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Albuquerque mayoral candidate Richard Berry may have only one company listed under his name with the New Mexico Public Regulations Commission, as we reported yesterday, but on his candidate financial disclosure statement filed with the City Clerk he lists five.
One of Berry’s campaign themes is that he’s a successful business man, and that he would run the city more like a business if elected.
Questions about Berry’s business life have been raised by incumbent mayor Martin Chavez, who put out a mail piece and radio ad saying that Berry is the owner of only one company—R.J. Berry Enterprises, LLC. And, Chavez says, that company has “…No sales, No Income, No employees, No office.”
Cumbre Construction is the company that many refer to as Berry’s business, but in fact that company is owned by his wife.
Financial disclosure form filed with the Albuquerque City Clerk by Richard Berry
The City Clerk requires candidates to file a financial disclosure form that lists “any and all sources of income that presently account for five percent or more of your income, or which accounted for five percent or more of your income during the past year.”
On that form, Berry lists five sources of income: Cumbre Construction, Inc.; 12,000 Constitution, LLC; RGR Ltd., LLC; RJ Berry Enterprises, Inc.; and Paisano Partners, LLC.
The form does not ask for any greater detail, so we don’t know if the income derived from each of those sources is investment income, or from sales of goods or services.
We can infer from this information that Cumbre Construction accounted for at most 80 percent of his income, and that RJ Berry, Enterprises provides at least five percent of his income. It’s this company that the Chavez campaign says in its campaign literature had no sales and no income.
Berry’s campaign manager, Dana Feldman, told the Independent today that the campaign is working on a document to prove that Chavez’s claim about RJ Berry Enterprises is false.
“There is income coming from RJ Berry Enterprises,” she said. “It’s a small business consultancy firm that has been paying gross receipts tax.”
Feldman said she would get back to us with the detailed information about Berry’s business activities as soon as it is ready.
