SWOPblogger

Here is the text of a letter SWOP submitted to the City Council this week regarding Tax Increment Development Districts.

Please join us next Monday, Dec. 3, 5:00pm at the City Council Meeting to support Councilor Michael Cadigan's Bill rolling back these massive corporate welfare schemes called "TIDDs." For more information, please call the office: 505-247-8832, or read past blog posts here, here and here.

Dear Albuquerque City Councilors:

The SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP) is opposed to the creation of Tax Increment Development Districts (TIDDs) in “Greenfield Developments” for the following reasons:

1. TIDDs subsidize developers (and MdS and SunCal are owned by large, out of state developers) by diverting tax revenues from the state and city general funds, and are inherently unfair.

a. Paying for new infrastructure with TIDD’ed tax money mocks the “no net expense” policy of the City of Albuquerque, which states that growth will pay for itself.

b. By covering development costs which should be paid for by the developers, TIDDs create an uneven playing field for developers (mostly local) who have to pay their way with impact fees and regular development costs.

c. There is no transparency requirement built into the legislation requiring the developer to show infrastructure costs are not passed on to the public through the price of homes. Without this requirement, we can assume the costs of infrastructure are being paid twice: once when homes are sold, and again when tax revenue pays off the bonds.

2. TIDD financing in new developments is bad government replacing private enterprise investments.

a. State Government should not be paying for infrastructure in fringe developments in Albuquerque or Santa Teresa.

b. City Government should not be paying for infrastructure in fringe development in Albuquerque or Santa Teresa.

c. TIDD financing increases the cost of infrastructure because the privately placed bonds (for MdS and Suncal to be purchased by their parent companies, verifying that they can pay for the development up front and providing them income on top of the free development money) are at interest rates higher than Albuquerque can command.

3. TIDD financing will have a negative effect on the non-TIDD areas of Albuquerque.

a. The total cost in lost revenue to the City from the MdS TIDD is estimated at $750,000,000 using the MdS projections and including the portion of State GRT which would be returned to the City under the current state distribution policy.

b. This financing method assumes that the residents of a TIDD area do not use or need any of the government related services in other parts of the city. It also does not consider the collective needs of the city, in effect Balkanizing Albuquerque for decades to come.

c. Again, paying for new infrastructure with TIDD’ed tax money mocks the “no net expense” policy of the City of Albuquerque, which states that growth will pay for itself, because it assumes future collective needs can be predicted, or that current needs on which projections are based are sufficiently being met today.

4. TIDD financing veils the income transfer and thus is not the kind of open, transparent government Albuquerque deserves.

a. The TIDD tax revenues pay off infrastructure bonds, which were bought by the developer building the infrastructure. In effect, the developer is actually paying upfront for the infrastructure and then being paid by the tax monies. The bond process obscures the fact that the tax revenue is going to pay a private enterprise’s development cost.

b. The diversion of the revenue streams and the impacts are not easily understood—MdS and SunCal tell you they are paying their own way and probably believe it after they have repeated it enough times. But in fact, with TIDD’ed tax money they are the beneficiaries of large public revenue streams.

SWOP believes that Councilor Cadigan had it right the first time when he introduced his bill to remove greenfield development from the Albuquerque TIDD legislation. We commend him for all of his hard work on the issue. Politics have forced him to modify and modify.

Faced with no other alternative, SWOP can support proposed modifications, but only with severe clawbacks assuring that developers who fail to achieve stated goals will repay all associated TIDD monies. In the long run, however, the TIDD financing at both the state and local level must be amended or all of the rest of us (the non TIDD dwellers) will be paying higher taxes for reduced services for decades to come.

Sincerely,

The SouthWest Organizing Project

Here is a great comic strip. With all the guns in school, racial profiling posts and most recent post from T-Shirt Hell it's made me think of how we can use humor to get our point across with a very serious subject.

What's difficult is that in order to be funny you have to use stereotypes that are obviously racist to begin with anyway, and one population will always be the butt of a joke. So where do we draw the line?

I don't know. But what I do know is that some things are funny (when we agree) and we need to remain sensitive (as much as possible) so as not to offend a particular person. But with that, some things are pretty funny, (Jon Stewart, Dave Chappelle) especially if we're poking at systematic issues were always fighting, like racial profiling in our so called "public safety" structure.

Which is why I thought this comic was great. The K Chronicles are hilarious. It's political sattire at it's best. Somehow when we say political sattire it makes it a little better. Anyway, have some fun and check out the K Chronicles.

