City Schools, and mayor of Santa Rosa.