Afghan refugee accused in a case that shocked Albuquerque's Muslim community reaches plea agreement - Associated Press
An Afghan refugee who was convicted earlier this year of first-degree murder in one of three fatal shootings that shook Albuquerque's Muslim community has reached a plea agreement that could resolve criminal charges stemming from the other two killings.
Muhammad Syed's attorneys confirmed Thursday that the agreement will be considered by a state district judge during a hearing Tuesday. Details of the agreement have not been made public.
Syed already faces life in prison for killing 41-year-old Aftab Hussein in July 2022. He was set to stand trial in the second case beginning Tuesday, but those proceedings were canceled amid the discussion about changing his plea.
The three ambush-style killings happened over the course of several days, leaving authorities scrambling to determine if race or religion might have been behind the crimes. It was not long before the investigation shifted away from possible hate crimes to what prosecutors described to jurors during the first trial as the "willful and very deliberate" actions of another member of the Muslim community.
Prosecutors described Syed as having a violent history. His public defenders had argued that previous allegations of domestic violence never resulted in convictions.
The first trial uncovered little about motive, leaving victims' families hoping that the subsequent trials might shed more light on why the men were targeted.
The other victims included Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, a 27-year-old urban planner who was gunned down Aug. 1, 2022, while taking his evening walk, and Naeem Hussain, who was shot four days later as he sat in his vehicle outside a refugee resettlement agency on the city's south side.
With the conviction in the case of Aftab Hussein, Syed must serve at least 30 years in prison before he is eligible for parole. His sentencing hearing has not been scheduled.
AG files to hold landowner in contempt after he misses deadline to remove obstructions in public waterways — KUNM News, Santa Fe New Mexican
The state aims to hold a Pecos River landowner in contempt of court after he failed to remove obstructions and misleading and false signage in the river.
In October of last year, Attorney General Raúl Torrez announced the state filed a complaint against landowners who tried to restrict public access to parts of the river that flowed through their private land.
In March, Erik Briones entered into a consent decree to remove any and all fencing, obstructions and signs, which still hasn’t happened months later.
Briones told the Santa Fe New Mexican he plans to do so when the water level is low enough. He says heavy spring runoff and monsoon rains have kept the levels high.
Briones said he disagrees with a 2022 New Mexico Supreme Court decision that launched the initial complaint, which affirmed the public has the right to walk or wade on the stream bed, even if it's technically private land.
Briones said that leaves owners liable in the case of injuries or worse, and he and other landowners have filed a federal complaint seeking to overturn the court’s ruling.
Patchwork of new Title IX rules are in effect with no end in sight - By Susan Dunlap, New Mexico Political Report
Thanks to court challenges by conservative groups and Republican-led states, six schools in New Mexico – three colleges and three K-12 – cannot implement Biden’s Title IX rules to expand protections against sex discrimination. And that number will likely grow.
The Biden administration announced new Title IX rules in April designed to expand protections against sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation, sex characteristics, sex stereotypes and parenting and pregnant students.
The new rules also change how schools respond to allegations of sexual assault. This is a change advocates welcome because they said the 2020 rules, established by the Trump administration, made the process more difficult for victims.
Enacted in 1972 under former President Richard Nixon, Title IX is considered a landmark in federal civil rights law. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in all educational programs and activities that receive federal funding.
The new rules went into effect on August 1. But 26 Republican-led states, clustered into nine lawsuits, sued and sought injunctions on implementation of the rule. The focus of all nine lawsuits is aimed at preventing the portions of the rule that expand protections for transgender and nonbinary students that allow them to use the bathroom of their gender and expect their pronouns and names to be respected within the educational environment.
The lawsuit before U.S. District Judge John Broomes in Kansas included three conservative organizations, including Moms for Liberty. The organizations sought an expansion to an injunction to include all schools across the nation with enrolled members as students. The court agreed in July.
Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice told NM Political Report that her group is submitting a new list every few weeks to the court to add more schools to the list as they recruit more members at schools around the country. The court agreed with Moms for Liberty that the list should be dynamic. Justice said Moms for Liberty intends to get members at every school so that all schools and colleges will have to return to the 2020 Title IX rules.
The groups’ argument is that their children’s right to free speech is being infringed upon, Justice said.
“The ruling out of the Tenth Circuit is important. It reaches into blue states and we’re really thankful for that,” Justice said.
