For all the time Mayor David Coss and the City Council had to put a fair and sensible real-estate transfer tax question before our community's voters, they didn't.

Instead, what's on the March 10 ballot is a demagogue's dream — a stick-it-to-the-rich, gig-the-speculators proposal to tax transactions on amounts above $750,000.

Since few citizens would be affected, this idea has great appeal for those who won't be. Yet claims that it'll boost the cause of affordable housing — and that's its purported purpose — are inflated, to put it mildly.

If the Workforce Housing Initiative is approved, sales of certain homes — those in the city whose neighborhoods aren't already linked to affordable-housing schemes — will be taxed at 1 percent beginning at $750,001. A million-dollar transaction could cost the seller $2,500; not exactly an onerous amount compared with the $50,000-$60,000 the sellers are likely to pay their real-estate agent.

Nonetheless, it's the real-estate bloc leading the fight against the tax. Some of their arguments make no sense. For example, they're claiming the council could arbitrarily lower the $750,000 figure. That couldn't happen without a whole new election.

Other objections do make sense — especially that the city's timing is atrocious, in view of the beating the real-estate market is taking.

Back during Santa Fe's housing-speculation boom, we advocated a transfer tax. It's still a good idea — but not as it's being foisted upon the community today.

The tax should apply to all transactions, not just a select few. Make it a graduated impost: half a percent, maybe lower, at the bottom, 1 or more percent at the top.

The closest thing to an across-the-board tax anytime soon is the $30 paperwork-processing fee proposed in the Legislature by Santa Fe's Rep. Jim Trujillo to benefit affordable housing statewide. That fee probably should be higher — $50 minimum, say — and set on a sliding scale to build a realistic affordable-housing fund.

At the very least, the Santa Fe transfer tax ought to apply to the whole county — which, for jurisdictional reasons, might also bring the state Legislature into the picture; too late where this election, its cost, its divisiveness and its half-bakedness are concerned.

Tempting as it might be to "soak the rich," approval of this tax won't do much of it — now or when the housing market emerges from its slump.

Santa Feans should reject this tax and send our leaders back to the drawing boards.



Send Bermúdez to community-college board

If candidates of this high quality were on every ballot, we'd probably get out of the election-endorsement business:

In the only contested race out of three for the five-member Santa Fe Community College board of trustees, Andrea Bermúdez and Marcy Litzenberg come with excellent credentials — in academic achievement, educational experience and community service.

Both have professional ties to the college, while Litzenberg was a conscientious, contributing and collegial member of the Santa Fe Public Schools Board.

Whoever wins Tuesday's election, we're sure, will be a valuable part of the school's governing body for the two years remaining in Margaret Garduño's term.

If it's Litzenberg, she isn't likely to seek another term; she figures that, in a couple of years, she and her husband might have other plans. Bermúdez says she'd be willing to run for another six years on the board. So with continuity in mind, we lean toward the longtime higher-education administrator.