Judge Padilla hires husband
Council reviews waiver

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — The City Council is still waiting to review a waiver it should have known about last year that's allowed Municipal Court Judge Linda Padilla to help hire her husband for work on the court's computer system.

State law generally prohibits city employees from helping procure services for the city when the employee or an immediate family member stands to gain financially from the deal.

But it also allows the director of administrative services to grant a waiver if: the financial interest is disclosed; the director determines that the employee can help procure the service without bias; the employee's participation is in the city's best interest.

While the City Council need not approve the decision, it does need to be notified.

When the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts asked municipal courts across the state to hire outside vendors to maintain their computer networks in 2001 to limit employee access to confidential court records Gallup hired Padilla Computer Services, a local company owned by Judge Padilla's husband Don.

Larry Binkley, Gallup's administrative services director, said Padilla helped make the recommendation. And deciding the deal met all the state's conditions, he granted the waiver.

But when the city's contract with PCS was renewed Jan. 1, things didn't go so smoothly.

The city's procurement office didn't get a copy of the new contract until Jan. 22, weeks after it took effect. And the City Council, officially, still hasn't been notified. Although the notice was on the council's agenda last Tuesday, it tabled the item at the request of outgoing Mayor Bob Rosebrough because of the potential controversy.

"In a perfect world," Binkley said, all this would have happened before the new contract went into effect. That would have been standard operating procedure. This time, he said, it "slipped through the cracks."

The council will likely return to the issue in the coming weeks.

"I have always maintained a hands-off approach when it comes to this contract," Padilla writes Marco Abeita, the city's purchasing agent, in a March 20 memo. "The contract has always been implemented by the court administrator."

"Furthermore," she writes, "the terms of the agreement have always been set by the purchasing department."

According to the same letter, PCS installed the hardware and "Fullcourt" software the court now uses and remains the only local vendor familiar with it. The Office of the Courts and its Judicial Information Division praised Gallup Municipal Courts' data as "'the cleanest (they've) ever seen.'"

In addition to routine maintenance and inspection, the new contract worth $21,000, to be reimbursed by the state calls on PCS to make the court's network wireless.

Padilla, a municipal judge since 1994, was re-elected March 6.