BY JAMES WERNICKE
Los Alamos

Most communities rely on a simple accountability mechanism: when residents lose confidence in the government’s direction—because housing is scarce, costs rise, and local business vitality stagnates—families and employers relocate, and revenue follows. That feedback loop doesn’t guarantee good governance, but it creates pressure to correct course.

Los Alamos is different. Our anchor employer provides extraordinary economic stability and is not realistically mobile. The County’s own FY2026 budget describes LANL’s scale (about 14,150 employees in-county, $5B budget, and thousands commuting daily). That stability creates something close to a captive revenue base. When revenue is less sensitive to performance, the incentive to be relentlessly responsive weakens—even without anyone having bad intent.

Start with what the community says it wants.

In the 2026 Strategic Leadership Plan, the County lists the top community priorities from the 2024 National Community Survey: effective services, local business, housing, fiscal stewardship, and communication/engagement. In the same breath, it acknowledges the lowest-performing areas: economy (quality/variety of businesses), affordability, and community design (new development/housing options).

That is the “gap” many residents feel: our priorities are clear, yet some of the most important, small-market outcomes stay weak. It also helps explain why the 2024 National Community Survey showed only 45% of residents rated their overall confidence in County government as excellent or good, and why ratings for the County’s direction and “acting in the community’s best interest” are lower than the national benchmark. This shows trust is a lagging indicator of lived outcomes.

Now look at what the system rewards.

The FY2026 budget highlights external validations—multi-year GFOA awards, a “Triple Crown” honor, audit awards, and an upgraded Moody’s bond rating—as major accomplishments. These aren’t bad things. They’re just highly legible internal “success signals,” and they’re easier to optimize than the messy outcomes residents experience day to day.

Even “communication and engagement” is framed as easy to measure activity metrics—follower-growth goals, videos produced, town halls held, dashboards launched—which can rise without increasing public trust. If the scoreboard is clicks and content volume, that’s what gets optimized.

The budget also makes clear that core decisions are constrained by financial policy targets and the imperative to keep projects moving even as GRT declines, including a proposed ½-cent GRT increment tied explicitly to meeting “required reserve targets” while maintaining adopted spending. Prudent financial management matters, but it can also create an institution that optimizes continuity and control over adaptability and partnership.

This is not an argument about motives. It’s about incentives that produce a government that behaves like a competitor rather than a partner.

When the County faces difficult, small-market problems—local business fragility, affordability, and community design—the Strategic Leadership Plan says “concrete actions… will be determined” later and routed into existing plans and a performance dashboard. That is a tell. It’s not that the County doesn’t recognize the problems. It’s that the strongest incentives inside the system reward what can be packaged, validated, and tracked, not what requires humility, power-sharing, and sustained partnership with local private and community enterprise.

This is the misalignment problem in a nutshell: when incentives reward continuity, control, and externally validated “excellence,” the County will naturally expand what it can measure, own, and operate. A small-market community also needs something government cannot directly substitute for: a diverse, resilient private enterprise base. If County services are delivered in ways that crowd out capacity for private and community enterprise, the NCS “lowest performing” outcomes will remain stubborn.

We do see glimpses of the right model.

On broadband, the budget describes an open-access approach with tiers (owner/management/service providers), which—if implemented well—can enable multiple providers rather than crowd them out. That’s the direction we should demand across services: define the public goal, then choose the delivery method that strengthens the whole ecosystem.

But often, the incentives fall short.

When community groups ask the County to partner—not just listen—the response often defaults to control and process. The Los Alamos Local Business Coalition brought concrete recommendations to the Council’s Local and Small Business Engagement Working Group (reducing vacancies, simplifying permitting with clear accountability, improving change-of-use transparency, expanding inspections capacity, urgency on tourism, and practical assistance), yet the County’s responses leaned heavily on “planned dashboard” metrics, directories, monitoring, and legal/process constraints (“no legal mechanism / anti-donation barriers”), with many items deferred to future budget cycles or multi-year timelines. And when residents asked Council to include local business members and adopt stronger transparency steps through an MRA commission, Councilors acknowledged the trust issue and the value of business expertise—then chose to keep decision-making internal (Council and staff) and emphasize presentations and communications rather than shared governance. These choices may feel efficient, but they reveal the incentive problem: it’s easy to optimize what can be tracked, packaged, and controlled, while the hardest outcomes—local business vitality, affordability, and public trust—remain the areas the NCS shows are weakest.

If we want different outcomes, we must change the incentives. That means electing Councilors who will (1) require partnership analysis before expanding County-run services, (2) measure success in resident outcomes (business vitality, affordability, trust), not just awards and dashboards, and (3) insist on transparency and accountability as non-negotiable operating standards—not just a slogan.

County Council elections are this year, and Candidate Filing Day is March 10. (Minor party and independent candidates must file on June 25.) We need candidates willing to set the accountability example by campaigning on clear, outcome-based metrics—and then reporting progress publicly. Voters should also commit to rewarding results over labels. Ignore party loyalties and vote for candidates who can name the outcomes they will deliver and the metrics by which they should be judged.

Los Alamos’ revenue stability is a gift, but stability without accountability becomes drift. The plans highlight what gets rewarded; the survey highlights what is still lagging. We can close that gap, but only if we demand alignment.

Sources:
2024 National Community Survey https://www.losalamosnm.us/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/government/transparency/documents/2024ncs/the-ncs-report-los-alamos-county-nm-2024.pdf

2026 Strategic Leadership Plan https://losalamos.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=14907089&GUID=45145A15-B078-4556-92DB-48F8DAE0861E

2026 Adopted Budget https://www.losalamosnm.us/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/departments/administrative-services/documents/fy2026_adopted-budget.pdf

Discussion About Follow-up on Council Local/Small Business Engagement Working Group and Los Alamos Local Business Coalition Recommendations https://losalamos.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1274376&GUID=BBE0104E-80D3-4E69-9A71-21DF2C735E02

Discussion on Metropolitan Redevelopment Area (MRA) Commission https://losalamos.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1293766&GUID=61B03BF2-5DE4-42B1-9F66-E62648F0D074

Discussion and Possible Action on Establishment of a Metropolitan Redevelopment Area (MRA) Commission
https://losalamos.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1293767&GUID=ACC8C906-580E-4469-A40F-6389EEBDA140

2026 Candidate Information
https://www.losalamosnm.us/Government/Transparent-Los-Alamos-County/1ElectionInformation/Candidates