By Rob Nikolewski │ New Mexico Watchdog
SANTA FE – Tom Romero may have been the chief executive officer of the New Mexico Lottery for nearly eight years. He may have been paid $155,000 a year.
But last Wednesday, he was fired from his job without any explanation by the New Mexico Lottery Authority Board of Directors, [...]

By Rob Nikolewski │ New Mexico Watchdog
SANTA FE – If you want to know how your local high school is doing on things like enrollment, test scores and graduation rates, you can find the data in seconds on the Public Education Department website.
But if you want to find out how two of the state’s three [...]

New Mexico’s got a $5.9 billion annual budget.
Want to know where it’s spent?
Well, the majority of it goes to education.
The annual review of the past legislative session in Santa Fe shows that kindergarten-through-12th grade programs and the state’s higher education system receive well over half the money in the annual state budget.
The Legislative Council Service just released its [...]

The numbers haven’t been adding up for the state lottery in recent years and that means unless the state legislature can come up with a fix, students who qualify for lottery scholarships to New Mexico universities and colleges will see across-the-board reductions.
“We’ll have to cut the size of awards for each student,” Dr. José Z. [...]

Class action notices have gone out to families who invested in New Mexico’s  poorly performing college savings plans.   Thousands of New Mexicans trusted that the tax advantaged plans selected for them by the State of New Mexico could help with the increasing expense of a college education.  But New Mexico’s college savings plans proved to [...]

From the Albuquerque Journal today (June 22):
New Mexico’s post-secondary institutions won’t be making the dean’s list.
We’re talking Ds and Fs here, according to a report released this week by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Institute for a Competitive Workforce, a U.S. Chamber of Commerce affiliate.
The report grades the country’s two-year and four-year public institutions, naming New Mexico, [...]

Nepotism. Millions of unbudgeted spending. Lack of control of cash deposits. Untracked student loans. Material weaknesses and substantial deficiencies in internal financial controls. A drumbeat of major failings concludes the just released audit of the New Mexico Higher Education Department conducted by the Albuquerque accounting firm Atkinsonn & Company. The audit covered the fiscal year [...]