Golden opportunities

Posted 12/05/2007 07:52:00 AM

By Carter Bundy

The Rio Grande Foundation and AFSCME are essentially philosophical polar opposites. We’re talking 2007 Patriots and Dolphins opposites. Yankees-Red Sox opposites. Hannity and Colmes opposites… no, wait, not Colmes. How about Michael Moore and Ann Coulter?

AFSCME believes that government, when delivered well, plays an important part in the education, health and economic development of our community. I’ll let the Rio Grande Foundation speak for itself, but it’s probably fair to say it shares Grover Norquist’s desire to shrink government to a point where it could be drowned in a bathtub.

So what on earth could possibly bring AFSCME and the RGF together on policy? The fleecing of New Mexican taxpayers, that’s what.

Big potatoes

After months of trying to work a compromise with mega-developer SunCal, Councilor Mike Cadigan bit the bullet earlier this week and realized SunCal wasn’t looking for compromise. More on that in a minute.

First, a basic refresher: SunCal, a company which deserves credit for jumping on the new urbanist bandwagon, is seeking enormous tax subsidies for its 55,000 acres of land on the west side. That’s almost half the size of Albuquerque. Huge.

To its credit, SunCal has always promised a new urbanist community. Of course, prior to seeking these tax giveaways, the company never made the quality of its development contingent on taxpayers handing over billions of dollars. If it did make that representation to Westland shareholders, it certainly was a well-kept secret.

The tax subsidies the company seeks are called Tax Increment Development Districts, or TIDDs. TIDDs were designed to help rejuvenate blighted areas of town which already had a tax base and already had basic infrastructure in place.

In greenfields, though, the entire new tax base constitutes the “increment.” Further, the entire infrastructure for a new city half the size of Albuquerque will be paid out of the TIDD.

Greenfield developments aren’t explicitly banned from applying for TIDDs, even though TIDDs were never originally intended to subsidize fringe development. It’s this loophole that Councilors Cadigan, O’Malley, Benton and Garduño seek to close.

The value of the subsidies to SunCal alone, when you add up state, city and county tax gifts, will be well into the billions, or tens of billions, over the next 25 years. This to a company that bills itself as the largest privately held developer in the West?

You can’t really fault Mesa del Sol or SunCal, or their lobbyists for that matter, for trying to get the taxpayers to pad their profits by using the loophole. They’re for-profit corporations, and if a golden opportunity presents itself, why not take it?

What did Tom DeLay say about compromise?

Having said all that, we all know that developers are the most powerful political players in New Mexico. So Councilor Cadigan, seeing the writing on the wall, brought numerous interested parties together to see if there was a way to slow down the developer subsidy train while supporting new urbanist development.

It’s probably not appropriate for me to share the contents of the meetings I attended, but I’ll leave it that Councilor Cadigan and council staff worked their tails off to find a compromise suitable to SunCal. SunCal rejected virtually every proposal while offering none of substance of its own.

Council internal politics and theatrics aside, the four Democrats who stayed in the council chambers for the vote voted exactly how most Albuquerqueans – and certainly most Dems – would expect: to support new urbanism but without tens of billions of dollars in tax subsidies.

The developers are gambling that they’ll have a mayor and five councilors willing to pad their bottom line with tax dollars.

They may be right and may siphon off a few hundred million before anyone catches on, but in doing so, they’re going to give the opponents of TIDDs a powerful tool to take back their city and state. When the backlash comes, my guess is the mega-developers will end up with less than they’d have gotten had they been willing to compromise.

The politics of pivots

In every new race, candidates reinvent themselves to reflect the new position and constituency for which they’re vying. All of them do, in both parties, with maybe the exception of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

As I’ve noted before, Mayor Chávez is a smart politician who has shown an ability to pivot on an issue when appropriate. When he needed moderate Republicans to avoid a runoff in 2005, he (politically) wisely opposed a minimum wage bill with controversial language.

As he geared up for some kind of statewide Dem primary, he signed minimum wage legislation. It was a defining pivot, and a politically astute one.

Can a corporate tax subsidy really be the defining moment of a young campaign? In most years, in most states, the answer is no. In New Mexico in 2008? Maybe.

It’s no secret the mayor’s being knocked around a bit by some Democratic blogs, both at home and nationally. But let’s face it – it’s a small percentage of New Mexican voters who read DailyKos or even Democracy for New Mexico or Heath or Joe.

The developers have a golden opportunity, but the mayor might have an even better one.

If Mayor Chávez signs the loophole-closing bill, fiscal conservatives, advocates of sound government and greens will all be applauding. It’s just the firewall he needs against Democratic – or zealous taxpayer-advocate-group – attacks. And it’s a golden opportunity he should take.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.