Daily Lobo: I was just looking through your issues that you have posted online, so I’m going to ask you a couple questions based on that.
Richard J. Berry: Sure, you betcha.
DL: When you’re talking about immediate and long-term job growth, you said that you’re going to try to start spending the 100 million un-used tax dollars that are available from the city. Why do you think this money hasn’t been used yet, and how do you plan to use it to create jobs?
RB: Well, I think that’s a good question. If you look at geo-bond dollars, the impact fee dollars and state grants, there is a lot of money at City Hall that’s sitting there and hasn’t gone out the door yet. Even the mayor himself has said there is $100 million or so that he’d like to get out on the street, but it hasn’t happened yet. I think, in an economic downturn that we’re in now, those are tax dollars we’ve already sent into the city. Those should be used to put projects together, to create jobs — number one, to improve public safety and improve quality of life issues around the city. So it’s a real win-win thing for everybody if we can get those dollars out the door. Why they’re not getting out the door, you’d have to ask Martin Chavez that. I’m not sure.
DL: What kind of jobs do you hope to create, and how is that going to help out UNM students who are about to graduate find jobs?
RB: Well, I think the number one thing is if we’re going to have a vibrant economy, we have to have a thriving job base. I’m a UNM graduate, my wife’s a UNM graduate, and when you’re coming out of the university system, you want to know there is a job waiting for you. Whether you are in the sciences — we have a wonderful intellectual community in Albuquerque — or whether it’s in the trades. I personally am in the construction industry. So when we start creating jobs, we start building a tax base, if we build a tax base, that helps everybody. Everybody’s boat rises, if you will. Regardless of what your major is coming out of the university system, a thriving job base is really what you need to have a bright future.
DL: So you think those jobs are going to be created through the use of more money?
RB: I think, if we can get the tax dollars that have already been sent in, those would be more along the lines of construction projects, median landscapes, senior centers, youth soccer fields, road improvements, those kinds of capital-type improvements. I have other job creation ideas about buying more of our goods and services at the city level from local vendors if we can get that done at a competitive price.
DL: You have posted that you are going to end the sanctuary city policy. What is that going to mean for the city of Albuquerque and how will that affect the people?
RB: This is a crime issue. It’s a public safety issue, not an immigration issue. Twelve years ago, the mayor changed the policy where he prohibits his police officers, when they have a criminal in their custody, from running a complete background check to include not just their previous criminal activity but their immigration status. And so what I’m asking to do is take that policy back to what it was before Martin Chavez changed it to what serves the public today and what most municipalities around the country do, and that is if you are a criminal in police custody, then your entire background will be checked, including immigration status. If it’s a way to get a criminal off the street, that’s the point of the policy change.
DL: So how will knowing the immigration status help to get criminals off the street?
RB: Well, if someone’s in custody and they have an immigration status check and they’re in the country illegally, then there is an immigration hold put on that person so that person wouldn’t as easily be able to bond out and get back on the streets.
DL: Also, you are not going to allow people with different immigration statuses have driver’s licenses, is that right?
RB: Well, that’s an issue at the state level, it’s not a mayoral issue, but that’s something that I think faces New Mexico. New Mexico is one of the very few states in the country — there’s just a handful now that will issue the same driver’s licenses to someone who is here un-documented as they will for a citizen or someone who is here on a document basis. And it comes into the national security issue; it deals with the Real ID Act that is coming out of Washington. So, there are states around the country that have had a policy who are now reverting that policy back to not doing it any longer. It’s just a security thing. Once again, it’s not an immigration policy, it’s a security policy.
DL: Property crime seems like a very big issue in your campaign and I see that you came up with a three-step plan. The first step is “make crime a priority.” How do you plan to do that? Obviously, there are many things that are priorities in the police department.
RB: We hear more about property crime in Albuquerque than almost any other issue when we’re talking to folks out on the street. Property crime is up nine percent in Albuquerque. Thirty-one thousand people in Albuquerque were victims of property crime, including myself. This is very much on people’s minds. Part of the quality of life for all of us is making sure we feel safe in our homes and making sure our personal property is protected. So I think as you sit down as a mayor, you pull your police officers in and they are experts at crime solving and crime prevention. You ask them, “What are the resources that you need? How can we prioritize property crime to make sure we’re funding the resources you need to not only keep us safe and keep our property safe but also get yourselves home safe at night?” So, I think it’s a prioritization issue as much as anything.
DL: Okay, so are you going to form new police forces to deal with property crime, or what are you going to do?
RB: Well, I think what you need to do is put priority on it and set up a task force within a department to bring innovation. I think one of the key things in this race is that after twelve years of one mayor, some of the innovation and some of the creativity may not be there. So, let’s get creative about how we’re going to solve these problems together; let’s work with the community and the police department to try and solve this problem.
DL: Your second step was “bring back funding for crime prevention programs.” Where are you going to get this funding and how do you know that these prevention projects actually work?
RB: Well one of the things that happened this year was that the mayor was presiding over a very large budget deficit. So he made cuts — many, many cuts. One of the things he cut that I wouldn’t have cut was youth gang prevention. APS was able to step in with stimulus dollars and cover that half million dollar cut that he made. I just don’t think that when you’re prioritizing cuts that I would prioritize a youth gang prevention program. I think crime is fought not just on the reactive basis through police enforcement, but also through a proactive basis by keeping our youth, giving them a brighter future, keeping them out of gangs in the first place. I think that would help.
