The Rural and The Restless

The Drama in Colfax County

By Eric Mack, 1-30-06

	Small, but very opinionated. Colfax County.

With the U.S. Postal Service in disarray across New Mexico, I’m having a really hard time getting my Netflix in a timely fashion and have been forced to seek my entertainment from less likely sources.

Fortunately, Northeastern New Mexico’s Colfax County (pop, 14,189, according to the 2000 Census) has been providing quite the soap opera over the past six months. The drama may have finally reached its climax last week whenTom Garcia suddenly announced his resignation in the midst of an effort to recall all three of the county’s elected commissioners. Of course that effort is now in jeopardy, ironically due to the alleged incompetence of county employees in failing to properly serve the commissioners with summonses.

Alas, I fear I may be getting ahead of myself. Many in Colfax County would argue that this story begins several years ago, but for our purposes I’ll take you through the short version, which for brevity’s sake I will begin last year with a leak in the county courthouse.

As the story goes, a chronic leak in the aging courthouse rained down while Judge Sam Sanchez’s court was in session. The need to renovate or reconstruct the courthouse is one of those things that has been the subject of years of debate and a few failed bond elections. An irate Sanchez apparently threatened to shut down the court if something was not done to fix the leaky roof.

All this came about in the spring of 2005, just as the county’s revolving door was spinning, with one County Manager on her way out and a replacement, Tom Garcia, who failed to please a handful of local government watchers, on his way in for what would be a very brief tenure.

“Tom inherited a lot of problems that had been going on for years,� said Commissioner Bill Conley of Angel Fire, who found himself the subject of frequent criticism shortly after Garcia’s hiring.

One of the first tasks at hand for Garcia was the leaky roof that had so enraged Judge Sanchez. Under that pressure, a hasty action was taken to find a contractor to get the project underway. What followed was a bizarre series of delays, apparent miscommunications and alleged fiscal irresponsibility that came to a head when the courthouse project was red-tagged by the state this fall due to the contractor’s failure to secure the appropriate permits.

As of December, word from Raton is that the roof still leaks. The county commissioners have requested over $2 million dollars from the state legislature to continue to move forward with the project.

Since the courthouse debacle, letters to the editor sections in local papers the past half-year have been filled with the fiery complaints of a small but vocal group of critics lambasting the commissioners weekly over the courthouse project, Garcia’s alleged incompetence at completing a budget, purported abuse of the state mileage and per diem act and a host of other issues.

Finally, in Mid-December, four county residents filed a request to initiate the process of recall for all three commissioners, citing a list of alleged violations of everything from the state procurement statutes (in reference to the courthouse project) to the Open Meetings Act.

Nothing in the list of allegations is particularly damning or controversial, most seem to be minor oversights, perhaps due to a certain level of ignorance or incompetence. And although he is not mentioned in any of the court documents requesting to initiate the recall, Garcia was clearly the target of the effort.

“He’s what got me started on all this,� said William Hickman of Cimarron, one of four signatories on the request. “He’s completely incompetent. He can’t even write a budget.�

The whole drama is rife with political maneuvering. Most of those behind the recall effort are friends or supporters of Whitney Hite, another vocal critic and former county manager who has said he is considering running for the commission.

Then, just a few weeks ago, a surprise twist was added to the drama. It appears that the purported incompetence of county employees may have actually endangered the effort to recall the commission they report to.

Conley hired an attorney to file a motion in the district court requesting the recall petition be dismissed on grounds that none of the commissioners was served with a summons and the petition was not filed with the county clerk as required.

The county deputy charged with serving the commissioners was new on the job and has since moved on to another employer. Conley said he only presented him with a copy of the petition, not a summons. In fact, none of the three commissioners received a summons, although court records show the deputy did report serving all three. Reportedly, when Chuck Pride, leader of the recall group, filed the petition at the courthouse offices, the normal staff was not on-duty and protocol for getting a copy to the county clerk was also not followed.

So it would seem that the fate of the commission and the county it represents now waits for a hearing at the very courthouse where it all began with a leak last year. And it could be a very long wait. Judge Sanchez has recused himself and the other district judge, Peggy Nelson, will officially retire from the bench effective Wednesday. As for Garcia, he’s apparently had enough. He said he plans to move back to Albuquerque, not because of the recall effort, but to be with his wife, who works at Los Alamos.

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