Farmington Daily Times--“Tax policy is an important way we express our values as a state and raise the revenue to meet our goals,” Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in the press release. “These committees will study reform measures thoroughly and help us make sure we get it right.”
Public News Service--Bill Jordan, government relations officer with New Mexico Voices for Children, said currently those with the largest incomes in the state pay the smallest share of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those with the lowest incomes pay the highest share. He said 385,000 children will benefit when the revamped tax code returns $64 million to working families.
New Mexico In Depth--“It’s fantastic. It’s a really significant step forward for child care assistance in New Mexico,” said Amber Wallin, New Mexico director for the annual Kids Count report on child wellbeing.
Santa Fe New Mexican--Noting New Mexico’s Public Education Department is under a court order to make more investments in its schools, James Jimenez, executive director of the nonprofit New Mexico Voices for Children, said in an email that increasing those rates in the future is “just plain common sense” and will help the state meet the court mandates to improve public education.
Las Cruces Sun-News--When you filed your tax return this year, you may have noticed some changes. Maybe you got a smaller refund than usual or you owed more in state taxes. So what happened to the big fairness measures that the state Legislature just passed?
Ruidoso News--New Mexico is one of many states that have failed to increase per-student funding compared to a decade ago, according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). There are 26 states that have made larger investments in K-12 students since 2008, per-student funding in New Mexico remained at nine percent less in 2016 than in 2008, after considering inflation.
Searchlight NM and Las Cruces Sun-News--It will take a concerted, multifaceted effort to significantly improve child well-being because it is dependent on so many factors. But one policy with a proven, positive rate of return is high-quality early childhood care and learning. The first five years of life are critical for laying the foundation for future success, so the investments that we make in those years pay off dividends for children and society for many years — and future generations — down the road.
American Prospect--“We have the opportunity to put forward an agenda focused on more than trickle-down, which defined the last eight years for New Mexico,” Jimenez says. “Early childhood education, K-12, home visiting, progressive tax reform, these are all back on the table.” New Mexico, where 75 percent of children are of color, ranks 50th on the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s child well-being index. Jimenez says deep investments could demonstrably change those rankings.
Public News Service--"And we know that children in New Mexico suffer from a high degree of food insecurity, which means that they don't always know where the next meal is coming from,” he said. “And making food more expensive for children and families just does not make sense to us." Nearly all U.S. states have eliminated, reduced or offset taxes as applied to food for home consumption.
Santa Fe New Mexican--And the advocacy group New Mexico Voices for Children is distributing poll results that show overwhelming public opposition to reinstating a tax on groceries. “New Mexicans believe their leaders should be fighting hunger, not making it worse,” said James Jimenez, executive director of the agency.