After a year of negotiations and resistance from the Keller administration, the Albuquerque City Council voted 8-1 Monday night to overhaul how the city builds its $1.5 billion budget and require the mayor to give council more insight into how programs and staff perform.
The changes introduce new transparency rules designed to provide residents with a clearer understanding of how tax dollars are spent. The reforms eliminate “negative programmatic appropriations,” budget line items councilors said obscured actual spending, and require the mayor’s administration to provide detailed financial data, organizational charts and performance metrics during budget development.
The new rules take effect in July 2026 and will shape the fiscal year 2028 budget process. Councilor Tammy Fiebelkorn cast the lone vote against the overhaul…