Labels: K Chronicles, political satire, racial profiling, Racism

Santa Fe's Living Wage Ordinace now covers all workers! It was already the highest minium wage in the nation, now it's the most comprehensive. Let this be an example of what we can and must accomplish across all of New Mexico, and lets not stop there!

SWOP sent a delegation to the Santa Fe City Council Meeting last night to show our solidarity with the amazing work of the Santa Fe Living Wage Network (SFLWN) and SFLWN member organization Somos Un Pueblo Unido. Because of the long hard hours of organizing and strategizing that SFLWN had done the room was packed with 100 supporters of the expansion of the Santa Living Wage to include all workers, no exceptions. The supporters weren't just young people and small business workers who were exempt from the prior living wage ordinace, they included small business owners, the SF business alliance, labor unions, faith-based organizations, and community organizations like SWOP.

Out of the entire crowd there was only 1 person that spoke against the Living Wage for All. Because of the overwhelming support for the ordinace, and the prior work the SFLWN had done directly with the SF City Councilors and the SF Mayor the vote was unanimous! All SF workers will be paid the highest minium wage in the nation! We hope this will inspire all of our work as we fight for a true LIVING WAGE for ALL New Mexicans, and some day maybe even a maximum wage?

Labels: Santa Fe Living Wage Network, SWOP, Worker's Victory

What do you know, another marketing scheme to divide an conquer people of color and women.

Another way to further a white supremest patriarchy. Is the chuckle worth it?

I don't care much for Hilary's politics, but it made me sympathize for her and for all of us women. This brings up so many issues that I can't even begin to breakdown in this post. Sounds like that's a Weekly News Rant in the making. So I'll just ask that others chime in and really let us know how far this T-shirt company has gone. (who by the way makes a killing off of offensive t-shirts, e.g. slavery get's work done) when does it end?

Looks like a Republican is behind this one. Check out this commentary from feministing.com
It's all very interesting. One thing to note, referring to women as ho's is HIGHLY Offensive.

Labels: 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Democracts, Hilary Clinton, Offensive T-shirt, Racism

Come Out to City Council Meeting November 28th!! SWOP will be carpooling to Santa Fe to make sure the Council votes for keeping the Living Wage. If you would like to come with us, e-mail tomas@swop.net or call 505-301-6671.

Visit SantaFeLivingWage.org

* City Council to Decide Fate of Living Wage Wednesday, November 28th at 7:00 pm. The City Council will consider what to do with the Living Wage on Wednesday, November 28th at the Santa Fe City Hall, 200 Lincoln Avenue. We are first on the agenda. We need a strong turnout so that the Council understands what the community wants. Please come out!

Santa Fe is proud of its living wage, the highest in the country. But we still need your help. Forty percent of Santa Fe workers aren't covered, and the current law makes enforcement difficult. Some councilors are thinking of exempting young people and disabled people from the living wage.

We are supporting amendments that will expand the law to cover all employers, not just those with 25 employees or more. The amendments will also establish an automatic cost of living increase every year, starting January 1, 2009. Please join us that night to make sure the City Council does the right thing.

Here are four other ways you can help:

1. Sign The Petition ! We have at least 3,540 individuals, businesses, and religious, civic, labor, and community organizations have signed on as supporters of the proposed amendments to the Santa Fe Living Wage Ordinance. Click Here to keep track of our progress and see who has signed. Please sign up if you have not signed already!

2. Contact your Councilor! Please contact your City Councilors to tell them you support the Living Wage covering all Santa Fe workers including young people and the disabled. For contact information for the councilors in your district – and a link for their email address, Click Here. After you talk to your councilors, email us at info@santafelivingwage.org and tell us what they said.

3. Learn about the Issues!

a. Read the fact sheet about the proposed amendments. Click Here for PDF format; Pass it on to your family, friends, and co-workers.

b. Click Here to see the text of the proposed amendments.

c. To read the Executive Summary or the full report of the September, 2007 study of the impact of the Living Wage in Santa Fe by the Bureau of Business & Economic Research at the University of New Mexico, or the Living Wage Network Fact Sheet about the study, Click Here.

d. To read the local newspaper coverage about the UNM, Click Here .

* Sign Up for Text Messaging. Sign up for text message action alerts on your cell phone. If you have a cell phone number that can receive text messages, e-mail tomas@santafelivingwage.org to sign up. Type in your name and 10 digit cell phone number and press "send". You can sign up even if you don't have a 505 area code. Your phone will be charged just like any other text message that you would receive.

