By Mark Oswald | Albuquerque Journal North
SANTA FE, N.M. — The Santa Fe City Council, as a customer looking for the best deal, is now faced with something similar to the rancorous debate that took place when a new Super Walmart opened about a decade ago.
Santa Feans, and the council, were divided about having a second and bigger Walmart in town. Walmart was blasted for its labor policies, as a corporate giant that hurts local business and as yet another aggression against the old, traditional Santa Fe.
But in a public comment period during what was literally a night-long council meeting, there was also support for what Walmart and its massive organization has to offer – cheap prices. In the end, the Walmart development on far south Cerrillos Road was approved by a single tie-breaking vote.
Now the City Council is considering a new contract for municipal government’s banking services as the existing one with the giant Wells Fargo Bank expires.
Wells Fargo, of course, is coming off a bad year.
In a major scandal, Wells Fargo acknowledged in September that its employees opened up to 2 million bank and credit card accounts without customer authorization in order to meet lofty sales goals – a case of trying to hoodwink its own customers. Federal and California regulators fined Wells Fargo $185 million.
And the bank has faced protests, including in Santa Fe, for its involvement in financing the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
Mayor Javier Gonzales cheered the DAPL protesters who showed up outside a Wells Fargo branch in January and pushed for changes to the bidding process for the banking contract to include assurance of local involvement by the city’s banker. The mayor and others on the council also have promoted study of the ground-breaking idea of a public bank for Santa Fe, in part to gain control over how its money can be used as it bolsters a bank’s assets
But a city fiscal team, after reviewing bids from Wells Fargo and four other banks, now recommends sticking with the Wells Fargo behemoth. Three of the four other bidders are locally based. One other bidder has New Mexico in its name, but is a “member” of a banking outfit from Dubuque, Iowa.
The bid evaluation team’s report makes it clear that the competition wasn’t even close.
“Wells Fargo Bank provided a strong alignment of business interests, community initiatives and process priorities while keeping fiduciary responsibility and the safeguarding of the City’s financial assets in the forefront,” says the team’s recommendation.
In the new “community initiatives” category, Wells Fargo scored 501 points out of a possible 525. No other bidder got more than 338 points here. “The most complete, thorough and involved response was provided by Wells Fargo” in this category, the evaluation report says. The report lists Wells Fargo’s local lending to small borrowers, community donations and its employees’ volunteer services as pluses. It even adds, “Wells Fargo has been an industry leader in social, environmental and governance activities.” Wow.
For what it’s worth, a regional Wells Fargo official more or less apologized for the unauthorized accounts scandal. He was “personally very disappointed with things that have happened in other areas of our institution this year,” he told a City Council committee Monday.
The evaluation committee’s rave review of the Wells Fargo bid is going to make it difficult for councilors to move to another bank. The Finance Committee on Monday sent the recommendation onto the full council.
It’s a tough call for elected representatives to go against political beliefs that they and many of their constituents have expressed and strongly hold to. But the city staffers’ strongly non-political evaluation report is hard to argue with.
