After a 2018 scandal, which some Las Cruces city councilors thought might trigger criminal charges, the City followed an independent investigator’s recommendations to keep a keener eye on handling of public funds. A 2019 Ordinance created an Oversight Committee and an Inspector-General position to be filled with Oversight Committee approval. Another ordinance created a Public Safety Select Committee. (“PSSC”).
Then-City Manager Ifo Pili didn’t like oversight. The IG position sat unfilled for years, violating the ordinance. The oversight committee did some good work we’ll never know the details of. (The Ordinance required publication of Committee findings; but that mostly didn’t happen.)
In 2023, the City hired an IG, but he reportedly clashed with Pili and left. Then Pili [without required Committee approval] appointed as IG an oversight committee member whom Pili reportedly didn’t consider a threat. Mandatory committee meetings stopped in 2023. The committee dwindled to one voting member, former City Councilor Jack Eakman. I was told the problem was filling committee positions that required folks with solid experience in Business (Eakman), Auditing, and Law. Eakman kept urging action. In April he served an IPRA Request. The City denied him 33 documents on dubious attorney-client privilege claims.
When some some councilors seemed quite interested in a proposal for citizens’ police oversight, Mayor Ken Miyagashima, who opposed it, referred the proposal to the PSSC to die. The PSSC never even invited further discussion!
The PSSC looked like an improper “executive committee.” It was supposed to report information to the full council, but no one saw that happening. It appeared that the committee either wasn’t doing its job or was possibly violating the Open Meetings Act.
In June 2023, citizen Michael Hays requested documents concerning the PSSC. The City stiffed him, violating IPRA so blatantly that settling the lawsuit cost the City nearly $200,000 plus paying its own lawyers. [Full disclosure: I represented Mr. Hays.] I hope the new city manager and city attorney are improving things. When Eakman re-submitted his document request, the City gave him all the documents it had wrongly denied him. The documents showed that by late 2023 a professional auditor and three apparently qualified attorneys had volunteered to serve on the Oversight Committee and been vetted.
Violating the Ordinance, the City delayed appointments, saying staff needed to amend the Ordinance. Recently the City Council adopted amendments that somewhat weaken the Oversight Committee and have it report to the city manager. (The amendments don’t seem so urgent that we needed more than a year with NO oversight committee.) The ordinance is silent on handling misconduct allegations against the city manager, but I’m told that the city clerk would appoint an “Ethics Committee” from among citizens serving on boards. Not ideal.
A simple plan – to have three qualified citizens use their expertise to investigate city affairs that seemed to need that – seems less promising now. I hope good people take this on and prove me wrong.
Citizens have asked whether those committees still exist, or still function. No straight answer was available, probably because city officials were trying to figure out the right course of action. But that wasn’t a good look.
I asked again recently. The City hopes to appoint a new oversight committee ASAP. The PSSC? High city officials couldn’t really answer that yet.
I’m glad we have a new city manager and attorney, but doubt the long wait and the amendments have helped curb official misconduct.
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[This column appeared Sunday, 13 October, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News
and on the newspaper's website and will shortly be up on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[This was a harder column to write than some are. I wanted to be neither too critical of the city nor insufficiently critical. Opinions vary on whether or not, or by how much, the amendments mentioned actually weaken the committee. Further, how strongly should one factor in positive expectations of Ikani Taumoepeau and Brad Douglas? Certainly our experience of Douglas’s predecessor made her departure likely to be an improvement. I hope we can discuss all this on a radio show soon, hopefully with divergent points of view represented.]
[Vote! I’m feeling extremely pessimistic about the national election. These are demented and dangerous times. What can we do when climate-change-charged storms are killing folks in Florida and pushing most to vote for a climate-change-denier who’ll do nothing, when unions in Pennsylvania are leaning more and more toward voting for a man who loathes unions, and that voters worry Kamala Harris “can’t handle Putin” while her opponent is a Putin-admirer and such a Putin toadie he sent Putin hard-to-get COVID tests when in office. Of course, he has denied that, and accused reported Bob Woodward of having “lost his marbles” for reporting such a thing, but the Kremlin has now confirmed Woodward on that point. I’d hate to have to explain all this to Dwight Eisenhower.
The local and state situation is not so discouraging.]
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[This column appeared Sunday, 13 October, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version aired during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ . APOLOGIES for not getting this one posted here until now AND for not doing a column at all this week. ]
[This was a harder column to write than some are. I wanted to be neither too critical of the city nor insufficiently critical. Opinions vary on whether or not, or by how much, the amendments mentioned actually weaken the committee. Further, how strongly should one factor in positive expectations of Ikani Taumoepeau and Brad Douglas? Certainly our experience of Douglas’s predecessor made her departure likely to be an improvement. I hope we can discuss all this on a radio show soon, hopefully with divergent points of view represented.]
[Vote! I’m feeling extremely pessimistic about the national election. These are demented and dangerous times. What can we do when climate-change-charged storms are killing folks in Florida and pushing most to vote for a climate-change-denier who’ll do nothing, when unions in Pennsylvania are leaning more and more toward voting for a man who loathes unions, and that voters worry Kamala Harris “can’t handle Putin” while her opponent is a Putin-admirer and such a Putin toadie he sent Putin hard-to-get COVID tests when in office. Of course, he has denied that, and accused reported Bob Woodward of having “lost his marbles” for reporting such a thing, but the Kremlin has now confirmed Woodward on that point. I’d hate to have to explain all this to Dwight Eisenhower.
The local and state situation is not so discouraging.]
A city government which cannot follow the ordinances of its or previous council's making deserves, not an "incomplete," but a "failure." If it cannot obey they law, how can it be trusted?
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