Cocoposts

Turtleback Mountain Diary 4

These days enlightened professionals in government stand out like big bass in a shrinking desert lake - leaping out of the water because they can't take the pond full of stupid anymore.

This is one quirky-ass little town.

One of the latest movidas involves a city vote to shorten the municipal runway to benefit a developer named Greg Neal who says he'll build a truck stop there any day now.

This is what's become of the "premier commercial and industrial zone" anchored by a "motorplex" promised in the 7,388 acre State land swap completed by former State Land Commissioner Patrick Lyons with chest-thumping pride in 2008.  Then NASCAR said they'd never heard of Greg Neal.

Now the Airport Director and somebody else has resigned.

Economic development: they'll say it's about jobs but it's all about real estate speculation.

Largest Landowners

The names apparently include a New Mexican. Here's the Land Report 100 - Largest Landlowners list.* This is not by weight.

A person with same name as one of them, Number 72, is presently requesting public funds through a LEDA grant from the Bernalillo County Commission to build another set of big boxes in an alfalfa field he owns at Coors and Rio Bravo Boulevards.

The zoning for the site was approved years ago when Teresa Cordova, stalwart protectress of valley values, was in office. As I recall, one of the arguments at the time was how the County needed its own retail development.  That huge Walmart right next door was in the evil City. (Say it with a hissss.)  So Wal-Mart didn't count except as a "changed community condition" that bolstered the argument for the conversion of more prime farmland into yet another speculative real estate venture. Sad but true.

 

 

* In spite of my much coveted position as primary steward of Whitelodge and Weed Ranch, I'm not on the list.

 

Swear Never to Blog About Palin

But  The Des Moines Register shows the power of repeated rhetoric and how anger gets deflected away from our corporate masters sponsors.  "Government" is ill-defined and varied - difficult to grasp at once.  It's hard to understand and easy to over-simplify. The term is used in broad swipes at federal, state and local agencies, employees and programs. It's all about government.

"Palin slipped easily into the role of the voice of a movement that feels chained down by taxes, the federal deficit and an out-of-control government."

Sorry, but where does corporate greed fit in?  I feel chained down by bank fees and utility rates, the intelligence deficit and an out-of-control Wall Street.

Step Into The Light

Bernalillo County Commissioner Wayne Johnson opines in the Albuquerque Journal about the county's  new openness and transparency moves, which appear to rely somewhat heavily on website access to previously obscure information.

Particularly unsettling is how good Commissioner Johnson says he thinks the most important provision of the new ethics resolution is the part where everyone will get to know how much money everyone else makes. 

In every job that I've ever had, my boss knew exactly what I earned and how much it actually cost to pay for my services. That boss was charged with determining whether or not my productivity warranted the cost to the company and my continued service. Governments are no different. 
     

In his view apparently we're direct supervisors.  Thanks, but no thanks.  I'm retired.  I don't want to be the judge of whether every single person in the bureaucracy is worth a paycheck.  That's a supervisor's job in a professionally managed government.  Although I would be interested in disclosure of commissioners' investments, not just their income.  That information would be relevant to my vote, and to their votes.  Otherwise, who gets hired and fired is not my job. 

Stepping into the light, reminds me of Poltergeist and little Carol Anne who was told, do NOT go into the light. Don't even look at it, then told something completely different, run to the light, baby. Mommy is in the light. This was a lie, of course, intended to trick ghosts.  But what got them into this dilemma of light or no light was that the developer moved the cemetery but left the bodies.  It was enough, they thought, to put up the headstones for people to see.  Everything else was left below the surface.  Yeah, the county is a little like that. 

Just shoving information toward the light without context or responsibility isn't ethics.

 

Sine Die

"The past is never dead.  It isn't even past."  William Faulkner

In twitter time the Roundhouse legislative session is ancient history.  At the risk of sounding melancholic, I miss the time when last Saturday wasn't ages ago. If this was the nineteenth century, the legislators (all men) would still be drunk.

At the gavel banging Sine Die they would have emerged from the old capitol building into similar spring sunshine.  The capitol in those days was an ornate domed affair* with broad steps descending northward toward the Santa Fe River and the town.  From the steps speeches were delivered to assembled crowds and the Governor at the time may have spoken.  Legislators may have stopped to listen or snubbed the Guv and continued on to waiting carriages.

There'd be more hats and facial hair and less bathing. The scent of pomade, horse poop, cigar smoke and body odor would be on the wind and in the hotel bar.  La Fonda was precursor to the Rio Chama as primary legislative watering hole - a designation that endured well into the twentieth century. 

