City Government

It may be that we need to buy ten fiddles for the Albuquerque City Council and Mayor. They will need something to do when the city budget burns down everyones projects, subsidies and union pay raises.

The first meeting of the new city council didn't go too well when four of the members boycotted the Monday evening lawmaking session. The four members didn't like the fact that Councilor Brad Winter, who ended up as the new President of the Council, had lied to them about who he would support for the job. I can tell you that this is pure Brad Winter behavior. When I was Mayor we found we could never rely on his support. I don't think it is because he lied though. He is just one of these elected officials that will always seem to support the last point of view that is presented to him before a vote. Like many elected officials today, think Marty Chavez, he has no strong core beliefs. He just wants to stay in the game.

All this is going on while the city revenue situation is smoldering. It will soon break into a major 4 alarm fire while this nonsense of boycotting on the council continues.

I noticed today in the Journal that state government has revised downward its revenue projections. It was mainly due to the housing bust and the state's share of the gross receipts tax revenue off of home construction. Well, the state still has money coming in from $95 a barrel oil. That is something that the city of Albuquerque can't rely on. So with the Mayor's double digit budget increases over the last six years the city is in for a large wakeup call. Get out of the way as all of the budget cuts will bring special interests and professional victims in front of the council to argue that they simply can't get cut.

Mayor Chavez will have his hands full as he runs for the Senate and the budget hearings occur at the same time. I am sure his nemesis Brad Winter will use his Council Presidency to make this a big issue.