Committee advances amended bill to extend MRA tax-exemption window to up to 14 years

Representative presenting Senate Bill 58 told the committee the amendment changes the program to allow MRAs to grant property-tax exemptions for up to 14 years instead of the current seven-year abatement. "What that does is it allows MRAs to either grant up to 1 year or 2 years, so a lesser amount of time, or up to 14 years," the sponsor said, noting rising materials and construction costs and the need to improve project feasibility.

Supporters including an affordable-housing developer and the New Mexico Association of Realtors testified that a longer exemption window would help make large projects financially feasible. Rebecca Velarde, director of development for Palindrome, said the extended tool would “make it financially feasible” to build workforce housing in a central metropolitan redevelopment area. A state expert explained that while MRAs are different from federal CDBG slum-and-blight designations, municipalities set local criteria and that Albuquerque currently has 19 MRAs and has supported 12 projects that produced about 500 housing units, 100 of them affordable.

Committee discussion clarified that the bill’s language was intended to allow flexibility (“up to 14 years”) and that some statutory language will require cleanup in a future code-revision effort. Representative Lundstrom and others asked technical questions about how MRAs are approved and whether there is a central statewide repository of MRAs; witnesses said no statewide repository currently exists and local processes vary.

A motion to give Senate Bill 58 a due pass as amended was made, seconded, and carried with no opposition noted in the transcript; the committee reported the bill out as due pass as amended.