Sandoval County Commissioner Daymon Ely is convinced he did the right thing in approving a $16 billion IRB deal with Intel last month. He’s equally convinced that this summer’s Corrales Air Toxics study provided no proof that Intel’s operations are harming nearby residents.

The Corrales attorney sat down for an extended interview with Corrales Comment September 24 to answer questions about the IRB proposal, about his alleged conflict of interest in serving on the air toxics task force while negotiating that IRB deal, and about the legitimacy of the air study results.

“Commissioners don’t have to check their common sense at the door,” Ely said, explaining why economic impact studies showing revenue losses from the Intel IRB were not decisive.

“Common sense tells you that if Intel goes away, we don’t have those taxes [that Intel would have to pay without the tax relief].

“There’s absolutely no question in my mind but that had we not done this IRB, we were encouraging Intel to leave.”

Comment: Even if that is true, we can see from the $8 billion 1995 IRB that those who really benefitted from that deal were the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County. Sandoval County didn’t do so well comparatively speaking, and in fact had a net loss of $27 million. So why wouldn’t you negotiate the new IRB so that the benefits flowed to Sandoval County instead?

Ely: “But it’s not a net loss, because I don’t view the tax abatements as real money. I don’t see that money coming in if we don’t do the IRB.… We are trying not to be provincial about it and do only what’s best for Sandoval County. We’re trying to do what’s best for New Mexico, too.

“If it benefits Albuquerque and Bernalillo County more than it does us, we shouldn’t be saying, ‘Well, then we’re done. We’re waiting until it’s better for us.’ That’s really old-time politics. I’m not into that. I’m happy that it’s benefitting everybody. And if it benefits them more than it does us, fine… so long as I see and feel that there’s a benefit from this for the residents of Sandoval County as well. And I do.

“It comes down to two issues. First, do you believe that Intel would leave if we weren’t giving them the IRBs? The answer I would give you is: yes, I really 100 percent believe that would happen.

“Two, are they hurting or harming the residents?”

Comment: Given the last question, was it pre-ordained that the air toxics study would exonerate Intel? It seems clear from a variety of facts and incidents that the governor made an assumption early on that whatever came out of the Corrales Air Toxics Study was going to exonerate Intel. Im hindsight, it was pre-determined at the highest level of state government at that time, a year before any conclusions were reached, that the conclusions of the study were going to be that there is no problem.

That suspicion was increased by the fact that the study became extraordinarily political, and was temporarily shut down and pulled under the control of the Secretary of Environment just after the study’s project manager uttered the words “it looks like Intel might be culpable” when looking at actual meteorological conditions at times when residents reported complaints.

Ely: That makes zero sense to me. If I had thought for a second that it wasn’t an up-and up study, I wouldn’t have sat on the task force. It would have been a lie and I wouldn’t have done it.

“Second, what everybody is missing on this is that they think, ‘Well, gee, if the study results come out bad, Intel is going to leave.’

“But start with the notion that if we penalize Intel $2 billion [by not giving tax abatements] you guys think that Intel is going to stay. It’s a little inconsistent to say, ‘They’re going to stay even if we penalize them $2 billion, but politicians are worried they’re going to leave if there are environmental problems.

“There are several things wrong with that. You start with a false premise, that any politician would want the study to come out so it exonerates Intel. That might be a popular notion in the abstract, but the reality is, if it was proven that Intel actually is harming residents, that’s an easy political calculation.”

Ely said he urged Fred Marsh and other members of Corrales Residents for Clean Air and Water (CRCAW) to produce doctors’ medical opinions about suspect illnesses due to specific patients’ conditions. “The pressure was on them to put their cards on the table. But play it out… even if there was evidence that Intel is harming residents, does that mean that Intel is going to leave? Why? Now that that information is out there, not just for the New Mexico community, but for the Arizona community, the Oregon community, for the Ireland community, everywhere. The information is out there. So Intel can’t just run away to somewhere else.…

“If you have a study that Intel is in fact hurting people, they’ve got nowhere to go. They run the same kind of plant everywhere. It wouldn’t be kept secret in New Mexico. It would go everywhere.

“It’s not like they could go to Arizona and save themselves money. There has always been this notion that ‘It’s a big corporation. It must be bad. Government must be helping to keep them here.’

“But for me the question is easy. Look at it from a political point of view. Suppose the task force comes back and says, ‘They are in fact hurting people. Here is the proof.’ In that case, we [the County’s negotiators for the IRB] go to Intel and say, ‘We’re not doing this deal until you improve it.’ They say, ‘We’re out of here.’

“Even if that adversely affects the economy, from a political point of view, you’ve done the right thing, absolutely done the right thing. And number two, it has the advantage, at least in my community, of being the popular thing.

“So any politician worth his salt isn’t going to lose any sleep over taking it to Intel.

“If the task force had come back and said there is real information that Intel is harming people, we’d be done. But not only did I believe that there was no proof that Intel was harming residents, but if they were, why is CRCAW and SWOP (Southwest Organizing Project) talking about monitoring?

“We should be talking about reducing pollution, not monitoring. I’m not getting that. What I thought happened, is that we had reached the end of the study. I did meet with Secretary Curry about half-way through the study, but just to tell him that we really wanted answers. This was before the IRB, and there was no pressure. I just told him ‘Don’t BS anybody, just tell us the answer.’

