AG: Council violated N.M. meetings law

By Zsombor Peter
Staff writer

GALLUP — The Attorney General’s Office has found the City Council in violation of two provisions of the state’s Open Meetings Act but clear of a more serious third.

In a Sept. 18 letter to City Attorney David Pederson, the office’s Mona Valicenti writes that the council violated the state law during its June 26, July 10 and July 24 meetings.

“First,” the letter reads, “the agendas were vague in their listings under executive session. Second, the minutes of the meetings indicated that the City Council improperly went into and came out of executive session during those meetings.”

Valicenti did not, however, find anything wrong with what the council did outside of those meetings.

The matter in question involves Mayor Harry Mendoza’s contact with his fellow councilors prior to their July 10 meeting. Mendoza pressured City Manager Eric Honeyfield into resigning the next day. The question is whether the mayor conducted a “rolling quorum” before he did so, that is, garnering council votes one councilor at a time outside of a regularly called meeting.

Valicenti’s letter claims the mayor merely made “courtesy calls” to the councilors “to inform them of his request for the city manager’s resignation.” According to the letter, she gleaned this version of events from a conversation with then-City Attorney George Kozeliski.

But one of those councilors, and the mayor himself, tell another story.

In a previous interview with the Independent, Councilman Allan Landovazo said Mendoza asked for his support in having Honeyfield fired but did not get it. Even Mendoza conceded that he approached at least three of the councilors individually to gauge each one’s support and came away believing John Azua and Bill Nechero were with him. Mendoza said he did not, however, consider it a rolling quorum.

The late Bob Johnson, former director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, thought otherwise.

“If (Mendoza) reached a quorum,” he said in an interview a month after the July 10 meeting, “there was a rolling quorum, and that’s a violation.”

In a Sept. 10 letter threatening to sue the city for wrongful termination, Honeyfield himself claims that Mendoza, during the private June 11 meeting where the mayor asked for his resignation, said he had enough votes on the council to remove him if he refused to leave voluntarily. Mendoza has declined to comment on that meeting, and the city has yet to officially respond to Honeyfield’s letter.

As for the two violations the Attorney General’s Office did find the council to have violated, Valicenti lays out no penalties, merely advising the council to review the appropriate procedures “to avoid similar violations in the future.”