Fabian Chavez, in the book, Taking On Giants by David Roybal, describes a 1963 confrontation in La Fonda with a liquor industry lobbyist.  The powerful liquor lobby was like the oil and gas industry of the day. Chavez had attempted reform legislation that angered some.  (No telling if they stormed out of committee hearings en masse.)  The lobbyist got drunk and grabbed the Senator by the lapels saying, "I elected U.S. Senator Dennis Chavez.  I elected Senator Clinton P. Anderson, and I own the legislature.  I bought you a thousand times."

Fabian later said, "they thought that if they contributed to us, they owned us."

Ah, tradition!

*The capitol was later stripped of these embellishments and renamed for an unhappy war event.

Roundhouse Showdown

Last night Representative Andy Nuñez tried to put a controversial bill up for a vote on the House floor and Speaker Lujan swept it out the door.  The Santa Fe New Mexican has the story. Reporters expected it and the Governor's staffperson had been waiting to film the stunt all day.  Watch dizzycam here.  It captures all the R's gesturing at the press after the Speaker left the chambers.  They're all looking up and saying, "Did you see that Trip?"  He did.

Before this staged drama came the long contentious debate about the film bills.  And before that came the long contentious debate about the budget.  And before that came a lot of tedious talk about cowboys.  I can boldly speak for cowpeople everywhere when I say no one really wanted to stay in that room a second longer. No one but those itching for the Nuñez drama.

Earlier in the afternoon Representative  Thomas Garcia had taken obvious pleasure in hours of verbal evisceration on budget amendments.  He grilled until well-done and the time limit was up.  This limit is called "Rule 20" I understand.  If they debate any longer, unicorns start dying.

What Would Bronson Cutting Do?

Searching for a New Mexico politician to respect* sent me back to the beginning of the last century - to  U.S. Senator Bronson Cutting.  What would he think of industrial hemp and genetically engineered seed? In Bronson's day hemp was grown in New Mexico. Testimony on Representative Begaye's Industrial Hemp bill included that of a man who recounted how his grandfather grew it successfully in Truchas for many years.

House Bill 575 is at least the fifth attempt at legislation for industrial hemp production.  In 2009 there were memorials and two bills that died.  Two bills in 2001 died in committee. In 2000 HB 388 died in committee. In 1998 a bill passed both houses, but was vetoed by Governor Johnson. (Go figure.)

Efforts to liberalize hemp elsewhere are having a similarly bumpy ride.

In the House Agriculture committee debate on HB575, Representative Cervantes suggested the bill didn't need all that pesky licensing and fees wording. The bill was temporarily tabled for gutting and hasn't been seen since.

Now, if it was about using genetically modified hemp seed from Monsanto, we might get somewhere.

County Sticker News

Big and little changes to Bernalillo County government the Albuquerque Journal notes.They've fired the jail boss and economic development officer.  And they're also getting rid of the in-your-face ugly-ass DWI stickers put on all cars last year because they chip the paint.  Scary acronyms do that. 

The challenges of new county management are sort of mythic, like thinning sacred deadwood of various dragons and priests.  There are lot of different ways of going about this, Commissioner Fair Maid Maggie Hart Stebbins told those assembled at the media breakfast.*  She stands at the entrance of the manager employment search maze.

The newsy Journal story mentioned jail overtime too:  The average corrections officer is working three double shifts a week, according to Tom Swisstack, who took over just last year as the deputy county manager for public safety.

Swisstack himself was coming off super-dooper-triple-back-flip-shifts during which he has mastered all aspects of local government.  He could be county manager too. And they could stick him to cars while they're at it.  He wouldn't chip the paint.

* Is that where you eat the media?  Mmmm.  Is it a buffet?

Voter ID and Ego

House Bill 308 -Voter Identification was heard in the House Voters and Elections Tuesday. The committee room was full of people who'd never been to the place before. I smelled hubris.  A tea party person was greeting early arrivers. He wore an incredibly loud red white and blue shirt with a screaming eagle on his chest.  Clearly, I hadn't had enough coffee.

Texas Squeeze

The Los Angeles Times reporter Evan Halper describes similar scenes in the California and Austin capitols:

"throngs of advocates for the poor, the disabled and the elderly telling old ashen-faced lawmakers on the Senate Finance Committee about the various horrors" of planned cuts. 

Stories are similar and familiar - evidence of epic policy failures and sad statistics speak for themselves.

 Such figures call into question whether Texas' economy has really transitioned into a new 21st century model, or whether it has been buoyed by high oil prices and lots of loosely zoned land where construction of cheap houses endured through the recession.

And marvelous Molly Ivins mention in another LA Times column by Michael Hiltzikin:

California's Legislature has won national renown for its dysfunction, but Texas lawmakers know how to squeeze dysfunction until it squeals. The late Molly Ivins reported years ago that when a good-government group ranked the Texas Legislature 38th among the 50 states, the reaction among knowledgeable Texans was, "You mean there are 12 worse than this?