The Hoot Smalley Report #1: Mayor Berry

\ Oct 01, 2009

3 min read

Hello all,

Hoot Smalley here, and I am just an average Joe with a favorable opinion in regards to the filming in New Mexico. So, as we all know or should know by now Richard J. Berry won the Mayoral race in ABQ last night. When I first heard the news, I cringed. Then I proceeded to drink. Then I crashed at a friend’s house and woke up to rain drops slamming against her roof.

I faked sleeping until the rain stopped and left to go get a cup of Joe at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop. My neighborhood incidentally ended up experiencing yet another drug raid. We don’t know what that neighbor of ours is doing in his back yard (we suspect he is cooking meth), but this is the second raid in two weeks. Alas, I digress.

So, I get to the coffee shop and I find myself cringing yet again. The morning paper, The Albuquerque Journal, has confirmed that Berry has won.. This is just what I needed to see as I begin my hangover recovery process, which is a cup of coffee, three eggs over medium and bacon. I begin reading the article in depth and quickly kill the coffee supply that is available, and I begin to ask myself who is this guy Berry.

I’m no slouch when it comes to knowing who is who on the political scene, but when I think back to when the mayoral race began, I can’t really place where Berry came from. All I knew or really ever known about the guy is that he is a Republican, who somehow became a State Representative in 07. At this point I decide to do research and quickly find that h e is a relative newcomer in terms of politics and surprisingly he voted for a bill that initially looked to be quite promising: HB 634 Filmmakers Production Fund.

This bill would have allowed the state to invest up to $5 million in productions and as it reads would not have negatively impacted the incentive program that we currently have for the big time productions. It looks as though the bill ultimately died and was never signed into law, but I find that the existence of a bill that could have been favorable to the Independent Film Industry (had it been worded better) on Berry’s voting record is promising. The bill, by the way, was sponsored by Rep. Ben Lujan Sr.

So perhaps my day will be all the sunshine and rainbows that it promises to be now that the rain has stopped. And, if he can make meth-house on my block disappear that would be great!