Stiff Budget Cuts in Chihuahua State for 2019

How Does the Chihuahua State Budget Compare With New Mexico's?

While politicians in New Mexico debate how to spend (invest?  squander? recover from the past few years?) another billion or so in loose state money, and whether to dip a finger into the Permanent Fund for early childhood education, citizens in our neighboring state of Chihuahua, making do with a much smaller state budget, are facing serious budget cuts in the middle of a civic nightmare in which the rule of law in many places has broken down.  Let us for a few seconds be grateful as New Mexicans for what we have.

Quick digression:  By the way, the tab for early childhood education--for everyone--has been picked up by the Mexican federal government ever since the Mexican Revolution about a hundred years ago.  Rosaura Zapata, who created the Mexican pre-school system after visiting many kinder schools in Europe to pick up ideas, was named Inspector General of kindergartens in Mexico, way back in 1928, more than 90 years ago.  And also by the way, has anyone in NM gone to countries that outrank us in education to pick up ideas about how best to do early childhood?  Do we have the slightest idea what values and expectations we will have for children going to pre-school?  How would we know if the system is working?  Are we supposed to take it on faith this is the magic bullet that will lead us out of the wilderness of 50th in education?  Mexico has universal public pre-school but it's math, reading, and science scores for 15-year olds on the PISA tests show it to rank 57 among countries participating in the tests.  The US scores 31st, behind Viet Nam and Poland.  Isn't it time the state set goals and deadlines for lifting us out of 50th in education?

Back to the Chihuahua Budget:  Chihuahua Governor Corral, of the PAN Party, complained bitterly last month that newly-eleted President Armando Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) was cutting the Chihuahua State Budget (in Mexico state budgets are determined by the President) by 23% (about $223 million US dollars) in 2019.  The money saved by the President, Governor Corral quipped, would likely be used for national "assistance programs as an electoral strategy."

How Big is the Chihuahua State budget?  The Chihuahua State budget, in pesos is $66.9 Billion, which amounts to about US $3.5 Billion at the exchange rate of 19-to-one.  By contrast, the New Mexico budget is around $6.3 Billion.  In state government expenditures per capita this amounts to around $3009.  Chihuahua state has a population of about 3.6 million (compared to NM's 2.1 million), so the per capita expenditures amount to around $975, about one third as much as in NM.  but a dollar-for-dollar comparison doesn't tell the full story, since wages and the cost of living in Chihuahua are much lower than in New Mexico, so a dollar goes farther in purchasing power in Chihuahua than here.