New Mexico colleges and K-12 schools implemented the rule on August 1 and all schools were expecting to do so uniformly because New Mexico was not a party to any of the lawsuits.
But because of the expanded injunction, New Mexico State University, Eastern New Mexico University’s Roswell campus and Central New Mexico Community College cannot implement the new rules. Each of these three schools are on the organized groups’ list of college campuses that have enrolled members.
The New Mexico Higher Education Department said through spokesperson Tripp Stelnicki that the department hopes “these legal challenges can be resolved expeditiously so that all students and faculty of all higher education institutions in New Mexico are operating on the same playing field with respect to updated federal Title IX regulations.”
“These federal guidelines are intended to protect students, and the department would want to avoid a long-term situation where one set of rules applies to one set of students, and another to another,” Stelnicki said through email.
John Houser, associate vice president for public relations and advancement at ENMU, told NM Political Report that since the injunction only applies to the Roswell campus, only the Roswell campus would abide by the 2020 set of Title IX rules. The Portales and Ruidoso campuses would enforce the 2024 rules, which include the expanded protections.
Houser said ENMU doesn’t believe that this will be confusing for students because there are administrators on the campuses who are experts at understanding the regulations and at applying them.
Brad Moore, director of communications and media relations for Central New Mexico Community College, told NM Political Report in an email that because of the injunction, CNM “will continue to address Title IX claims under the 2020 Title IX rules unless or until the injunction is lifted.” He said the college will “closely monitor the legal proceedings and be prepared to implement any regulatory changes.”
William Nutt, executive director of the Office of Institutional Equity for NMSU, told NM Political Report that because NMSU and Doña Ana Community College, plus NMSU’s satellite campuses in Grants and Alamogordo, operate as one system, the entire system will enforce the Trump 2020 Title IX regulations.
He said, however, that he welcomes students reaching out to his office if they have concerns or questions.
“I will talk to anybody,” Nutt said.
He also said the 2020 regulations are “the floor” and the school itself has implemented policies on its own that protect students.
Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, staff attorney with American Civil Liberties Union in New York, told NM Political Report that schools that are on the list can still implement the Biden-era rules. But the schools can only enforce the new rules as part of their own policies and procedures, not as a student’s right under federal law. The federal DOE cannot enforce the rules at these schools.
Nutt said that NMSU can work with a student if they have faced sexual harassment, violence or discrimination. He said NMSU already accommodates parenting students by providing lactation rooms on campus, which is a requirement under the Biden rules, but not the 2020 rules.
One important change to the Biden rules, advocates say, is that it allows a college to respond to a student who needs help on campus if a sexual assault occurred off-campus. Nutt said that through NMSU’s own policies, it can do something similar. He said, for instance, the school can change a victim’s grade or wipe away the fact that a victim of sexual assault ever attended a class to help them recover.
But, Gwen Stacy, a third-year student at NMSU, told NM Political Report that she is concerned that NMSU is not able to implement the 2024 Title IX regulations. She repeatedly referred to the scandal NMSU faced a few years ago because a few students on the basketball team sexually assaulted other team players during a hazing incident. The coach did not respond, initially, to a complaint about the incident. But the university later fired the coach and settled an $8 million lawsuit with the student’s family.
Stacy said that given NMSU’s history, she does not trust the university will live up to its goal of protecting students.
“They already have a pretty poor track record,” she said.
DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY
Adrien Lawyer, co-founder and director of education of the Transgender Resource Center, said that under President Barack Obama, transgender and nonbinary individuals were headed on the “conveyor belt” of acceptance.
Obama issued a Dear Colleague Letter in 2016 which outlined that under Title IX, transgender students’ rights are protected.
Lawyer said that sometimes even the most well-meaning teachers discriminate against students who don’t fall within heteronormative stereotypes. But when Obama issued the letter, “it changed everything,” he said.
Lawyer said the move enabled transgender students to push back when teachers or administrators did not allow students bathroom access or refused to use the students’ names or pronouns.
But under former President Donald Trump, the Department of Education revoked Obama’s guidelines and then issued its own Title IX regulations in 2020. Lawyer said the Trump rules emboldened people at the local level and “we had to fight for things already established,” in New Mexico.
