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State looks for public input on strategic plan
Pump jacks pump oil at a site north of Eunice on May 7, 2024. The state Economic Development Department is looking for public input on its strategic plan, one that focuses on diversifying the state’s economy from “reliance on natural resource extraction,” officials said in a news release.
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When state officials with the New Mexico Economic Development Department released their 20-year strategic plan in the fall of 2021, they spoke of diversifying New Mexico’s economy away from the golden child: oil and gas.
Now, officials are requesting public input for an update to that plan as times and circumstances change.
“This is a living, working, breathing document unlike a lot of strategic plans,” said state Economic Development Department Interim Secretary Mark Roper.
The statewide strategic plan, first released in October 2021, was prepared by the Center for Innovation Strategy & Policy at SRI International, a Menlo Park, California-based nonprofit scientific research institute.
The 384-page report touches on a half-dozen challenges facing the state — the concentration of economy in a few key industries; public-sector dominance in the state’s innovation ecosystem; the disengagement of socioeconomically disadvantaged communities in planning processes; misalignment between higher education and industry; the difficulty in attracting and retaining talent in urban, rural and tribal communities; and a lack of collaboration between economic development stakeholders.
But the report also looks at the nine target industries in New Mexico — including film and television and intelligent manufacturing — as key areas to diversifying the state’s economic growth.
In requesting public input, which will be accepted through the end of August on EDD’s website at edd.newmexico.gov/state-plan-input/, state economic development officials are hoping to update the plan with feedback that considers economic barriers and needs in residents’ communities, as well as touch on the relevance of the state’s target industries.
The strategic plan covers 20 years, Roper said, with hopes to continue updating it through that course of time. It was last updated in June 2023.
“We take in all the information the department gets from the public, from partners — meaning local economic development organizations — other state entities, and we implement those ideas, those discussion plans to the plan as the framework is,” Roper said.
