While the press corps, including
, has been digging into pay-to-play in
, a new report by
illustrates a more insidious—but just as important—effect of money in politics. The report, "Connecting the Dots: The Oil and Gas Industry's Influence on New Mexico Politics," is available
, in PDF form. From the summary:
The Common Cause report includes several specific examples where lawmakers seemed to be influenced by industry donations, including a 2005 bill that "would have saved environmentally intensive industries such as O&G money by reducing their liability for environmental damage resulting from their operations."
What's the take-away here? As Common Cause puts it, the oil and gas industry's contributions may be "influencing state policy-making processes in a manner that, while beneficial to the industry,
might not be in the best interests of the state as a whole
."