By MERILEE DANNEMANN
Triple Spaced Again
© 2023 New Mexico News Services

New Mexicans have been singing the refrain “What’s wrong with New Mexico?” for so long we should make it the official state ballad.

Or maybe we could try listening to keen observers who are not stuck in old ways of thinking.

Sen. Bill Tallman, (D-Albuquerque), quoted to me a statement that a fellow senator had made recently on the Senate floor: “New Mexico doesn’t like change, and it doesn’t take risks.”

That has the ring of truth.

Tallman is definitely not “from here”, to use a favorite New Mexico term. He is unaffected by the sentimentality of native New Mexicans and wannabe native New Mexicans.

He’s a career city manager who has run city governments in several states. He is analytic about New Mexico and has introduced legislation to make government work better. Not surprisingly, some of his legislation has been resisted.

For instance, when a top executive is hired for a public position, New Mexico law considers the list of applicants to be a public record. If a news organization (or anyone else) asks for the information, the public entity is required to provide it. Tallman thinks that is preventing the most highly qualified candidates from applying.

The Las Cruces school district just hired a new school superintendent. The news service Source New Mexico published the names of 23 applicants with a paragraph about each one.

It appears Las Cruces made a fine choice. The new superintendent is Ignacio Ruiz, an assistant superintendent for the Clark County School District in Nevada, the fifth largest school district in the nation, with an impressive resume. 

However, the unanswerable question is: Who else might have applied but didn’t?

Tallman has been consulting with Nick Estes, retired former general counsel for the University of New Mexico. Estes noticed that in recent searches for superintendents for the largest districts, none of the applicants were superintendents from districts of comparable size. He thinks a superintendent who already has a job of similar status would not risk applying if the names were to be disclosed, because it would damage the relationship with the community back home.

Estes said 37 states hold applicants’ names confidential and most other states place some limits on what can be disclosed. 

Our law makes an exception for university presidents. Only the names of finalists — at least five — are required to be published. Tallman’s recent Senate Bill 63 would apply a similar rule to all public institutions. 

SB 63 passed the Senate comfortably but died in the House.

It was opposed by my friends in the journalism community, who in my opinion are putting an inflexible position on open records ahead of the goal of excellence. 

Tallman didn’t have better luck attempting to reform our goofy capital outlay process. That’s the process where legislators earmark more than $1 billion every year on dozens of little projects instead of a few big ones that would have statewide benefit. 

Tallman’s bill, SB 186, proposed to establish a capital outlay interim committee composed of legislators and appropriately qualified public members, which would set priorities for the billion-plus dollars. A different approach to the same issue was in SB 197, with other sponsors. Neither bill passed.

On the capital outlay issue, there is more widespread recognition that we’re behind the times and changes are needed. This change – whether Tallman’s approach or another one – will probably batter its way through the Legislature in the next few years.

Tallman is also working on procurement reform and other matters that can only be appreciated by policy nerds like me.

So many of us – me included – are tired of singing that old refrain about New Mexico’s bottom position on the national stage. It’s worth more listening to people who have been somewhere else. 

Contact Merilee Dannemann through www.triplespacedagain.com.