Thanks, PNM: Good business is good for state
Ihave been in corporate America, ran my own restaurant, served as the president of a nonprofit and founded a nonprofit that provides scholarships to our graduating seniors. I want to be able to use my skills to help bring economic opportunity to our state.
Public Service Company of New Mexico recognized its 100th anniversary, and many in the community rightly applauded that celebration of a local, homegrown company. PNM is one of only a handful of publicly traded companies that calls New Mexico home. Yet PNM has been blasted for trying to create a reasonable profit for its shareholders. As a regulated monopoly and a publicly traded company, PNM is required to make factual disclosures about almost every aspect of its business. We should applaud a good hometown business that employs about 1,500 New Mexicans and provided jobs as well as retirement for thousands more over those 100 years. PNM also invites the community to participate in its planning discussions.
PNM has received grief from a political organization that disguises its own business model as an advocacy group for the environment and consumers. The rhetoric seems to be blaming and not constructive in nature. I get tired of seeing and hearing the “blame game.” New Energy Economy has adopted the for-profit business model for which it so loudly and hypocritically condemns PNM. Why?
Groups such as New Energy Economy hire for-profit marketing groups to frame and twist facts to keep the dollars rolling into their organizations. Under the guise of a public advocacy, they continue to push out marketing materials more concerned with creating revenue than informing consumers. Business should not run on fear tactics.
Good capitalism has served this country well and can serve our state well, but good business happens when we call a spade a spade. PNM statements must be factually accurate both because of its status as a publicly traded company and its status as a regulated monopoly. If information is put out that is incorrect, PNM has an obligation and legal responsibility to correct it. None of these accurate disclosure requirements bind what groups like New Energy Economy market to their audience as facts to raise funds.
We, as consumers, have to be smart enough to understand that something as complex as generation and transmission of electricity cannot be reduced to a market-tested picture with an exaggerated caption aimed at taking dollars out of our wallets to support the “cause.”
Recently, PNM announced the possibility of closing all four units of its coal power plant, something New Energy Economy had advocated. Rather acknowledging the positive move, New Energy Economy continues its negative engagement rather than working with PNM and for its advocates.
In this day and age of “alternative facts,” good business means we must continue to demand accurate disclosure from our companies and our government, but we also must apply those same standards to groups that claim to be in the public interest but have a very real private interest of raising money.