“So when the final report is turned in —we’re done. We’re not going to do this forever. But the solution that CRCAW and SWOP came up with is, ‘Let’s keep doing this [study] forever and ever and ever.’ But it’s not free for NMED to do this. They had poured resources into it, they were investing a lot of dollars and had a gazillion people here. So they finally said, ‘You know what? We did what we promised we would do. We have the reports —we’re done.’

“That was my sense of what happened. I didn’t think there was a conspiracy, or something to exonerate Intel. And quite frankly, it never made sense to me that anybody would think somebody is out to exonerate Intel because… why would you do it? If Intel is hurting our residents, they’ve got no place else to go.

“What would be the reason for any politician to want the study to come out exonerating Intel? I guess the implication is that he would be scared that Intel would leave. But where would Intel go? If they are hurting people, they’ve got to fix the problem —period.

“Public health is always more important than the economics. I think this governor believes that, and I certainly believe that. Economic issues, as important as they are, come in a distant second.”

Comment: You didn’t think it at all strange that the day Mary Uhl [the study’s project manager] said that Intel could be culpable for causing these health problems, the whole process was taken over at the Secretary’s level?

Ely: “No. What it seemed like to me was that they had invested a lot of resources in the study, and that the work was done. The way I read it was, ‘We have poured resources into this and we are confident that this study is the right study, and we’re done.’

“I didn’t draw this big conspiracy theory from that.”

Comment: There are plenty of examples of political manipulation of the results of the study. The study was pulled away from the project manager and was directed by Secretary Ron Curry.

Ely: “In fairness, what I saw was that the technical report was done, [N.M. Department of Health epidemiologist] Len Flowers disagreed with it, and they said, ‘We’ve got to decide this. We’re at the end of the study, we’re out of money… what is the conclusion on this?’

“I didn’t assume there was some conspiracy on this. You know what? I just didn’t. Because what could the motive be?”

Comment: The motive is that the governor has retaining Intel as a centerpiece of his tenure. He does not want to be sitting there after four years or eight years saying, ‘The economy has gone all to hell because Intel left after we made them stop harming people.’

Ely: “But Intel has nowhere else to go. They can go elsewhere on economic issues, because if they go to Arizona, they save themselves $2 billion. That’s a real economic decision. But play it out: if you find Intel is culpable; you’ve caught them. Where do they go? Nowhere. They go nowhere. In Arizona, they’d say, ‘We’ve got the goods on you. You’re not doing that here.’

“That’s why I felt so comfortable about it. I thought if the conclusions of the study were that they were harming our residents, I would have no problem hammering them in the IRB process because they had no leverage over me, because they can’t go anywhere.

“It has never made sense to me that a politician would say, ‘We’ve got to keep Intel here; we’ve got to keep Intel happy,’ because they have nowhere else to go if they’re harming residents.”

Ely said he would have been a forceful advocate to persuade Intel to change its production processes if it had been proven that current processes make residents ill. “Let’s say the study comes back and it says not only are they harming our residents, but these are the specific chemicals that are causing it.

“What happens is that we sit down with Intel and we say ‘Here are the five chemicals that are causing problems in the community, causing health effects. Before we can finish this IRB we need you to eliminate those chemicals coming out the stacks.

“Alright, now there are two things they can say. They can say, ‘You know, it’s impossible for us to eliminate those, with any amount of money.’

“Fine. That’s easy for me. Let that be on somebody else’s conscience. I’m not working out an IRB. Bye-bye… see you around.

“Or they can say, ‘Well, you know, we could do that, but it would cost $20 million. Guess who gets to spend the $20 million? They do. It becomes part of the IRB deal. That is the opportunity to get it done. I assume anybody would know that in terms of negotiating the IRB….

“Everybody is ascribing these motives that somehow I or anybody else would be scared that the results of the task force would be bad. On the contrary. Had the results of the task force been something that I really felt showed that Intel was doing something bad —if we really proved it— that would have meant two things. I get to be really popular and do the right thing, both at the same time.

“This way, I felt like I did the right thing, but I have a part of the community that is furious with me. Why wouldn’t any politician want both?”

Comment: You don’t see any relationship between the timing of the IRB negotiations and the air toxics task force report?

Ely: “No, and I’ll tell you why. If that’s the suggestion, I can shut that down. They were down to their last $1 billion. They had just expanded with Fab 11-X. Fab 11 is quickly becoming obsolete. They want to re-tool Fab 11. They can’t do it on a billion dollars.

“It’s going to cost them several billion, and if they do it, they pay the taxes… they couldn’t do that, so it was either continue to make the New Mexico plant relevant or not.

“That makes sense to me. If anything, I think they would just as soon have approached the County Commission about the IRB after the task force was over, but they were seriously running out of time.

“I think they would have just as soon waited, seen what came out of the task force and then made a decision what they were going to do. That made all kind of sense, except business sense. They were really seriously running out of time.

“It didn’t make sense to me that they would approach us in the middle of the task force. The fear, of course, is that we would have them in effect over a barrel” if the task force concluded Intel was causing a problem.

“If they really felt like they were doing something awful, polluting our community and hurting our residents, and the residents were close to finding out about it, what would they do? They’re going to throw money at this community? Why? Just leave!

“They’ve got plenty of plants to choose from [for their next expansion]. If we’re really being that much of a pain in the ass, why wouldn’t they just get out of here? At the end of the day —I know this is going to be a very unpopular thing to say— I don’t think they believe they are harming the residents.

“Somebody would have to be thinking awfully bizarrely to come up with a scenario that says, ‘They’re just about to find out, so we’re going to throw a lot of money at them.’

“Why not just leave?”