Mayor Chavez Caught in the Act of "Greenwashing"

I received the video above in an email awhile back when Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez was still running for the U.S. Senate. This seems like a perfect time to post it.

Everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, pointing readers to John Fleck's excellent exposé of Albuquerque Mayor Marty Chavez's greenwashing that appeared in Sunday's Albuquerque Journal, so I thought I'd join the queue (so to speak). Fleck documents the inflated statistics and exaggerations that were once displayed on the City of Albuquerque website's Albuquerque Green "Q" page. Turns out that Marty's nonstop bragging about Albuquerque being the greenest metropolis in the universe (or variations thereof) was mostly hot air, like much of what he boasts about as his accomplishments. He's good at paying lip service. Unfortunately, his assertions too often often fall a little short of the truth.

Chantal over at Duke City Fix, who used to work on city cyberspace projects, provides a screen capture and useful link to the "Q" page as it once appeared before it was taken down when Fleck started poking around for the facts. Cocoposts also weighs in, and SWOPblogger features the Journal article itself. Meanwhile, Eye on Albuquerque discusses this and other examples of the Mayor's tendency to distort statistics to suit his political needs.

Aren't you glad Marty Chavez had the sense to withdraw from the New Mexico Senate race? Let's hope he has the same sense to refrain from running for Mayor again, despite his recent decision to challenge the term limits that apply to the office.

Sprawl Isn't Green
Chavez has worked hard to portray himself as a "green" mayor. Undoubtedly, Chavez has done some positive things for the environment, but there's a lingering problem that won't go away. During his tenure as mayor he's been known as the area's number one cheerleader for out of control, unregulated sprawl growth and the developers who make huge profits from it. You can't be for sprawl development and be "green," now can you?

When planned growth strategies were being debated in Albuquerque and considered by the City Council, Marty did everything he could to fight against it or to water it down. Marty became known as a fighter for developer interests, whether it was a road through the Petroglyph National Monument or a roadway situated so it destroyed a cottonwood hundreds of years old. Marty even posed in a photo op showing him jubilantly helping to cut the tree down.

Then there's his strong support for Tax Increment Financing (TIF) in the form of TIDDs designed to financially reward West Side developers for gobbling up greenfields and replacing them with sprawl, all at the taxpayers' expense. Check out our previous guest blog by Gabriel Nimms of 1000 Friends of New Mexico for more on that.

If Marty Chavez runs for Mayor again in 2009, you can rest assured he'll be facing big-time challenges on the basis of his greenwashing alone. Then there's all the other stuff ....