CABQ Seal ImageTwo-term state Rep. Richard Berry believes that incumbent Mayor Martin Chávez was playing pure politics yesterday when he held a news conference to announce that City Hall will give the District Attorney’s Office $275,000 to target repeat offenders.

Berry, who is challenging Chávez in the upcoming mayoral election, said in a statement yesterday that the news conference was an “election season stunt” in order to appear tough on crime.

If Chávez was really concerned, he would have lobbied for greater funding for more prosecutors during the 2009 legislative session, Berry said. But instead, he continued, the mayor lobbied for mass transit, like his “$300 million trolley car.”

Berry’s statement  said that he was the one who worked for that kind of funding at the Legislature, before the mayoral race began:

Berry, who sits on the Appropriations and Finance Committee, made a motion to fund the Bernalillo County District Attorney’s Office at the highest level available. That motion was passed and the office received a higher level of funding.

“This is nothing more than a $275,000 smokescreen. If this program was a true priority for Chávez, he would have asked the legislature to fund it instead of asking for money for his trolley,” said Berry.

“In the last weeks of the campaign Chávez is scrambling to appear tough on crime in the hope that voters will forget his record, but after twelve years as mayor, he has been unable to solve the problem.”

Berry also pointed out that Chávez still hasn’t identified how to fund the additional 100 officers he recently proposed to add to the ranks of the Albuquerque Police Department. At the news conference yesterday, Chavez didn’t identify where the $275,000 would come from.

In an e-mail to the Independent, the Chávez campaign said Berry’s criticism of the mayor is a “non-news story” and questioned why the Independent would cover the story given that we didn’t attend the mayor’s press conference.

“Are you really going to write a story about a press release a candidate wrote about a news conference you didn’t attend? This seems like a complete non-news story,” said Chávez campaign spokesperson Joanie Griffin.

Griffin did not explain why the criticism by one of Chávez’s challenger’s in the upcoming mayor’s race is a non-news story, or respond directly to Berry’s criticism that the initiative was spurred by election season.

T.J. Wilham — one of the Albuquerque Journal’s crime reporters — provides some context today on the issue of repeat offenders, and pointing out that the mayor has weighed in on the topic before:

A year ago, [Police Chief] Schultz and Chávez criticized the judicial system and prosecutors for accepting “sweet plea deals” for repeat offenders. Chávez also called for legislation that would prevent prosecutors from reaching plea agreements that dismiss sentencing enhancements for repeat offenders.

At the time, Chávez’s office released data that showed then-District Attorney Jeff Romero sought the repeat offender sentencing enhancement 839 times in 2000, a year before [current DA Kari] Brandenburg took office. The data also showed that Brandenburg sought enhanced sentencing more than 241 times in 2008, the most she has done so since taking office in 2001. She pursued it 104 times in 2001.

The legislation, however, never made its way through the Roundhouse.