NEW MEXICO (KRQE) –  Days after an Albuquerque man put up billboards highlighting some of the worst statistics about New Mexico, the state is sharing a different perspective. The New Mexico Economic Development Department has put its version of billboards resembling the format of the ones posted around the city. One of their posts said, “While some want to drag us down, we’re here to lift up the truth.”

“We saw those billboards and we really wanted to tell what we think is the story of new Mexico where we’re going so we thought that the effective way to do that would really highlight those positive statistics that are telling the story of progress, telling the story of billing prosperity for our families,” said Rob Black, Cabinet Secretary, NM Economic Development Department.

The original five billboards were posted shortly before the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, by Joseph DiGangi, through his LLC, Land-of-enchantment.org, pointing out New Mexico’s poor rankings in crime and education, with the tagline “Why can’t we do better?” He said his goal was to inspire change.

Now the state’s Economic Development Department is responding, with several social media posts depicting mockups of billboards resembling his. The state chose to feature different rankings, such as that New Mexico is number one for PhDs per capita, number one in Research and Development spending, and more. “To tell the story that we’re the only state in the country that has free childcare, free college tuition, these are really unique things that New Mexico has done in the last few years,” said Black.

Digangi’s billboards are set to remain up through October 12, which is the end of Balloon Fiesta. The state said they want Balloon Fiesta to be an opportunity to highlight successes.

local affiliate KRQE reached out to the billboard creator, Joseph DiGangi, and he responded with the statement below:

While I applauded everything positive New Mexico does to improve childcare and college tuition- the fact remains that 80% of eighth grader cannot read or do math at their grade level. And overall, our national ranking in education is Last Place— KRQE Facebook page shows over 3,000 likes and 1,000 heartfelt positive comments stating that we need to first admit that we have enormous problems so we can work together to solve them.