Udall fields questions on fracking, NM’s economy
State’s infrastructure needs repair, he says
U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., addressed questions from Albuquerque business leaders on Thursday touching on topics ranging from fracking to federal spending to the struggling New Mexico economy.
Udall addressed the monthly luncheon of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce at the Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown Hotel.
Following his speech, which focused on the need to improve the state’s infrastructure and on his support for the upcoming vote on his co-sponsored bill mandating stricter regulation of chemicals in consumer goods, he took questions from business leaders and community members.
Pat VincentCollawn, president and CEO of the Public Service Company of New Mexico, asked Udall his position on the possibility of a federal ban on fracking, a process for extracting oil and natural gas from deep in the earth.
Udall said conversations about fracking should remain at the state level and should focus on regulation — not banning.
“It’s hard to tell about what would happen on a national basis” regarding an effort to ban fracking, but he said the ban on fracking in New York state is “not based on reality.”
State regulations, he said, go a long way to keeping the practice safe and should remain the focus of efforts to control the practice.
But he said the federal government could be one answer to the state’s struggling economy.
Terri Cole, president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, asked Udall for insight into how New Mexico can pull out of its slump.
“We don’t have a strong enough private sector,” Udall told the crowd.
The answer, he suggested, is more federal help to the state’s military bases and research labs to speed up technology transfer, more investment in the state’s roads and infrastructure and a reorganization of the way the federal government contracts with small businesses.
He also said he supports the idea of raising the federal minimum wage, though he hadn’t settled on a particular level, and the federal government’s recent extension of mandatory overtime payment to certain employees.