TITLE IX AND NEW MEXICO PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Although the legal battle around Title IX tends to focus on college campuses, Title IX affects all public educational institutions that receive some kind of federal funding, including K-12 schools. The New Mexico public schools currently affected by the Tenth Circuit injunction are Siembra Leadership High school, Estancia Valley Classical Academy and Rehoboth Christian School.
The three schools did not respond to a request for comment.
Janelle Taylor Garcia, communications director for New Mexico Public Education Department, said that “since a federal court has blocked the rule for some schools in the state, the PED will now look into how it can update its guidelines to follow the court’s decision and other related orders.”
Taylor Garcia also said that if a student in a public school experiences harassment or discrimination, the student or family can file a complaint with their local school or the school district.
“It should be noted that students and families alleging sex-based discrimination under Title IX at school may also file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights at any time,” she said by email.
THE EFFORT TO RESTORE SOME PARTS OF BIDEN’S TITLE IX RULE
Over the summer, the U.S. Department of Justice asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider an emergency petition to allow the rest of Biden’s new Title IX rules to be applicable.
The DOJ asked in its petition that, since all nine lawsuits were focused on the section about discrimination against transgender and nonbinary students, that the high court could narrow the injunction to only that part of the rule and allow the rest of the 1,500-page rule go into effect.
If the high court had agreed, it would have allowed the new rules regarding how college campuses respond to reports of sexual violence to go into effect. But last week, the Supreme Court said, in an unsigned response, that it would not narrow the injunction. The federal government is barred from enforcing the 2024 Title IX rules while the lower courts consider the nine lawsuits. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Under the Trump Title IX rules, when a student reported sexual assault, the victim and alleged perpetrator had to undergo a live hearing, similar to a court process. Elena Rubinfeld, legal director for New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, called this a “huge barrier” for victims.
“Survivors don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Rubinfeld said. “We know that when survivors have more control of the process that follows their sexual assault, they have better outcomes and healing and survivors are able to move forward.”
The 2024 rules also lower the bar for what counts as sexual harassment, from both “severe” and “pervasive” to “severe or pervasive,” which makes it easier to report.
Calvo-Friedman said the Biden Title IX rules are a “really important step forward in terms of clarifying the obligation to schools.”
She said the Biden Title IX rules also impact pregnant and parenting students’ rights. She said pregnant and parenting students’ rights have always been covered under Title IX, but schools “don’t always know Title IX prohibits discrimination against pregnant and parenting students.”
“Instead of having to bring a federal case, a student can say, ‘I need clean lactation rooms and not providing it violates my Title IX rights.’ The rules say it explicitly,” Calvo-Friedman said.
Rubinfeld said that from a sexual assault perspective, if individuals or certain groups feel unsafe and violence is tolerated in a community, it “increases risk factors for sexual assault on campus.” In addition, LGBTQ individuals face a higher risk for sexual assault.
“We think about our entire culture as a community. People want to think trans rights are distinct from survivor rights. I see the two interconnected in a lot of ways. To create a community actively preventing sexual assault harm, we need to protect the rights of everyone in that community,” Rubenfeld said.
Kel O’Hara, senior attorney with Equal Rights Advocates, said this is a “really scary” time for transgender individuals and that anti-trans legislation has increased exponentially across the nation.
O’Hara, who uses they/them pronouns, also said anti-trans policies don’t just harm transgender students.
“It leads to the increased scrutiny of bodies, women of color in particular. Bans don’t do anything to address inequities in women’s sports,” they said.
O’Hara said under funding and under resourcing in girls’ sports and unaddressed sexual harassment in girls’ sports are the real barriers.
“We tend to lose sight of that in this conversation,” they said.
Judge orders dark money group to publicly disclose where its money comes from - By Tripp Jennings, New Mexico In Depth
A state judge is ordering a dark money group that paid for political advertising in support of legislative candidates earlier this year to disclose the sources of its funding and its spending by September 9.
In a 14-page ruling filed Wednesday in state court, Judge Joshua Allison agreed with the State Ethics Commission that the New Mexico Project meets the definition of “political committee” and imposed a timeline for the group to meet the demands of the state’s campaign reporting act.
“The material evidence is undisputed,” Allison wrote in the ruling. By not disclosing its donors and its spending, the New Mexico Project “frustrates the purpose of the Campaign Reporting Act: to shine light on those who seek to influence our elections by paying for advertisements that support candidates for public office.”
