We do not enjoy contradicting the wonderfully poignant and to-the-point words of famed poet Robert Frost, but apparently his New England neighbors—frozen much of the year in snow and ice—were warmer than ours in Los Alamos.
“Good fences make good neighbors,” Frost wrote.
In the Española Valley we know the opposite to be true. Here, good neighbors are generous. They know how to help others. To share like we were taught back in kindergarten.
So we have this to say to Los Alamos County’s government: Do not keep up your fences.
Be a good neighbor and knock them down, lest greed and selfishness get the best of you.
The wealthiest county in New Mexico, Los Alamos has long thrived using the massive economic benefits of the federal nuclear weapons work performed at LANL. The trouble is, as much as 60 percent of the lab’s workforce lives in the Española Valley, not Los Alamos County.
These workers are the heart of LANL’s daily operations, without who the lab could not function. Yet when they leave LANL and return to their homes in Rio Arriba County, they enter a different world: one where poverty, food insecurity, drug trafficking, water contamination and other public health threats often make daily life a challenge. We are a beautiful Valley, but one in dire need of funds to help our communities.
Rep. Joseph Sanchez (D-Alcalde) wants to use LANL funds to make our communities safer and healthier. The legislator has spent years trying to get Los Alamos County to do the right thing and share LANL tax revenue with our local governments.
During the last legislative session, Sanchez filed a memorial in the state House calling for a study of the issue. The memorial had 15 co-sponsors, but Rep. Christine Chandler (D-Los Alamos) helped ensure Sanchez’s memorial never received a hearing during the session.
The reason: Los Alamos County splits a LANL tax revenue share with no entity but the state, and Chandler and her allies apparently want to keep it that way.
Our neighbors’ resistance to sharing LANL wealth is so strong, it’s doubtful even New Mexican outlaw Billy The Kid could have pried loose money from their coffers.
Despite Chandler’s victory in denying the memorial a hearing last session, House Taxation and Revenue Committee Chair Rep. Derrick Lente (D-Sandia Pueblo) agreed to a potential interim committee study that would examine more equitable, regional tax distributions from LANL or other federal research facilities.
Lente included a caveat: the interim study would happen only if negotiations with Los Alamos County fail to resolve the issue.
The negotiations between Sanchez’s team and Los Alamos County commenced earlier this month. Sources tell the SUN Chandler controlled the initial session, which included Los Alamos County commissioners and the county manager.
Chandler ceded no ground to Sanchez and the Española Valley advocates. She and the other Los Alamos County negotatiators isnisted they were just there to listen, and did not offer or agree to any changes. Her behavior was described as disrespectful.
In other words, the retired-lawyer-turned-representative put on a master class in bad neighboring.
A former manager at LANL, Chandler must think she’s doing the right thing by trying to keep every LANL dollar she can in her county, even if it means depriving Valley residents who work at LANL a higher quality of life.
State Rep. Susan Herrera (D-Embudo) also sat in on the negotiation with Sanchez. She opposed his previous memorial on the issue as well as the more recent filing, arguing that changing the tax revenue distribution system for LANL would be bad policy and would “wreak havoc on our state.”
Herrera may represent Española, but her heart appears to be with our wealthier neighbors in Los Alamos. She served as founding executive director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, but the representative ought to consider the needs of Valley citizens who elected her over the whims of her old pals in Los Alamos.
One can only imagine what we could do here in our hometown and county with our fair share of millions from the LANL tax revenue pie.
Unfortunately, Los Alamos County is behaving like a municipal tightwad with poor manners. It’s not the way good neighbors treat one another. And it’s got to change.
As for Chandler and Herrera, they’ve refused to help their fellow Democrat Sanchez and turned their backs on economically struggling New Mexicans who want real leadership—not the politics of greed.
The Valley needs and deserves an annual share of LANL tax revenue, even if it means a touch less luxury in Los Alamos.
It’s time our neighbors showed a little more respect and a little less selfishness.
Editor’s Note: Rep. Joseph Sanchez is an investor in El Rito Media, which owns the Rio Grande SUN