Spaceport will benefit all citizens, including the poor

This is the third in a series of guest columns debating whether Doña Ana County voters should approve a 1/4 percent gross-receipts tax increase to help fund Spaceport America. Public officials and other readers are invited to participate in this debate. To submit a guest column for publication, e-mail me at heath@haussamen.com. Baseless personal attacks will not be published.

By Delano E. Lewis

One of the arguments most often made by those who oppose the spaceport gross receipts tax is that this project will benefit only the rich. Further, some argue that the money should be spent on infrastructure like health care, roads and education. I strongly believe that if our community has the vision to act on the spaceport and approve the gross receipts tax, the benefit will accrue across our community and county. The spaceport will be the catalyst in the creation of jobs and in the generation of revenues to benefit all of our citizens, including those at a lower level of income.

For a comparison, let us look at Huntsville, Ala. In 1950, Werner von Braun and a group of German scientists had been working on developing missile technology at White Sands Missile Range for five years. A group of community members in Huntsville recruited him to Alabama, and for whatever reason our community did not try to keep him. So he left to develop Redstone Arsenal, which became the head of the U.S. Army’s missile command.

The effects of that development in Alabama have been gigantic. As of 2006, Redstone Arsenal employed 14,601 people. White Sands Missile Range currently employs slightly more than 6,600 people. The development of Redstone Arsenal not only created jobs directly, but became the hub of a whole new aerospace industry. Boeing, NASA, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman and other high-tech employers contribute an additional 17,612 jobs to the area. This cluster directly and indirectly contributed $3.4 billion to the area’s economy in 2002, according to a chamber of commerce report.

So, how does this help poor people? First, jobs that pay a living wage and provide good benefits give people a chance to earn income and take care of themselves and their families with less government support. A census comparison shows how much better off the people of Huntsville are in contrast to the people here:

• More people are working. In Madison County, Ala., 6.1 percent of people are unemployed. In Doña Ana County that number is 10.5 percent.

• Working people make more money. In Madison County the median household income is $50,504. In Doña Ana County that number is $29,630.

• Because of this situation, there are fewer poor people. In Madison County, 7.4 percent of all families fall below the poverty level. In Doña Ana County that number is 21.7 percent.

So if Doña Ana County was to develop more jobs at higher wages, we would decrease the number of families that have to live in poverty.

The effects don’t stop there, however. Higher wage levels mean more money in an economy. Because people have more money, they buy more products and better houses. Since county and municipal governments get most of their tax revenue from gross receipts and property taxes, more purchasing means more tax revenue and more resources to local governments for roads, health care and education

Without these new jobs, two things will happen. First, we will continue to rely on the traditional jobs. Those jobs, though important, aren’t enough to get many of our people out of poverty as can be seen in the census numbers mentioned above. Since many of them remain in poverty, they will continue to rely on government programs for their necessities. Second, without this income our tax base will remain low and our local governments will not have necessary funding to provide those needed services.

Last week in the Las Cruces Sun-News an argument was made that paying for public infrastructure is “corporate welfare” and benefits will only fall to those running spaceport corporations or rich enough to afford initial space flights. But the benefits of publicly owned airports and seaports have been known for years, and the jobs and tax revenue created assist all people living in an area with a large public facility.

Others will argue that a gross receipts tax is detrimental to the growth of our community’s economy. The fact remains, however, that the GRT will have a minimal impact on the regular citizen and it will only remain until the bond used to pay for Spaceport America’s construction is paid off. And if it is so bad for business, why have both the Las Cruces and Hispano chambers of commerce and the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance – the major representatives of development in our community – all endorsed the GRT increase? The answer is simple: The benefits outweigh the costs.

So the decision is ours to make. As residents of Doña Ana County, we can vote on April 3rd to enact a gross receipts tax in support of Spaceport America and begin a new chapter in furthering the economic growth of our community.

Lewis is a co-chair of People for Aerospace and former U.S. ambassador to South Africa.