Five appearances in August, and a thread running through most of them: who writes the rules, who accounts for the money, and how rarely anyone can answer either question on the record. Mr. Brenner took that question to a $3 trillion insurance market in The Wall Street Journal, to $110 million in New Mexico opioid settlement funds in the Santa Fe New Mexican, and to the Federal Reserve’s debit interchange cap on a panel with George Mason’s Todd Zywicki.
The Wall Street Journal — Cross Country
August 28, 2026 (online) / August 29, 2026 print edition.
How Did a Nonprofit Become America’s Insurance Regulator?
By Patrick M. Brenner
SPPI’s highest-profile placement of the month: a bylined Cross Country column carrying the tagline identifying Mr. Brenner as president of the Southwest Public Policy Institute.
The piece opens on New Mexico ground — Insurance Superintendent Alice Kane’s testimony that insurers declined to renew more than 6,200 homeowner policies in 2025, the state’s highest total on record — and uses the nonrenewal crisis to ask who actually writes the rules governing a $3 trillion insurance market. The answer, Mr. Brenner argues, is a private nonprofit in Kansas City: the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
The column’s analytical core is dynamic incorporation by reference. Mr. Brenner documents that New Mexico’s insurance code was amended in 2014 to strike the requirement that holding-company registration forms be provided by the superintendent, an official accountable to the governor, and to substitute NAIC-prescribed forms. He pairs this with an administrative rule directing regulators to the NAIC’s live website rather than a fixed edition of its documents. The effect is that binding obligations can change without a vote, a hearing, or a signature.
He builds the accountability case on the GAO’s June review, conceding upfront that it made no recommendations and found no wrongdoing, then arguing the facts it documented are troubling on their own terms: the accreditation committee doesn’t publish its findings and confines deliberations to regulators; NAIC has been exempt from Form 990 since 1955 as a claimed instrumentality of the states; it reported $161.4 million in 2024 revenue, roughly 94% from the industry whose standards it writes; it does not disclose executive compensation; and its published conflict-of-interest policy covers member commissioners but, as far as GAO could determine, not its chief executive. He notes that both the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and NASAA — which sit alongside NAIC on the Financial Stability Oversight Council — do file 990s.
The prescription is aimed at state legislatures rather than Congress. Michigan has required NAIC to file an annual report with its insurance regulator and both legislative insurance committees since 1998, covering officer pay, every accreditation standard, and whether deliberations are open. Mr. Brenner closes by asking which state will be the second to do so.
This dovetails directly with SPPI’s NAIC Transparency and Accountability Act model legislation, released August 28.
Santa Fe New Mexican — My View
August 29, 2026
Start spending opioid settlement — and show where and how
By Patrick M. Brenner
A bylined op-ed with the SPPI tagline, and the second Mr. Brenner byline in the same 24-hour window as the WSJ column.
The piece opens on a spokesperson for then-Mayor Alan Webber telling The New Mexican late last year that Santa Fe had no plan to discuss for its opioid settlement share. The July report from the Office of the State Auditor supplied the number: the city had spent $605, with $9.7 million on hand. Statewide, local governments took in roughly $110 million between 2023 and 2025 and reported spending about $15 million; fifteen of thirty-three counties reported spending nothing.
Mr. Brenner’s argument is that this is not a scandal, and he says so directly. Nobody pocketed anything. The failure is paralysis rather than theft — a government treating inaction as the safest handling of money it fears could be misused. He extends the same courtesy to local officials, noting the funds arrive as a stream through 2039, that rural New Mexico faces a genuine provider shortage, and that the current mayor’s stated preference for a data-driven plan is right in principle.
The column also contains an unusually direct self-correction: a year ago in the same pages he argued the danger was misspending the windfall, citing other states charging unrelated expenses to abatement accounts. He states plainly that he was watching for the wrong failure.
