New Mexico

New Mexico is the only state that doesn’t pay its state legislators, which puts them at a distinct disadvantage when they try to go head-to-head with deep-pocketed lobbyists, corporations, PAC’s, and other campaign contributors. Unpaid legislators are often dependent on outside employment and whatever financial benefits they may obtain from lobbyists, such as meals, gifts, campaign contributions, and, the most remunerative benefit of all, the possibility of post-legislative employment as a lobbyist.

The Santa Fe Children’s Museum promotes conservation and Nature Equity for people with disabilities. Among more than 190 museums in the F Minus database, it is one of the most reliant on fossil fuel lobbyists, sharing three different lobbyists with eight companies promoting either coal, oil, or gas projects. Among these companies is Permian Resources, which extracts gas through fracking in New Mexico and other states. Living near gas extraction projects has been associated with a spike in cancer for people of all ages, and associated with a spike in rare cancers among children in Pennsylvania.

What is the impact of these eight companies’ fossil fuel activities on the children of New Mexico? Rising temperatures are causing higher concentrations of ground-level ozone in the state, a pollutant associated with asthma and other childhood respiratory problems. And what about these particular lobbyists? The state makes it hard to know because there is no disclosure of lobbyist salaries, positions taken, or bills lobbied upon.

Best feature: includes a filter for searching lobbyists by the issues on which they lobby, such as “Environment.”

Worst feature: the flip side of the site’s best feature is that searching for “Environment” only produces a list of environment groups who largely supported environmental legislation. There is a separate “Oil & Gas” category for oil and gas companies who to some degree opposed environmental bills.

Additional Findings

Site has some interesting features like a filter for number of clients retained by a particular lobbyist. This feature would be more useful if it was possible to simply search by lobbying firm. Another good feature is that each lobbyist page has a section for fines paid due to filing late or incomplete reports.