Summary AGC Legislative Positions

The New Mexico Building Branch of Associated General Contractors is a fifty-seven year old organization. Since its inception the organization has been instrumental in ensuring the success of its members and the professional standards of the commercial construction industry. The 200-plus members of AGC build over sixty percent of New Mexico’s non-residential-public and private building construction each year. Its members are open-shop and union general contractors, open-shop and union specialty subcontractors and members who are suppliers of materials and services to the construction industry. AGC members are dedicated to the improvement of their industry. They actively operate “School-to-Careers” programs and operate craft apprenticeship programs to recruit their own trained workforce. The members have endowed a chair in Construction Management at the University of New Mexico and actively recruit college students into the ranks of construction professionals. Members are committed to safety excellence and have the lost-work-day records to prove it.

Based upon our available records we estimate AGC members have a combined annual gross revenue approaching $1 Billion. AGC members employ approximately 11,000 persons. Those employees support 20,000 family members and dependents. We estimate of the 31,000
employees and dependents that 15,503 are registered to vote in New Mexico. Our members are interested in public policy issues and when motivated to have their voices heard they will respond.

In order to effectively lead the construction industry in New Mexico it is necessary to state in the following list some of the issues that are important to business owners and employees in the commercial construction industry and to good government in New Mexico:

1. Develop annual, focused and consistent programs of capital outlay spending for state-wide needs.[1]

• Develop cohesive short-term and long-range goals for meeting infrastructure needs across the state.

• Plan and prioritize these needs and establish a means of funding them within statute.

2. Award state construction contracts on the basis of the qualifications of the contractor
and expand delivery methods. [2]

• The construction industry model of the Qualifications-Based-Selection (QBS) system for selecting engineers and design professionals in a public works project is a good system for the state. The system is cost effective because it involves professionals overseeing the selection and performance of their peers.

  • Expand project delivery methods for procurement of construction services by including Construction Management At-Risk (CMAR) and job-order contracting (JOC)

3. Make New Mexico a better place to live and to do business by changing tax policy
and providing for needs of business within the state. [3]

• Develop tax policies to help employers boost the skills of the region’s
  workforce.

• Create a state environment that encourages technological innovation.

• Enact legislation that will create fast and responsive government

• Develop actions to aid local communities in attracting knowledge-based jobs
  and the companies that create them.

• Encourage companies with information technology needs in managerial, professional and technical positions to locate in New Mexico.

• Adopt policies that encourage increases in innovation capacity and productivity through incentives that boost training, research and development and new capital investment.

4. Maintain state oversight of construction.[4]

• Fully fund CID’s operations to enforce building codes, standards and the licensing of contractors.

• Fully fund CID’s operations to pursue unlicensed contracting within the state.

5. Support environmental policies that are cost-effective, flexible and based on sound science. [5]

For more information, please contact John Horton of the Associated General Contractors - New Mexico Building Branch at 505-842-1462.

Download the PDF[6] of this document

Positions Index[7]