The New Mexico Project, founded by one-time gubernatorial candidate, Jeff Apodaca, has argued in court filings that it does not meet the definition of a political committee and therefore isn’t subject to the law’s demands. The State Ethics Commission sued the New Mexico Project in May to force the disclosure of the information, a position Allison sided with in Wednesday’s ruling.
Blair Dunn, the organization’s attorney, declined to say in an email Thursday morning whether the New Mexico Project will comply with Allison’s order or appeal the ruling.
In a Wednesday afternoon press release, Jeremy Farris, executive director of the State Ethics Commission, said the judge’s ruling “underscores the importance of New Mexico’s campaign finance laws. New Mexicans have a right to know who is spending money to influence their votes. The Commission will continue to work so that the public’s right is realized.”
The New Mexico Project made a splash in the months ahead of this year’s June primary election by spending thousands of dollars on radio ads to support certain Democratic candidates but never disclosed who was paying for the advertising.
UNM president replaces Health Sciences CEO –Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
University of New Mexico President Garnett Stokes has replaced the head of the UNM Health System.
In a campus-wide announcement, Stokes wrote that Dr. Douglas Ziedonis will be replaced by Senior Vice President for Clinical Affairs Dr. Mike Richards, who will now be Interim Executive Vice President for Health Sciences and CEO of the UNM Health System.
Ziedonis has been in the position since December 2020. The Albuquerque Journal reports Stokes told the Albuquerque Economic Forum on Wednesday that the hospital is expecting a large increase in hospital admissions in the future, and UNM Health System needs to add staff and expand the UNM School of Medicine.
Stokes said UNM Hospital’s critical care tower will open next year and they will need to hire 2,100 hospital staff. She thanked Ziedonis for his leadership and said this was a strategic decision.
Much of Ziedonis’ career was on the clinical side in addiction psychiatry. Richards has experience as an administrator and physician. Ziedonis will be on professional leave until the end of his appointment on Dec. 10.
A UNM spokesperson said no decision had been made on a national search.
Advocates call for permanent, expanded SNAP outreach - By Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
Advocates are asking New Mexico lawmakers to ensure the state always takes the opportunity for federal help to cover the cost of outreach and support for people applying for public food benefits.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – called SNAP – isn’t the only solution to food insecurity, but it is the most effective tool we have to ensure families have enough to eat, said Cody Jeff, poverty and public benefits attorney at the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
“How we do that is is making sure that as many eligible New Mexicans are enrolling, especially families with children,” Jeff said.
In February, New Mexico was one of 32 states and two territories that were called out by the feds for being late in processing benefits applications.
U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines call for 95% of claims to be processed within 30 days. New Mexico was only finishing applications on time in 72% of cases, USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack wrote to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
That means some New Mexicans benefitting from SNAP that includes food support for families, children, elderly and disabled people — were missing out on benefits.
And in some cases, they have had to either go hungry or forego paying other bills, Jeff said.
Benefits are getting delayed in part because of the time it takes the New Mexico Health Care Authority to process applications, due to staffing issues, Jeff said.
Jeff and two officials from Roadrunner Food Bank asked the Legislative Health and Human Services Committee on Tuesday to carry a bill in the upcoming regular session in January to require a state law for the Health Care Authority to submit a SNAP outreach plan every year to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Making the outreach program permanent and expanding it would allow more outreach workers to educate the public about what SNAP is, pre-screen people for eligibility, and follow up with them as their application is being processed, Jeff said.
“How this program could work for the Health Care Authority is alleviating some of that pressure, by allowing New Mexicans to enroll in places like Roadrunner, and to help potential applicants apply for SNAP there,” Jeff said.
They also asked for $150,000 to be added to the New Mexico Health Care Authority’s budget so they can hire a dedicated staff member to manage SNAP outreach, and create an application portal so outreach workers can track people’s progress toward getting their benefits.
Not only do applicants need high-quality translation and interpretation services, they also need training to be literate in how the SNAP program works, Jeff said.
ROADRUNNER FOOD BANK OUTREACH SINCE 2013
The New Mexico Human Services Department turned in an application for a SNAP outreach program for the first time ever to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in October 2023. SNAP oversight along with many other health duties were later moved to the Health Care Authority.
The plan’s goal is to ensure SNAP-eligible New Mexicans are getting accurate, culturally relevant, and developmentally appropriate information and help when they are applying for it, according to the 127-page outreach plan.