* Check the latest articles on the living wage, Click Here .

* To become a Member, Volunteer, or Supporter of the Network, Click Here .

Labels: living wage, Santa Fe

From November 9th - November 13th, nine of SWOP’s members (Robby, Tomas, Monica, Erica, Louis, Ruben, Emma, Orlando, and Aurea) went to Jackson, Mississippi. There we attended two conferences. South X Southwest, which was to build relationships with SWU of San Antonio, TX and Southern Echo of Jackson, Mississippi. The second conference was the GAP conference, which was working on filling the educational gap in Mississippi schools.

We learned about many of Mississippi’s struggles. Did you know that they have uniforms in their public high schools? On top of that they get sent straight to the office if they’re in violation of the dress code. Most of the time schools designate a certain store, which is usually pricy, where uniforms must be bought. One story we heard was about a girl who was out of dress code the last day of school and as a result of that she was suspended the first week of the following school year. How outrageous is that?! Another issue they face is corporal punishment. It is still present in all schools in Mississippi. The majority of the students who get punished are black males. We found out that corporal punishment is still legal here in New Mexico. A result of theses two problems is sometimes dropping-out. The drop-out rate in Mississippi is very high. 85% of Mississippi counties have a drop-out rate of higher than 50%.

We also learned about their history. We learned about two significant tragic events specifically. One was the assassination of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who was shot in his own drive way. Medgar happened to be a main target. He usually got out of his car on the passenger side of his car. But this particular day he had to get something out of his trunk. So he then got out of his car and was then shot by a long distance riffle. The other tragedy was the murder or Emmitt Till in Money, Mississippi. He was accused of whistling at a white woman in the grocery store in Grenada, MS. Later on that same day he was then kidnapped by the store owner and his brother. He was then beaten to death and then tied to a large cotton gin fan with barbed wire and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. His mother decided to leave his casket open to show everyone what had happened to her son. This event was a starter for the civil rights movement. You’ve probably heard of these stories before, but it’s so much more real when you’re at the actual place it happened!

As two interns we have been touched by what Southern Echo has done. We are now looking forward to the next gathering in the spring of next year. We hope to show the passion and discipline of our cultures and solve problems that all our communities face.

Here is our 2nd video blog! We're still learning how to do this right. We welcome any suggestions and comments, Enjoy!

Labels: APS, Guns in Schools, SWOP News Rant, SWOP Podcasts

Independent Media and Gentrification Explored on Counterspin

In case you missed it:
Download the MP3
Real Audio

Counterspin
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
8:30am-9am on KUNM
This week on CounterSpin: In the essay "Why We Write" journalist Robert Parry describes the need for an independent press to take on the mainstream media's penchant for promoting false narratives and marginalizing dissent. Bob Parry broke some of the most important stories in the last thirty years, he's the founder of the site Consortiumnews.com, he'll join us to talk about why he writes.

Also on the show: When corporate media talk about poor communities their story is pretty simple, these neighborhoods are a problem and gentrification is the solution. The story changes though if you actually value the opinions of those displaced. New research highlights these issues in Bay Area media. We'll talk to Karlos Schmieder from Oakland-based Youth Media Council about their report.

Listen Live

The bad grades just never seem to stop coming.

According to a new study, the state received an F for online disclosure of corporate tax breaks and other kinds of economic development subsidies with a score of 0 of 33 (0%).

The state got a better grade on contract disclosure, but lobbying activities in the state remain a relative secret on the internet.

In the press release for the Good Jobs First study:

"The Internet makes possible an unprecedented level of government transparency and public participation." said Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy, "But many states have been slow to adopt vigorous online disclosure, especially with respect to economic development subsidies. Twenty-seven states [including New Mexico] and the District of Columbia still provide no systematic online subsidy disclosure."

Full text of the report as well as an appendix on each state (plus the District of Columbia) can be found on the Good Jobs First Web site at http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/news/article.cfm?id=375

Some policy options for Fred Mondragon, state officials and legislators from the study's press release:

• Make it possible to browse through complete databases on subsidies, contracts, etc. as well as to search for data on a specific party.

• Provide a variety of data formats, so that users can either download full databases and analyze the information offline or import the data to other Web sites (through Application Programming Interfaces).

