Miscellaneous

There was no more vexing problem when I was Mayor that the issue of the homeless in Albuquerque. It was constantly a non winner as far as public policy decision making. No matter what we would try, there was always passionate and sometimes hysterical reactions. Mayor Marty Chavez actually has my sympathy as he tries to wade through this morass. One thing is for certain, he won't make anyone happy as he tries to lessen the impact on the Barelas neighborhood from the over population of homeless services in that area. Sometimes, I fault the service providers for not wanting to address the issue because it might not be good for them as organizations. They should cast a wider net than that.

The Wages of Fear

The Albuquerque Journal is once again on its peculiar obsession with what the salaries of public officials are. They have always followed this thread for some reason. I rarely see this in other major daily papers. If we need to pay top notch administrators to lure them in to government service then I don't have a problem. I have always had this feeling that the Journal reporters and editors salaries are so low that they just can't help themselves. You can see how many of them have left Journalism for other jobs in government. You can't blame them really. Someday, I would like to see a story on what those reporters do earn. But really, it is none of our business. I will gladly pay the Journal subscription rate hikes because I am into my love hate relationship with the daily paper. To be fair, they haven't raised the rates in a long time and I know the newspaper business is suffering greatly. Not long ago, in the Daily Onion satirical newspaper, a headline story was about the last newspaper reporter in the country being fired. Lets hope that never happens.