DL: The third step is “stop buying stolen property.” How do you think that you’re going to put that step into action?
RB: One of the things as a legislator that I voted for — that we did one of the last sessions — was that we made it more difficult for someone to take scrap metal. (People) go into a construction site or materials yard and steal copper or aluminum or one of these valuable metals and take that down and sell it to a scrap yard. We put into place a system where you have to identify who you are, give your data to the person, so we don’t have people stealing things and making it easy to sell those. So I think that rolls right back into property crime. I think a tougher pawn shop patrol is needed. Many of the pawn shops do a fine job, some don’t. There was an article in the newspaper a while back about a pawn shop that was fencing stolen bicycles. Letting folks know that if you steal something in Albuquerque, we’re going to make it difficult from an enforcement standpoint for you to sell that property. It’s a deterrent.
DL: You mentioned that Denver and El Paso’s crime rate has decreased. What kind of things do you plan to do that model their crime policies?
RB: Well the first thing you have to do is ask what they’re doing. In the middle of a campaign, it’s difficult to go to El Paso or to Denver. I think what you do is you rely on your law enforcement and the professionals that you have. Once again, it goes back to you giving them the resources that they tell you they need, give them the flexibility, allow them to do their job well and I think that’s going to make a big difference.
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DL: Lastly, one of your major issues was government transparency. You said that you would make information available on the city hall Web site, including the city’s checkbook and government salaries. Is that information not already available on the city hall Web site?
RB: Well let’s talk about transparency. Transparency is the key to reform in my opinion. It’s difficult to always legislate ethical behavior. We do our best in Santa Fe to do that, but I think transparency is the key. If people know that their actions as government officials and as stewards of taxpayer dollars are easily accessible, then I think that solves a lot of problems right there. So, right now you can go on the city hall Web site and I can tell you from personal experience, you can spend hours and hours and hours and hours trying to find the needle in the haystack. I think what needs to happen is what other states and municipalities have done. You should be able to go online and search with the click of a mouse, “contracts.” Type in the name of a company, see what contracts come up for that company, how much they are. You could tie those back into political contributions. For the taxpayer or an advocacy group to go in and find out, “What is the structure of one of our 21 departments,” or, “Are we real top-heavy in that department?” Also, what kind of salaries — maybe not by individual names — but what kind of salaries do we have at this department or this department and see if that really fits into what we think is a responsible city government.
DL: One thing I noticed that you aren’t including in those issues that you mentioned on your Web site was sustainability. What do you plan to do in that area to make Albuquerque a more sustainable city?
RB: I think it involves planning. It involves buying from the business community. It’s really a private-public partnership where the city government sits down with the industry, with the business entities in town and we do master planning. We make sure that we have smart planning growth, that we are designing around sustainability goals that are reasonable and don’t price us out of the market. I think we can do that and do a lot of good.
DL: Do you have a plan for sustainability around the city? Or is it just kind of something that you’re going to look at?
RB: Well I think that it’s building codes, it’s conservation efforts in the city structures and city buildings. It deals with water, electrical; it deals with how we design public buildings, and it is putting in reasonable sustainability requirements for local builders. Not always going to the very nth degree all the time where it becomes unaffordable, but getting good, solid, sustainability efforts put into our building codes.
DL: How will you make sure that water is always available in Albuquerque?
RB: Water is a big issue here, and I think that what we do is we look at the future. The San Juan Chama project that came online in the past several years was planned almost 50 years ago. So, I think what we need to do in our generation is we need to look forward into my son’s generation and generations after that and put things in place that will get us to the next sustainability level for water once our cushion from the San Juan Chama is gone. That’s going to be water transfers into the middle Rio Grande and working with our brackish water supplies to get them to where they’re potable — just looking towards those things we can do 30, 40, 50 years down the road so that somebody in those days can then sit there and say, ‘Well, thank goodness someone several generations ago had the foresight to plan for our water future.’
DL: What do you think of Mayor Chavez’s “MOVE” volunteer plan and would you keep this in place?
RB: This is the plan where as a city contractor you have to donate to the…?
DL: Well, it involves posting volunteer opportunities online so people can go see them and really advocating for volunteer projects.
RB: Well I think the glue that holds a community together isn’t necessarily government, it’s us. It’s the people who are willing to donate their time, treasure and talents to help the community, so anything that we can do to foster an environment of volunteerism is something I’m very much in favor of.
DL: What do you think the role of UNM will be in the community if you become mayor?
RB: Well this is our flagship university, and in the legislature I spend a great deal of time advocating on behalf of UNM. This is my university, this is where my wife graduated, and it is really a shining star, not just in Albuquerque, but in the state of New Mexico, for technology transfers and for education. So I think what a mayor needs to do is extend a hand to Dr. Schmidly, extend a hand to faculty at UNM and say, ‘How can we work together to build our city, to give our city a brighter future, to team our resources together so we can provide opportunities to our citizens?’ I look very much forward to doing that. This is a great university.