• Enhance subsidy and contract disclosure to include data on outcomes. For example, subsidy disclosure should reveal how many jobs (with what wage rates, benefits, etc.) were created by subsidized companies, and contract disclosure show indicate how well the vendor company carried out its responsibilities.

• Also enhance subsidy and contract disclosure to include data on the past performance of companies. This could include their track record on environmental, workplace, and consumer-protection compliance as well as the existence of any tax liens.

• Combine disclosure about subsidies, contract awards and lobbying with data on state campaign contributions by the companies involved or their top executives.

You can contact your legislator here about vigorous online disclosure of corporate tax breaks (and other economic development deals between governments and corporations), procurement contracts and lobbying activities in the state.

Labels: Clean Elections, corporate welfare, IRB's, Subsidy Disclosure, taxes, Transparency

Hey Folks!

Click below to view our news rant. Send us feedback and comments. It's our first time doing something like this, so we promise we'll get better.

Labels: 2008 Elections, homelessness, hunger strike, SWOP News Rant, SWOP Podcasts

Environment News
Situated between mountain ranges and undergoing steady growth, CiudadJuarez suffers a long-standing air pollution problem. Commercial trucks, city buses, personal automobiles, brick kilns, and unpaved roads all contribute to the degradation of the air shed. In recognition of the problem, the new municipal administration of Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz has drafted a set of goals to attack a problem that has dogged previous local governments. The plan was unveiled at a November 8 meeting of the Joint Advisory Committee (JAC) in the border community of Sunland Park, New Mexico. Founded in the 1990s, the JAC is a group made up of government and civil society representatives from Mexico and the United States that promotes clean air on both sides of the border.

“We’re trying to take a dynamic direction,” said Hector Sandoval, the new director of Ciudad Juarez’s ecology department. Sandoval, who ran as the Mexican Green Party’s candidate for mayor in this year’s election, laid out 13 clean air policy goals established by the Reyes administration. Highlights of the strategy include installing four air quality monitoring stations, requiring air emissions stickers on private vehicles, conducting inspections of private businesses, promoting a car-pooling lane on the heavily-traveled, international Bridge of the Americas, and bringing the municipal environmental ordinance up to date.

To achieve its goals, the Reyes administration banks on working with the Chihuahua state government and the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez (UACJ) in upgrading air pollution detection technology and in monitoring the old buses that rattle Ciudad Juarez’s streets, Sandoval said. In a similar fashion, the city government is collaborating with the university and other authorities to promote the use of cleaner brick kilns as well as the construction of an “ecological park” to house the city’s brick-making industry.

According to Sandoval, getting older, dirty vehicles off the roads is a priority of the Reyes administration. The environment department chief told Frontera NorteSur that the city government plans a 500-vehicle pilot project similar to “cash for clunkers” schemes in the United States. Sandoval said the Ciudad Juarez program will offer cash payments to owners of old vehicles that can be recycled or used for parts. A seller will then be able to use the money from a car as a down payment on a new vehicle, he said. As an extra benefit of the planned vehicle buy-out, Mexico could utilize carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, Sandoval added. No start-up date for Ciudad Juarez’s “cash for clunkers” program has been set.

Sandoval acknowledged that convincing car owners to part with their vehicles won’t be easy. A sprawling city with a difficult public transportation system, many low-income Ciudad Juarez residents depend on cheap, used vehicles imported from the United States. The Ciudad Juarez Municipal Planning Department estimates 79 percent of city residents use vehicles which average 13 years in age. Ana Maria Contreras, air quality chief for the federal Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), estimates that 30 percent or less of the approximately 450,000 vehicles circulating in Ciudad Juarez have been inspected for air emissions.

Mexican environmental authorities worry that the lifting of restrictions on the importation of used vehicles from Canada and the US set for January 2008 will result in even greater numbers of discarded, polluting cars and trucks coming into the borderlands from the North “This will create a big problem for the city,” predicted Gerardo Tarin of Semarnat’s Ciudad Juarez delegation.

Tarin said enforcing a Mexican customs regulation requiring that used imported vehicle have an environmental sticker will hopefully curb the worst vehicles from entering Mexico. “It’s hard to stop this from day to night, but at least we could stop the polluting ones,” Hector Sandoval added.

In Mexico, concerns are mounting about the environmental effects of a new used car import boom happening at the same time of meticulous US security inspections. Some environmental experts say that official air quality monitoring reports, which measure contaminants over relatively dispersed areas during extended periods of time, don’t adequately gauge the impact of short-term, air pollution bursts caused by idling traffic near the region’s international bridges where crossing times have reached as much as three hours at times in 2007.

