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A fledgling citizens group is buying time on Albuquerque radio stations to take Mayor Martin Chavez's side in a dispute with the City Council over a -cent gross receipts tax cut.

The Committee for Responsible Budgets is airing six ads this week and plans to do more, possibly in other venues, said Roger Mickelson, the group's spokesman.

"If we can't get a tax cut now, we'll never get one," Mickelson said.

Chavez proposed to implement the cut on Jan. 1, but a veto-proof majority of city councilors voted last week to delay that by six months, to July 1, 2008. They propose to use the extra tax revenues from that period - $9 million - to help fund Bernalillo County's Metropolitan Detention Center.

The mayor has promised to veto the jail funding plan and has by the end of the week to do so. The council could override the veto as early as Monday.

Chavez views the jail spending as caving in to unwarranted pressure from the county and characterizes the funding arrangement, which councilors worked out with the county, as a "backroom deal."

Councilors, led by President Debbie O'Malley, maintain the money is essential to ensure public safety and to keep the county from going over the city's head and working with the state to impose a more draconian funding package.

One ad that aired on KKOB-AM (770) on Tuesday singled out Councilors Don Harris and Brad Winter, the most conservative of the six who voted for the delayed cut.

Both councilors laid the campaign at Chavez's feet.

"The old mayor's pulling out all the stops, isn't he?" Winter said. "I think it would behoove him to work with the council. But that's not his style."

Harris said he voted for the delayed cut because "I did not want to put criminals on the streets."

Mickelson and Chavez's chief of staff, Barry Bitzer, denied any mayoral involvement in the ad campaign, which Winter said involves automated calls.

"This sounds like a grass-roots movement to me, and it's about time," said Bitzer, who also denied any personal involvement.

But if the campaign is designed to pressure Winter and Harris into switching their votes - which are needed to override any vetoes - it doesn't seem successful.

Harris said he had no intention of switching his vote. Winter was a little more cryptic: "(The mayor) is trying to change my vote by intimidation? I'll just leave it at that," he said.

Mickelson didn't have budget figures for the ad campaign, but said the group would be spending "a lot less" than $10,000.