Pete Campos
It’s no secret that New Mexico needs to fix the way it chooses the infrastructure projects that receive state money, and the best time to reform the system is now. We cannot afford to continue our past practices.
New Mexico’s list of infrastructure needs overwhelms our resources. While our system, despite its shortcomings, has helped pay for myriad local and state projects across New Mexico, there are still $3.7 billion worth of projects – not including school projects – that are waiting for funding, according to the state’s Infrastructure Capital Improvement Plan. The state has less than $250 million to devote to those projects this year.
We also have far too many projects that have been partially funded, leaving the state with a significant inventory of partially completed buildings, roads and other projects. This is unacceptable.
How are we ever going to catch up and make a dent in the list of projects that still need funding? How can we ensure that we will make steady progress over the next decade at addressing all these needs? How will we accurately determine which projects still need funding and make sure that we never again find ourselves with such a large inventory of partially completed projects?
Here’s what we need to do to fix the system:
- Fully fund projects or commit to a firm time frame for phasing them in so that projects will be completed within a reasonable time.
- Ensure that the governmental entity that will ultimately manage the project has the financial and human resources to maintain it for the foreseeable future.
- Create a central, apolitical planning process to identify, prioritize and recommend for final approval by the Legislature and the governor the projects that should be funded.
Legislation would improve system
New Mexico has taken big steps toward addressing some of its most glaring capital outlay management weaknesses, including what may have been the worst method of capital spending in any state in the country. We have reformed the public school capital outlay process, ensuring that approval for school construction projects is based on need and a local district’s ability to manage and operate the facility once completed.
The New Mexico Legislature is more committed than ever to making statewide projects a priority and ensuring that local projects are critically necessary, fully funded and managed well.
But our work is not done. There is still a need to improve our project selection process and ensure accountability so that we can be certain that public funding for roads, infrastructure and public buildings is money well spent, serves a long-term need and can be sustained and maintained by a local or state government agency.
Legislation I am sponsoring, the Capital Outlay Planning and Monitoring Act, would go a long way toward improving our system. It creates a permanent legislative committee and a separate division within the Department of Finance and Administration to review, prioritize and monitor capital outlay projects. Additionally, another measure requests state and local agencies to immediately account for the unfinished projects under their jurisdiction, so we can get a handle on the scope of the challenge we face.
Our capital outlay system is not perfect, but it is far better than it once was and it is getting better all the time.
Campos is a Democratic state senator from Las Vegas and president of Luna Community College.