Public service means working together
What happened to public service? For years, Albuquerque has largely spared itself from the partisan budget battles that have crippled Washington and Santa Fe, but it appears that this respite is here no longer.
In recent days, I’ve come under attack for doing my job by finding compromise with a colleague across the aisle rather than letting partisans up for election hijack our budget process for headlines to run on in their campaigns.
To suggest that, as an outspoken progressive Democrat, I’m suddenly cozying up to Republicans is laughable.
These absurd attacks get right to the reason I’m running for Congress. Simply “saying no” and banging our fists won’t put food on the table for working families or ensure that we’re doing right by the people of this city. And it sure won’t take down Donald Trump or help lead the resistance.
For six years, as the head of ProgressNow New Mexico and as a city councilor, I’ve been the most vocal and aggressive critic in our state against Gov. Susana Martinez, Mayor R.J. Berry and now President Donald Trump. Just Google it.
The fact is that the mayor’s proposed budget eliminated all funding for Main Street programs in Barelas and Nob Hill, dozens of community arts and cultural programs, after-school programs, and the jobs and culture that go along with them.
The Council substitute put into place by the vetooverride was a Republicanled budget — written by Councilor Don Harris and championed by Republican mayoral candidate Dan Lewis — that gave big new raises to senior police leaders at the expense of community programs, and was built on the expectation that Trump and Martinez would magically triple our economic growth three-fold in the next two months.
However, in our attempts to prevent furloughs and harmful cuts down the line, I voted for an amendment — like every other Democrat — adding pay-as-you-go language to ensure we didn’t spend beyond our means if the “magic” funds fail to materialize.
But city workers and financial experts rightly objected to that proposal, so I sat down with the non-partisan finance department to work out a plan. Apparently my sin is that I worked with a Republican colleague to stop the games and take care of our city.
Because that’s what public service means.
To be clear, overriding the mayor’s veto put a more extreme Republican budget into action. I refuse to pass a budget that sets up hundreds of city workers for furloughs, hurting their families and our economy, just to score cheap political points and win the comment section of Facebook or the Twitterverse, and my colleagues shouldn’t either.
As chair of the City’s Finance & Government Operations committee, I’ve watched city revenues sluggishly improve for the past two years, and I’ll sit down to talk with anyone who wants to discuss the city’s very real and concerning budget issues that don’t leave enough money for firefighters and police officers, community programs and the arts, and investments in our local economy to spur job creation.
As a councilman I’ve consistently been a steward of progressive values and stood up to the mayor and other councilors when they pushed Albuquerque in the wrong direction. I prevented the administration from issuing another insider APD contract. I worked to turn a plan to privatize police services into new full-time, well-paying investigator jobs, who are already catching property crime offenders. And, I started New Mexico’s largest municipal investment in solar energy.
But Democrats don’t hold a supermajority on the council or control the Mayor’s Office, so I couldn’t have done any of those things alone.
I’d rather put progressive values into action by working with a few reasonable Republicans than play politics and get nothing done at all.
Because that’s the right thing to do — for all of us.