2012 Legislative Platform
| February 1, 2012
2012 Legislative Platform
The New Mexico Green Chamber of Commerce believes state government can and should play a critical role in helping our business community recover from the national recession and begin hiring workers. With chapters in Las Cruces, Silver City, Albuquerque, Taos and Santa Fe, our members have identified several priority areas, which they believe will help their small businesses grow and succeed. These include: Thinking Local First, Leveling the Playing Field for New Mexico companies and small businesses, Fostering Entrepreneurship, Open and Ethical Government, and Advancing a Clean Energy Economy.
Thinking Local First
The NM Green Chamber of Commerce believes in Thinking Local First. New Mexico’s small businesses are not asking for hand-outs, but rather strategic assistance that helps them hire New Mexicans and build their businesses and works together to create an educated home-grown workforce.
We support tax credits targeted to helping New Mexico companies hire additional workers and increase their wages. We also support affordable incentives that promote the hiring of veterans and state university graduates, which are two important groups experiencing high-unemployment. We support the investment of state capital-outlay dollars into projects that create jobs in our long-suffering construction sector. We also support a tax deferment for companies who make critical new capital investment into their operations, which is a clear demonstration of their commitment to our state.
Leveling the Playing Field
New Mexico’s small businesses are working hard to maintain their payroll and cover their fair share of taxes. New Mexico’s economy depends on the development of a highly qualified workforce, which requires sustained, strategic investment into our students. Moreover, New Mexico’s retailers continue to compete with out-of-state big-box retailers and online stores for consumers while facing an increasingly shrinking profit margin. New Mexico businesses are able to compete. They just ask for a level playing field.
We support closing tax-loopholes for out-of-state companies and a transition to a Combined Tax Reporting structure for every New Mexico business, while lowering the state corporate income tax. We support efforts to expand access to capital for small business. We support tax credits that encourage small businesses to start-up, expand or relocate to New Mexico. We believe internet sales companies selling to New Mexican customers should pay the same tax rate as local retailers. We strongly support the use of tax expenditure reports and regular evaluation of every tax incentive and its ability to stimulate job creation or grow a new industry sector.
Fostering Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs are the engine that power innovation and the New Mexico Green Chamber supports initiatives that smarten and simplify regulation, reduces the costs of doing business (such as health care), and helps companies train their workforce.
We support establishing a Health Insurance Exchange in New Mexico as a means of reducing a major expenditure for every New Mexico small business. We support $10 million for the longstanding, successful Job Training Incentive Program. We also support the red-tape reduction Rule Making Regulatory Reform without amendments. We support the creation of a state Entrepreneurship Fund and additional investment in the NM Small Business Investment Fund.
Open, Transparent, Accountable Government
New Mexico small businesses, just like every citizen, depend on open, transparent and accountable government. The Public Regulation Commission must be reformed. The complexity of energy, health care, and other regulatory issues before the commission requires highly-educated, ethical and accountable leaders. Two years ago, the Supreme Court issued a decision that promises to corrupt our government by enabling massive corporations to spend millions of dollars on anonymous negative campaign commercials. We agree with Senator McCain who called it “the worst Supreme Court decision in history. We support further expansion of the Sunshine Portal to improve access to public information.
We support reform of the Public Regulation Commission that meets the following criteria:
We oppose the Citizens United ruling and support a Constitutional Amendment to overturn it. We support the expansion of public information available through the NM Sunshine Portal.
Advancing a Clean Energy Economy
Over the next five years, New Mexico has the opportunity to position itself for major economic growth and create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs. New Mexico has emerging technology from our national labs and universities; world-class wind, solar and geothermal resources; and a growing number of businesses in these clean-tech sectors. A recent NMSU study suggests there are now 35,800 people working in the clean economy, accounting for about 5.9% of the New Mexico workforce. According to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the renewable-energy sector can create as many as 66,000 new jobs by developing New Mexico’s potential for 27,000 MW of renewable energy. New Mexico is the right place to develop these industries, but our state must maintain or increase public investment in order to remain competitive.
We strongly support incentives to help homebuyers purchase energy-efficient homes, or upgrade foreclosed properties as a smart means of restarting our construction industry. We support the memorial urging the renewable energy sector and PNM to come to an agreement that supports a sustained distributed generation sector. As a high-technology state, we support strategic incentives for Research and Development in Technology, Technology Commercialization and Sustainable Energy. We share the view that electricity exchange is not subject to state taxes and support the job-creation potential of the first-in-the-world renewable energy hub, Tres Amigas, in eastern New Mexico. We support the formation of a committee to help low-income customers meet their energy costs.
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