Paul Gessing

It’s time to stop New Mexico’s backdoor rulemakers. Larry Behrens is right. The New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) has become a vehicle for imposing major policy without elected officials having to answer for it. • In 2022, this unelected board adopted one of the strictest oil and gas emissions rules in the country. • In April 2024, it voted 4-1 to impose California-style electric vehicle mandates on New Mexico, despite polling showing 60% of New Mexicans didn’t want EVs and 67% believed they would raise costs for families. • This month, the same board approved the first air quality fee increase in decades — costs that will be passed directly to working families. This is not an isolated bureaucratic issue. It is part of a documented pattern. The connections are clear and verifiable: The EIB operates in close alignment with the same networks driving policy across multiple states. New Mexico’s machine relies heavily on the Thornburg Foundation in Santa Fe as a central hub, which coordinates funding and strategy with national players. Thornburg has poured tens of millions into New Mexico nonprofits over the past decade, including groups deeply involved in the environmental and “good government” space. These policies are supported by the same funding streams mapped across the West: • New Venture Fund (NVF) — part of the Arabella network — has sent $1.41 million in confirmed grants to New Mexico organizations (9 grants between FY2022–2024), including groups like OLÉ, Center for Civic Policy, Somos Un Pueblo Unido, and others that form the advocacy backbone. • The North Fund sent $100,000 directly to Emerge New Mexico’s 527 political arm — dark money activating the candidate pipeline that helps protect these structures. • Emerge New Mexico has trained 627 people and placed 118 alumni in office, including key legislative gatekeepers. This is not grassroots — it is a highly organized, national candidate production system. This is how backdoor rule-making works: national money flows through fiscal sponsors and foundations into advocacy groups and aligned elected officials, who then shield unelected boards from accountability. Voters are left paying higher costs for policies they had no real say in. New Mexicans deserve transparency and elected officials willing to own their votes. The Environmental Improvement Board is a symptom of a deeper problem — unaccountable parallel power operating behind the scenes of representative government. The public record on these funding flows and organizational connections is available through IRS Form 990 filings, state campaign finance records, and public grant databases. The data is verifiable. The pattern is consistent. It’s time to end the backdoor governance in New Mexico. abqjournal-nm.newsmemory.com…