Legislative Finance Committee

General fund recurring revenues were $548.6 million in January 2019, up $164.3 million, or 42.8 percent from the same month a year ago. However, most of the increase is a reflection of accounting issues: Personal income tax collections were artificially deflated in January 2018 because of when refunds were booked, and insurance premiums tax collections were artificially inflated in January 2019 because of a distribution was booked a month early.

Replacement of the 15-year-old information system for the $6 billion Medicaid program, which handles 10 million transactions a year, has been delayed by changes in project management, staffing issues, and purchasing delays, all of which pose a risk to the project.

The Human Services Department kept administrative costs for Medicaid to just 4 percent of total costs in 2018, and the four private managed-care organizations in the Medicaid system all fell within state-required limits of 14 percent in 2017, although some struggled as a result. Hospitals, which must maintain physical facilities, spent between 17 percent and 56 percent of their budgets on administration in 2017.

As of March, the state had $737.4 million outstanding for more than 1,600 projects. More than half of that funding -- $480 million -- was authorized last year, but $174 million dates back to 2017 and about $66 million is older than that.

New Mexico must improve maternal and child health if it wants to capitalize on its investment in early childhood education, but the state lacks a cohesive strategy for address-ing weaknesses in those areas.