The news from the Bernalillo County Commission that its budget could possibly suffer a 20% shortfall over the next couple of fiscal years is highly disturbing. Cutbacks and more taxing would be needed. But the question is, how did the Commission let it get to this point? It is a massive failure in their management system that things would get to this point. County government has always been pretty invisible because there is no one person accountable for occurrences like this one.
And as oil prices continue to fall Governor Martinez's free ride over the last four years will come to an end. She has a seemingly peculiar lack of management skills on the state level. It hasn't hurt her so far but I don't think even her pogrom against immigrant's drivers licenses will shield her from criticism for her lack of preparations over the last few months. Of course the legislature will share in this meltdown. In fairness, who could see this price decline continuing as it has? But the Martinez administration looks like the deer in the headlights.
And in the Albuquerque's Mayor's office a feeble bond program shows our victimization by the Marty Chavez administration and their raiding of property taxes to pay for ongoing city operations, rather than using this money for major projects, as was always done. It is a system that will hobble our city's ability to upgrade public works and projects to make us a player.
It will be interesting to see how everyone handles these frighteningly real budget meltdowns in 2015. Meanwhile those well paying federal jobs still look viable as a cushion, despite the Governor's and Mayor's dislike of government.
And in the Albuquerque's Mayor's office a feeble bond program shows our victimization by the Marty Chavez administration and their raiding of property taxes to pay for ongoing city operations, rather than using this money for major projects, as was always done. It is a system that will hobble our city's ability to upgrade public works and projects to make us a player.
It will be interesting to see how everyone handles these frighteningly real budget meltdowns in 2015. Meanwhile those well paying federal jobs still look viable as a cushion, despite the Governor's and Mayor's dislike of government.
1 comment:
Jim
A couple of questions, first, can't Mayor Berry reverse the property tax swap that Mayor Chavez started? Would it be easy to roll that back?
Second, (more of a comment) jobs are jobs. Government jobs are just like oil and gas jobs or any other jobs. I don't see why Martinez and Berry have tried to drive away government jobs, it makes no sense to me. A job is a job, the government is and always will be part of our economy. Take what we can is what I say.
Happy New Year!
Dan
Post a Comment