Crime cited to oppose plan

Group says government should focus on other problems

A business interest group with a history of fighting against paid sick leave has deployed a new strategy: using Albuquerque’s violent crime as a reason not to pursue such a policy.

The Albuquerque Coalition for a Healthy Economy has launched a website highlighting media reports about recent crimes. The featured headlines include “Man accused of kidnapping woman after work, raping her at gunpoint” and “Four shot outside Downtown ABQ nightclub.”

The website, crimemattersabq.com, encourages citizens to contact local leaders and urge them to “concentrate on crime.” It criticizes both the Bernalillo County Commission and the Albuquerque City Council. Both bodies recently passed plastic bag bans, and the County Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a bill that would require businesses to provide workers with paid time off.

Website visitors can forward a form letter to elected officials that says, in part: “As you know, violent crime is rampant, car theft is out of control, good people are leaving but you work to pass plastic bag bans and complicated sick leave rules that will hurt jobs and drive businesses away. That’s not what Albuquerque needs.”

Carol Wight of the New Mexico Restaurant Association is running the website.

Wight said the County Commission does not seem to be adequately addressing the crime problem, which she said should take precedence.

“One of the reasons I started this is people are saying, ‘You don’t care about your employees; therefore, you don’t want sick leave.’ It’s, like, we care about employees on a very basic level. … We care they can come to work safely . ... It’s really important to us that we have a safe place to go to work,” she said. “And that’s the County Commission’s job. It’s our job to employ people.”

Albuquerque has experienced some of the nation’s worst crime rates, although the latest Albuquerque Police Department data shows double-digit decreases in both violent crime — such as aggravated assault and rape — and property crimes like auto theft and commercial burglaries.

At the county level, Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins says officials multitask, continuing to work on issues related to crime and behavioral health. For example, the county is preparing to open a 16-bed crisis triage center to provide mental health stabilization services for those with substance abuse problems or mental illness and has in the past year raised sheriff’s deputy salaries and approved contracts for a “tiny home village” transitional housing project.

“I just think that is a weak argument that we can’t focus on more than one thing at a time,” she said.