Alma Leticia Figueroa, twice head of Ciudad Juarez’s ecology department and the current coordinator of the biology program at the UACJ, said the health of Mexican and US government workers, vendors, local residents and border-crossing students is jeopardized by the bridge congestion. “They are all people exposed to an air quality outside the norm,” Figueroa said. A JAC participant for nearly a decade, Figueroa recalled attending numerous meetings with officials from Mexico and the US in which a “maximum” goal of 20 minutes crossing time was agreed to for bridge users. However, the current situation represents a step “backwards from what we proposed,” Figueroa said.

In an interview, Figueroa endorsed a special car pool lane, proposed harmonizing export-import environmental standards for used cars and suggested reserving thorough auto inspections at border crossings for secondary stations specifically meant to check suspicious cars and passengers. Figueroa contended that a pressing need exists in the United States for an educational campaign aimed at coaxing people not to dump their old, polluting vehicles on Mexico. Ultimately, she emphasized, Ciudad Juarez’s air pollution problem is not confined by a glass barrier at the border.

“El Paso, Sunland and Juarez are in a basin, a common space. We breathe the same quality of air,” Figueroa said.

Kent Paterson
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

For a free electronic subscription email
fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Click on letter to enlarge.

Karlos says: Ok. So, like, shameless plug time. The following post is promotion for a report I contributed to for journalists writing about and groups working on housing and development issues. It's focus is the Bay Area, but it's a valuable tool for anyone hoping to use creative strategic communications in their work.

Displacing the Dream: A report on Bay Area newspaper coverage of development and gentrification

- PDF Preview: http://youthmediacouncil.org/documents/view/61
- Press Release PDF and Press Kit: http://youthmediacouncil.org/sections/view/pressroom
- Relevant Blog Posts: http://youthmediacouncil.org/blogs/view/user/1
- Read the prologue: http://www.sfbayview.com/News/Main/Displacing_the_dream.html
- Get your copy at http://youthmediacouncil.org/store

Bay Area, CA - As of 2006, Oakland and San Francisco had each lost 20-25% of their African American populations. Displacing the Dream exposes the failure of Bay Area newspapers to adequately cover the crisis of gentrification and displacement facing the Bay Area today.

YMC has spent much of this last year analyzing 3 months of coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News. The result is this report on the dominant and missing stories in coverage of gentrification and displacement in the Bay. With Contributions from anti-displacement groups in the Bay Area and the Miami Workers Center, research support from Data Center, and poetry by Roopa Singh, Displacing the Dream promises to be a groundbreaking tool to support creative communications strategies for organizers in the Bay and beyond.

What did newspaper coverage of housing and development include? Whose voices were heard and whose got left out? What does it all mean? Get your questions answered and buy your copy of Displacing the Dream today, a must-have tool for journalists, advocates and organizers.

Labels: Dia de los Muertos, Rini Templeton

Update: Corruption Blamed For Tabasco Floods

Floods trap residents on rooftops in southern Mexico

Monahan's blog had an interesting quote from Fred Mondragon yesterday:

State Economic Development Secretary Fred Mondragon raised some eyebrows as he came out swinging against the PNM layoffs, the over 100 recently announced by Eclipse Aviation and 1,000 layoffs in Rio Rancho at Intel Corporation. He told KRQE-TV news:

"It's hard to see how they can justify a rate increase while at the same time laying off a number of people. I'm getting a little bit tired of these large companies coming in right before Christmas and playing bogeyman man... In this case right before Halloween and letting go of people right at the end of the year right before the holidays."

Mondragon suggested PNM execs look to cut costs among themselves. I'd be concerned about the high salaries," Mondragon continued. "They just brought in a high-powered executive from Colorado to be the chief operating officer."

Recent annual total compensation for CEO Sterba is $3.6 million. Other compensation in the executive suite of the publicly regulated utility include William Real at $924,000, Alice Cobb at $898,000 and Charles Eldred at $771,000.

Mondragon's comments are not going to resonate favorably in the PNM boardroom which is gearing up for a December rate increase hearing before the NM Public Regulation Commission, but his comments should be noted by the Legislature and local governments as they contemplate economic incentives for large companies. (emphasis added)
Good paying jobs are cited as the trade-off for taxpayer sweetened deals, but now we're seeing how sour things can get for working New Mexicans when the big boys start sneezing.

Could it be people are waking up?