For the better part of a decade, Jason Riggs, advocacy and public policy director at Roadrunner Food Bank, said he has been “tormenting anyone I can talk with” about getting a New Mexico SNAP outreach plan into law.
Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, and New Jersey already have robust outreach programs, Jeff said.
The Health Care Authority has made a lot of progress in the past year, Riggs told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The state government got $60,000 from the feds for SNAP outreach in 2023, and that helped Roadrunner Food Bank’s existing outreach program, which had existed for a decade prior, Riggs said.
“Food banks were designed to be emergency services, and SNAP is really the first line of defense against extreme hunger,” Riggs said.
The state outreach program improved communication between the Health Care Authority and people in the community asking about their applications, which eliminated people’s apprehension to apply “because of the wait time,” said Shannon Hudson, SNAP and public benefits outreach manager at Roadrunner Food Bank.
“So we can encourage people to apply because we have the information from the Health Care Authority,” Hudson said.
New Mexico education secretary resigns amid NMSU job speculation - By Nash Jones, KUNM News, Albuquerque Journal
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Wednesday evening that the head of the New Mexico Public Education Department has stepped down. Secretary Arsenio Romero’s resignation is effective immediately, according to the announcement.
The governor said in a statement that she appreciated Romero’s service and wished him “the best in his future endeavors.”
This announcement comes less than two weeks after New Mexico State University announced Romero is one of five finalists in the search for a new president.
Michael Coleman, a spokesman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham told the Albuquerque Journal the governor had asked Romero to pick between his current job or his candidacy for the Las Cruces University leadership position – adding it’s “imperative that the person serving in this role be fully committed to the job.”
The governor’s office has not yet not named an interim secretary, saying only that Lujan Grisham and her staff would, “begin interviewing candidates to replace Romero…immediately.”
Bernalillo County is ‘Breaking Butts’ into compost and plastic - City Desk ABQ Staff Report
Bernalillo County officials are launching a new program to turn discarded cigarette butts into compost and plastic products such as hand tools and picnic benches.
On Tuesday, the Keep BernCo Beautiful Advisory Board, county staff, and Commissioner Steven Michael Quezada unveiled new receptacles — branded with Keep BernCo Beautiful and a play on the “Breaking Bad” title sequence — for people to toss their cigarette butts into. The county’s Public Works Division staff will then collect and send the butts to the company TerraCycle for processing.
According to TerraCycle, paper and tobacco are separated and shredded to use for composting and the plastics in the filters are sanitized and turned into powder to make into plastic.
“This initiative is meant to encourage the recycling of the cigarette butts that are being tossed on the ground and entering our water system,” says Keep BernCo Beautiful Advisory Board Chair Mark Acton. “Just like the name of our board, we want to Keep BernCo Beautiful, but also healthy and safe for everyone.”
The county has installed five receptacles — at the University of New Mexico Hospital, the Tiny Home Village and UNM’s South campus. It expects to install a sixth, with six more on the way, according to a news release.
Anyone who wishes to have a receptacle at their location should send an email to gvillescas@bernco.gov.
Death toll is now 9 in listeria outbreak tied to Boar's Head deli meat, CDC says - By Jonel Aleccia, AP Health Writer
At least nine people have died after being infected with listeria from Boar's Head deli meats tied to a massive recall last month, federal health officials said Wednesday.
The new food poisoning toll includes two deaths in South Carolina plus one each in Florida, New Mexico, Tennessee and New York, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Three deaths were previously confirmed in people who lived in Illinois, New Jersey and Virginia.
At least 57 people have been sickened and hospitalized in the outbreak. Illnesses were reported starting in late May and have continued into August, the agency said. It is the largest listeria outbreak in the U.S. since 2011, and Boar's Head has recalled more than 7 million pounds of deli products.
Listeria infections are caused by a hardy type of bacteria that can survive and even thrive during refrigeration. An estimated 1,600 people get listeria food poisoning each year and about 260 die, according to the CDC. Infections can be hard to pinpoint because symptoms may occur quickly — or up to 10 weeks after eating contaminated food.
The infections are especially dangerous for older people, those who are pregnant or those with weakened immune systems.
The problem was discovered when a Boar's Head liverwurst sample collected by health officials in Maryland tested positive for listeria. Further testing showed that the type of bacteria was the same strain causing illnesses in people.
