Let’s take a look this morning at the list of projects entitled “2025 Statewide Capital Outlay Requests” put together by the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) for its October 24th meeting. Despite periodic reminders from LFC recently that our overstuffed pipeline of oil & gas revenues will slow, the state keeps pumping more and more fossil fuels, to the tune of over 64,000,000 barrels of crude oil in the month of this past August alone.

To give some context to that big number over time, here’s the latest startling graph of oil production from the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

Damn.

So what are we gonna do with all this money? I am told that the problem is that, unlike suddenly famous musicians, we as a state have an incredibly hard time spending big sacks of money due to a lack of staffing, administrative infrastructure and other boring things that are really important but nobody pays attention because it’s boring.

The latest figure from LFC is that NM will have $660 million in brand-spanking “new money” for a total of $13.4 billion in revenue. It is perhaps indicative of this subject’s difficulty in becoming widely known that I found this information out from a quick search leading to an Instagram posting. Sigh.

Getting back to the LFC’s October 24th Capital Outlay Requests report, it succinctly and helpfully outlines a total of just under $1.5 billion in 2025 requests (“20 percent higher than last year”), with the single-biggest requests centered around building buildings (e.g., $100 million for a new NM General Services Department “Executive Office Building”). It is worth noting that many of the 2025 requests build on outlay in prior years that hasn’t been spent.

As BB centers on transportation-related stuff, here’s a screenshot of the requests pertaining to New Mexico Department of Transportation:

That’s ~$61 million out of a total of ~$1.5 billion in requests, funds largely generated from fossil fuels. I think you see where I’m going here. As further comparison, the NM “Spaceport Authority” is requesting $27 million for “stuff” pertaining to, I dunno, rich people taking space trips. It seems that more thought and funding could be going to our eventually overcoming our dependence on fossil fuels, but hey, the checks from 64,000,000 barrels of crude oil keep coming and who’s gonna buzzkill that party?

Certainly not the 2025 NM Legislature, regardless of how many Democrats lead its chambers and fill its seats. Funny how that’s worked out during the Lujan Grisham Administration. Funny, but not ha-ha funny.

Speaking of those legislators, the LFC report mentions the unique difficulty in efficiently spending such big bucks engendered by our Capital Outlay process:

• Legislators recognize state aid for local infrastructure projects is essential. However, LFC
  reporting has demonstrated ineffective uses of state funds, unspent proceeds, and
  incomplete projects. To enhance the effective use of capital funds, LFC staff collaborated
  with the New Mexico Municipal League, New Mexico Counties, and DFA to develop
  guidelines for legislative members and political subdivisions to encourage adequate
  planning, prioritizing, and overall management of state funds.
• In recent interims, LFC staff worked with DFA and LCS to align the project summary sheet
  legislators receive for local requests with a simplified version of LFC’s recommended
  vetting criteria. A short list of key criteria will appear on the summary sheet as a checklist,
  indicating whether or not each request meets the criteria. See example summary sheets on
  Attachment C
• LFC staff also worked with LCS and legislative leadership staff to implement an earlier
  deadline for local capital outlay requests for 2025 of mid-December. The earlier deadline
  gives legislators more time to sort and vet requests, solicit additional information from
  requesting entities, LFC, DFA, or others, and to coordinate funding.

Apologies on behalf of LFC for all the acronyms above, but distilling down the acronyms, bullets, and attachment references, the upshot is “LFC reporting has demonstrated ineffective uses of state funds.” Capital Outlay has proven to be a dumb way of spending money and now we have far more money to dumbly spend.

Hijinks will invariably ensue, and the upcoming Session should be fascinating for that and plenty of other reasons. Unfortunately, transportation in general and multi-modal transportation in particular, will very likely NOT be resolutely on the minds of Governor, legislators, and staff as they figure out how we’re gonna spend all this money generated by fossil fuels.

One is reminded that the music group Fleetwood Mac made its biggest-selling record “Rumours” amid a roaring shared cocaine addiction by group members. Replace cocaine straw with oil pipeline and you’re ready for NM Legislative Session 2025.