The analytical center is supplantation — charging an already-funded program to the new money, freeing the old dollars for something else, with no bad faith required. Thirteen states and D.C. restrict it; New Mexico does not, for either the state or local share. He works this through the state’s two best-performing jurisdictions to make the point stick: Santa Fe County’s medication-assisted treatment at the county jail reached 163 people last year, but the jail offered that treatment before the settlement and no public record shows the prior figure. Bernalillo County and Albuquerque extended APS counseling into middle schools, a tier that didn’t previously exist, which at least sounds like an addition. His conclusion is that he cannot tell whether either bought a single new hour of treatment, and neither can the auditor.
Four remedies close the piece: a common-format spending plan and annual expenditure report from every recipient on a single state dashboard; supplement-not-supplant written into statute; a standing oversight body, with the pointed observation that the Legislature convened a task force to study the public records act and a $920.5 million public health settlement is worth at least as much attention; and conditioning the next installment on filing the plan rather than on spending the money, so counties without providers aren’t punished for a shortage they didn’t create.
DC Journal / InsideSources
August 26, 2026
ESOP Leader’s Democratic Ties, “Praise-Jacking” Raise Red Flags Among Trump Allies
By Taylor Millard
Mr. Brenner appears twice as the sole on-record critic in the piece — every other skeptical voice is anonymous or generic. He is identified as president and CEO of the Southwest Public Policy Institute, a free-market think tank.
The story examines James Bonham, CEO of the ESOP Association, whose public support for Trump’s labor secretary nominee Keith Sonderling drew skepticism given his Democratic résumé — founding NewDEAL board member from 2010 to 2015, former executive director of the DCCC, and later CEO of the campaign consulting firm Blue Donkey Group. Critics dubbed the behavior “praise-jacking.”
Mr. Brenner’s first quote argues the administration won’t be taken in by Bonham’s sudden enthusiasm for a Trump nominee. His second closes the article: “The D.C. swamp is full of charlatans like James Bonham” who feign alliance with the president after years of opposition. Getting the closing quote is the strongest position in the piece.
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy — Panel Discussion
Recorded August 20, 2026; published August 21, 2026
Linney’s Pizza v. Federal Reserve: Who Pays for the Payments System
Mr. Brenner appeared as a panelist, credited as President & CEO of the Southwest Public Policy Institute, alongside Todd Zywicki of George Mason’s Scalia Law School, Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayers Union, and Ben Sperry of the International Center for Law & Economics.
The discussion covered Linney’s Pizza, LLC v. Board of Governors (6th Cir. No. 25-6038), the challenge to Regulation II now on appeal from the Eastern District of Kentucky. The panel worked through the central interpretive question — whether the Durbin Amendment creates two categories of issuer cost or three — along with the distinction between incremental and marginal cost, a Fifth Amendment takings argument under Penn Central, the developing circuit split with the North Dakota Corner Post ruling, fifteen years of evidence on who captured the 2011 debit cap, and state-level efforts in Illinois and Colorado.
SPPI’s amicus brief supporting the Board of Governors is linked in the video description, giving the institute both a seat on the panel and a cited filing in the record.
Santa Fe New Mexican — “Around the Roundhouse” podcast
August 13, 2026
From opioid settlement transparency to banking deserts, think tank founder talks policy issues in N.M.
A full-length feature interview rather than a quote pickup. Mr. Brenner is identified as founder, president and CEO of SPPI, described as a New Mexico-based think tank whose stated mission is delivering data-driven research, advancing government transparency, and safeguarding consumer choice across the Southwest. Host Daniel J. Chacón, the paper’s state politics reporter, covers what the institute does, how it is funded, and its current priorities.
Mr. Brenner discusses his departure from the Rio Grande Foundation and the decision to build his own organization. Substantive topics include opioid settlement transparency, New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act, banking deserts, and housing affordability. He also addresses leaving the Republican Party and offers thoughts on the state’s gubernatorial race.
