Governor Susana Martinez has made violent crimes a priority this legislative session, but not all legislators are happy with the push.
Representative Bill McCamley wants to see bills for more reforms in New Mexico, not just crime reforms. He says economic development bills could also help with violent crime.
“For instance when you talk about crime,” McCamley said. “Wage rates are one of the biggest factors in determining how much violent and property crime there is. So, when wages go up, crime, especially the violent and property crime go down. So, putting people in prison doesn’t really help, but raising wages does. Yes, we’re almost halfway through the session and I’m on the house side where the republicans control the agenda, and the governor has a lot of influence, and we have not heard one jobs bill.
McCamley has filed a few economic development bills this session, one of which would require universities that receive economic development funding to report how many jobs they’ve created.
“It’s up to us as a legislature to make sure that the places that we’re funding are held accountable. Right now though, job creation is actually not part of the performance matrices for either UNM, NMSU, or New Mexico Tech, when they have these economic development programs. So, what I want to do is make job creation, and money invested in the community part of their evaluation package, so we know whether they are working or not. And what that does is it creates pressure on people there to think out of the box.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOrscYZEg3k
