Excerpt:

When a deal is complicated, I get to the heart of the matter by setting aside the details, and focusing on what each party puts in, and what each party receives when everything washes out. Using the company's own numbers, here is what the Sun Cal TIDD deal boils down to.

SunCal contributes $5.6 million. (Land costs of $4,000 per acre for 1,400 acres.).

New Mexico taxpayers contribute $408 million, ($291,000 per acre of the development -more than enough to cover all of SunCal's development, infrastructure and project management costs.)

SunCal gets 100 percent of the profits from the sale of the lots.

Taxpayers get 100 percent of the ongoing costs of maintaining roads, sewers, water.

Why would the state of New Mexico (90 percent) and Bernalillo County (10 percent) put up virtually all the money, but then give all the proceeds to SunCal?

Sun Cal proponents claim the development will attract new and out-of-state businesses that will contribute to our tax base. This logic escapes me. If I were an out- of-state business, the $408 million given to SunCal would mean nothing. I would ask for my own subsidies and tax breaks.