Read all about the latest progress on our efforts to increase retirement security for all New Mexicans, maximize dollars to the classroom, make health care prices more transparent, expand the Strategic Water Reserve, increase funding for lottery scholarships and much more in Think New Mexico’s latest annual report! Click here to download the annual report.

Think New Mexico is delighted to have six stellar students working with us (remotely) this summer!

Our 2020 Leadership Interns include Rohan Angadi, a former Valedictorian and Student Body President of Clovis High School who is now a junior at Yale studying economics and mathematics; Daniel Estupiñan, who grew up in Sunland Park, served on the Gadsden School Board while he was an undergraduate student at NMSU, and is now earning his Masters from the Harvard Kennedy School; Chloe Larkin, a junior at Wellesley College who was active in New Mexico Youth and Government and was elected Youth Governor for New Mexico in 2018; Kate Monahan, a Santa Fean who just graduated from the University of Southern California and previously interned with Senator Tom Udall and Fix It America; Raffaele Moore, an Albuquerque native who is a rising junior at Brown University and previously interned for Senator Martin Heinrich and Mayor Tim Keller; and Ariane Talou, a junior at UCLA who has interned with Emerge New Mexico and served as a Fellow on Representative Ben Ray Lujan’s 2018 congressional campaign. Read more about this year’s Leadership Interns.

Think New Mexico’s staff is currently working from home as we do our part to flatten the curve, but we are continuing our efforts to develop and advocate for policies that will improve New Mexico’s quality of life and help the state come back stronger than ever from this public health and financial crisis. If you are experiencing financial hardship or need information about coronavirus testing or the state’s public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we encourage you to visit NewMexico.gov.

Finally, if you’re able to able to support Think New Mexico’s work during these challenging times, we wanted to let you know that the federal government is offering an additional tax deduction incentive for up to $300 in charitable contributions made this year.

The New Mexico Work and Save Act (House Bill 44, sponsored by Rep. Tomas Salazar, Rep. Gail Armstrong, Rep. Christine Chandler, Sen. Bill Tallman & Sen. Michael Padilla) passed the House 62-1, the Senate 40-0, and was signed into law by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham! This law will dramatically expand access to retirement savings accounts for private sector workers in New Mexico. Read more about it here. 

Exciting news: Think New Mexico’s Field Director Othiamba Umi has been appointed to the board that oversees the New Mexico Lottery!

Think New Mexico has spent the past five years fighting to get the Lottery to focus on its mission of maximizing dollars for scholarships. Our biggest obstacle has been the Lottery’s leadership, which has repeatedly attempted to decrease the percentage of lottery revenues going to scholarships and has failed to put the interests of students first.

We saw yet another example of this behavior this past summer, when the Lottery board voted to raise the Lottery CEO’s salary by 26%, from $174,142 to $220,000, along with a car allowance and a golden parachute. (Othiamba learned of this development because for the past five years he has attended nearly all of the lottery’s public meetings to act as a watchdog for the public interest.) Every dollar spent on excessive administrative costs – like this extremely high salary – is a dollar less for student scholarships, as we explained to KRQE News.

Fortunately, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham shared our frustration with the Lottery board, and she just made a major upgrade, appointing five new members, including Othiamba!

Other new members include two Think New Mexico supporters: Leo Romero, former Dean of the University of New Mexico School of Law, and Nina Thayer, who retired from the Biosciences Division of Los Alamos National Lab and is active with the American Association of University Women (AAUW).

Think New Mexico applauds the governor for taking this essential step to improve the accountability of the lottery. The governor’s new appointees form a majority of the seven-member oversight board, and we are excited about the difference they can make in re-focusing the lottery on its mission of serving New Mexico’s college students.

Think New Mexico has launched a new initiative to achieve retirement security for all New Mexicans by repealing the state’s income tax on Social Security benefits; ensuring that every private sector worker in the state has access to a retirement savings account that they can contribute to through automatic payroll deductions; and stabilizing New Mexico’s public pensions by consolidating their investment management, increasing the qualifications of pension board members, and using some of the current budget surplus to make a one-time, $700 million cash infusion or loan to the Public Employees Retirement Association pension fund. Learn more about our recommended reforms and contact your legislators and the governor!