By State Senator Debbie O’Malley — My mother rinsed her children’s diapers outside because the city had never bothered to run water and sewer lines to our neighborhood. This was Albuquerque in the early 1950s, in a working-class Hispanic community near downtown known as Sawmill. At one time the Sawmill industry was the largest industry in the state. Nonetheless this area was largely ignored by the city, so my mother went door to door with a petition successfully pressuring Albuquerque to put in the lines.
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Sen. Debbie O’Malley is a Democratic member of the New Mexico State Senate, representing District 13 since 2025, following years of service in local government including the Bernalillo County Commission and Albuquerque City Council.
That is still how it works. Communities that organize and demand accountability from the institutions that are supposed to serve them can win. The ones that take the ribbon cutting on faith usually end up with nothing to show for it.
Bernalillo County just decided that community benefits should not be left to faith. In February, the county commission passed a resolution that ties public tax incentives to real community commitments. Companies applying for abatements will now be scored on how much they actually invest back: local hiring, workforce training, support for small businesses, environmental responsibility.
The more a company commits, the more public support it can access. The plan also establishes a Community Benefits Fund intended to support those priorities over time, though how consistently it is funded will depend on how these policies are implemented. The commission spent a year getting here, running community meetings, public surveys, and a steering committee of residents, business leaders, and workforce advocates. It passed 4-0. On Tuesday, the commission is expected to take a final vote to adopt the Community Benefits Fund, enforcement measures, and a community advisory board to help guide how these commitments are carried out.
When taxpayers put money on the table to attract or retain a company, they deserve something real back. That should never have been up for debate. Bernalillo County figured that out.
In 1998, I was a founder of the Sawmill Community Land Trust to redevelop that same neighborhood where my mother once petitioned for running water. By then it had been polluted and abandoned by negligent industry. We forced the clean up of contaminated soil and groundwater. We fought for funding. We made sure the families who actually lived there had real power over what got built and for whom. Over time, on 27 acres of abandoned industrial land near downtown, we built Arbolera de Vida, the Orchard of Life, which included permanently affordable housing, community gardens, senior housing, and live-work space for small business owners. A neighborhood that working families own and can afford to stay in.
None of it came about from public subsidies with no strings attached. There were real expectations attached to it, and from a community that held real power over the outcome.
Some will say that requiring community commitments makes a place less competitive for business. New Jersey has required community accountability standards as a condition of receiving tax credits under its Emerge business incentive program. Meanwhile, businesses more often base location decisions on workforce availability and transportation than on tax incentives alone. And when governments fund tax giveaways by cutting spending on education and infrastructure, research finds the economic damage from those cuts can outweigh any benefit from the incentives themselves. Bernalillo County is not turning its back on economic development. It is demanding that the community get something real back for the investment it makes.
Bernalillo County showed how this can be done. A year of genuine community engagement, a serious scoring process, resulted in a super majority vote. My mother’s generation had to petition for running water in their own neighborhood. The least we can do is make sure that when public money goes out the door to support or attract an existing or new business, it benefits the people who put it up.