Boar's Head officials originally recalled liverwurst and other products meant to be sliced in retail delis with sell-by dates from July 25 to Aug. 30. On July 29, the recall was expanded to include all foods produced at the firm's plant in Jarratt, Virginia. The products included those sliced at deli counters as well as some prepackaged retail sausage, frankfurters and bacon.
All the recalled deli meats have been removed from stores and are no longer available, Boar's Head officials said on the company's website. The products were distributed to stores nationwide, as well as to the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Panama, U.S. Agriculture Department officials said.
CDC officials urged consumers to check their refrigerators for the recalled products. Look for EST. 12612 or P-12612 inside the USDA mark of inspection on the product labels, some of which have sell-by dates that extend into October. Discard recalled foods and thoroughly clean and sanitize refrigerator and other surfaces they touched.
Many illnesses caused by food poisoning are short-lived, but listeria infections can have devastating effects.
In Virginia, Gunter "Garshon" Morgenstein, of Newport News, died on July 18 from a brain infection caused by listeria bacteria, an illness that was confirmed to be linked to the contaminated Boar's Head products.
Morgenstein, 88, was a German-born Holocaust survivor who moved to Canada and then the U.S. as a young man and later became a flamboyant hair stylist, according to his son, Garshon Morgenstein. During his 70-year career, his father styled celebrities such as the singer Tom Jones and was known for his funny, outgoing personality, Garshon Morgenstein said.
Gunter Morgenstein enjoyed liverwurst, usually spread on bagels, and bought it regularly, insisting on the Boar's Head brand because he believed it was top quality, his son said.
He fell ill in early July and was hospitalized on July 8, eventually becoming so sick that doctors said he suffered permanent brain damage and was unlikely to recover. Family members withdrew life support, his son said.
After Morgenstein's death, a review of receipts showed that he bought the recalled deli meat tied to the outbreak on June 30. The family has hired a lawyer, Houston-based Ron Simon.
"It's really just a senseless accident and tragedy for something that just should not have ever happened," his son said. "He still had many good years left."
Bernalillo County manager contract approved - By Rodd Cayton, City Desk ABQ
Bernalillo County officially has its next manager.
Cindy Chavez will start in the job Nov. 13 after county commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to approve her employment contract.
Chavez will make $230,000 a year to start, with possible annual merit-based pay increases. She replaces Julie Morgas Baca, who retired at the end of June.
Chavez will supervise more than 2,500 people and a budget of more than $1 billion.
County Attorney Ken Martinez said the contract is in line with what other governments are paying and fits an executive wage analysis the county recently performed. He noted that Morgas Baca made $215,000 last year and said Doña Ana County recently hired a new manager at a salary of $220,000.
Appearing remotely, Chavez said she enjoyed the process leading to her hire.
“I want to say how honored I would be to serve as your county executive, and I enjoyed meeting everybody there that I’ve had an opportunity to meet,” she told commissioners.
Commission Chair Barbara Baca said she anticipates a smooth transition, as Chavez has visited the area a few times since being chosen and will return before starting the job. She said Chavez has been working closely with interim county manager Shirley Ragin as she prepares to take over.
Chavez is currently a member of the Santa Clara County (California) Board of Supervisors. She was chosen after a national search that resulted in interviews of 10 applicants and a forum at which three finalists met with commissioners and the public.
The four-year contract also calls for the county to provide Chavez with a vehicle for her official duties and limited personal use, and pay for job-related memberships in professional societies and associations, as well as dues or fees necessary to maintain licenses or bonds. She will also be entitled to Public Employees Retirement Association of New Mexico participation, with the county contributing $20,000 a year on her behalf, as well as some moving expenses.
Chavez was born in Alamogordo and has family members who live in the East Mountains.
OTHER ITEMS
Commissioners also approved allocating more than $763,000 for the Department of Behavioral Health’s CARE Campus detox center. Of that, $463,216 will go toward additional staffing for the observation and assessment unit. The four additional nurses will ensure the unit can maintain 24-hour operations and accommodate the growing number of people seeking emergency behavioral health support, county staff said.
The CARE Campus is already a 24-hour operation, county spokesperson Estevan Vásquez said Wednesday, but the focus is on provision of services during the day.
Also approved was $300,000 for the implementation and maintenance of the Unite Us closed-loop referral platform. Staff said the project, a collaboration with the City of Albuquerque, will streamline the referral process among social service providers, ensuring clients receive coordinated and comprehensive care.