SWOPblogger

Karlos says: Another victory for developers, yet we're getting closer to having a representative council. I have to say, corporate handouts like these result in a direct trade off on services, public safety and the needs, values and interests of the rest of us...

Journal article.

By Sean Olson, ABQ Journal

City councilors on Monday narrowly shot down a bill to limit incentives the city could use in certain tax increment development districts.

The tax districts allow developers to divert sales and property taxes that would have gone to the city from within a district to pay for roads and other infrastructure.

Opponents said at the meeting that the council already has the ability to confirm or deny an application for the tax districts on a case-by-case basis. The legislation would have only limited the council's ability to find more economic opportunities for taxpayers, they said.

"I think this slams the door shut to (prospective companies)," Councilor Ken Sanchez said at the meeting Monday.

Proponents said the bill would have simply established guidelines for district applications— saving resources for both taxpayers and developers.

Councilor Rey Garduño said that guidelines are set by the council often to save time. He used land-use issues as an example.

"Can you imagine if we had to examine every single zoning issue?" Garduño said.

The measure would not have affected districts inside the 1979 city boundaries, districts in a metropolitan redevelopment area— an urban rehabilitation project, for example— or districts already approved by the council.

In the remaining parts of the city:

Developers would only have been able to divert property taxes.

Diversion of those taxes would have been capped at 33 percent of the total collected.

Residential developments would not have been eligible for a district.

The council rejected the bill on a 5-4 vote, with Sanchez, Trudy Jones, Don Harris, Brad Winter and Sally Mayer voting against the measure. Garduño, Michael Cadigan, Isaac Benton and Debbie O'Malley voted for it.

Some of the councilors said they saw the legislation as an affront to their ability to intelligently analyze future applications for the districts.

Jones said she found it "offensive."

"It is almost as if we can't be trusted if we don't pass this legislation," Mayer said.

Cadigan, who sponsored the bill along with Benton and Garduño, said it was not meant to be offensive. It was meant to remind the city not to "succumb to temptations," such as the promise of new jobs, that might not be delivered by a developer, Cadigan said.

Benton warned the council to not think of the districts as the only way to ensure planned growth on the fringes of the city— one of the benefits of the districts touted by supporters.

"I think that's a failure of planning policy," Benton said.

Councilors passed similar legislation late last year, but it was vetoed by Mayor Martin Chávez.

Labels: Albuquerque City Council, Civic Engagement, corporate welfare, Corruption, TIDD

This is so crazy. Sometimes I think of how naive I am. It's still hard for me to believe how nasty and evil some people are.

What's awful is that we always talk about how we can't trust people anymore. Well in reality it's these people we can't trust. How can they live with themselves.

Let's trust our neighbors and lets get people in office we do trust.

October 2nd Albuquerque municipal elections. City Councilors are running for office. So let's get out to vote and get the right people in!

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by Amy Goodman

Karl Rove’s resignation as deputy White House chief of staff cements the political future of the waning Bush administration. George W. will have little to do except wield his veto pen; he doesn’t need the steadying hand of Rove for that, or his strategic insight. As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign “in order to spend more time with family,” a retrospective of his dirty tricks might be in order. Much is attributed to Rove, dubbed “Bush’s Brain” by Texas journalists Wayne Slater and James Moore-yet very little sticks to the man. Bearing in mind that we presume innocence until guilt is proved, read on:

-In 1970, College Republican Rove stole letterhead from the Illinois Democratic campaign of Alan Dixon and used it to invite hundreds of people to Dixon’s headquarters opening, promising “free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing,” disrupting the event.

-In 1973, Rove ran for chair of the College Republicans. He challenged the front-runner’s delegates, throwing the national convention into disarray, after which both he and his opponent, Robert Edgeworth, claimed victory. The dispute was resolved when Rove was selected through the direct order of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who at the time was none other than George H.W. Bush.

-In 1986, while working for Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful William Clements, Rove claimed that Rove’s personal office had been bugged, most likely by the campaign of incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark White. Nothing was proved, but the negative press, weeks before the election, helped Rove’s man win a narrow victory. FBI agent Greg Rampton removed the bug, disrupting any attempt to properly investigate who planted it.

-When Rove was an adviser for George W. Bush’s 1994 race for governor of Texas against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, a persistent whisper campaign in conservative East Texas wrongly suggested that Richards was a lesbian. According to Texas journalist Lou Dubose: “No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove. Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it. It’s a process on which he holds a patent. Identify your opponent’s strength, and attack it so relentlessly that it becomes a liability. Richards was admired because she promised and delivered a ‘government that looked more like the people of the state.’ That included the appointment of blacks, Hispanics and gays and lesbians. Rove made that asset a liability.”

-After John McCain thumped George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, with 48 percent of the vote to Bush’s 30 percent, a massive smear campaign was launched in South Carolina, a key battleground. TV attack ads from third groups and anonymous fliers circulated, variously suggesting that McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam had left him mentally scarred with an uncontrollable temper, that his wife, Cindy, abused drugs, and that he had an African-American “love child.” In fact, the McCains adopted their daughter Bridget from a Bangladesh orphanage run by Mother Teresa.

-According to the investigation of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Rove played a central role in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in retaliation for the accusation by her husband, Joe Wilson, that the Bush administration falsely claimed Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Niger.

-Rove has ignored subpoenas to testify before Congress about the Justice Department scandal stemming from the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He skipped a hearing on improper use of Republican National Committee e-mail accounts by White House staffers that allowed them to skirt the Presidential Records Act. Rove claims he enjoys executive privilege, which travels with him as he leaves the White House.

These are but some of the dirty tricks attributed to Karl Rove. We are to believe that Rove, born Christmas Day, 1950, is retiring to write books. Former Texas Agriculture Commissioner and populist firebrand Jim Hightower describes Rove’s departure as “a rat jumping off a sinking ship.” But arch-Rove watcher Wayne Slater of The Dallas Morning News knows better. He notes that Rove and his wife have built a house in the Florida Panhandle-the “Republican Riviera”-and that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be 59 in 2012, a ripe age for a run for the White House. Regardless, the art and science of the political dirty tricks, learned by Rove in the Nixon years and perfected by him in the George W. Bush White House, will be with us for years to come.

Denis Moynihan provided research assistance on today’s column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 500 stations in North America.

© 2007 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate

Labels: Bush, Corruption, Karl Rove

We need something like this for New Mexico. It seems like almost daily there is a new scandal in the paper. Today it's Rutherford's connection that seems kinda fishy with the UNMH expansion. When will it end.....

By Holly Allen, Christopher Beam, and Torie Bosch
Updated Friday, May 11, 2007, at 12:36 PM ET

For an interactive feature on the recent scandals of the Republican party, click here.

Having a hard time keeping track of all 10,000 GOP scandals? Between fired U.S. attorneys, deleted RNC e-mails, sexually harassed pages, outed CIA agents, and tortured Iraqi prisoners—not to mention the warrantless wiretapping, plum defense contracts, and golf junkets to Scotland—you could be forgiven for losing track of which congressman or Bush administration flunky did which shady thing. Renzi—now, was that the guy with the skeezy land deal? Or the woman Paul Wolfowitz promoted?

We're not saying that Democrats never do anything shady. (Cash-stuffed freezers come to mind.) But as the saying goes, with great power come great opportunities to screw up royally. And if your memory is as hazy as ours, you could probably use a handy refresher.

For an interactive feature on the many scandals of the Republican party, click here. For a text version, click here.

Labels: Corruption, GOP Scandals, NM Corruption, Republicans