{"id":27378,"date":"2011-03-17T16:17:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T22:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=27378"},"modified":"2011-03-17T16:17:48","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T22:17:48","slug":"county-commissioner-facing-possible-censure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/03\/county-commissioner-facing-possible-censure\/","title":{"rendered":"County commissioner facing possible censure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Commissioner Leticia Duarte-Benavidez<\/p><\/div>\n

Do\u00f1a Ana County Commissioner Leticia Duarte-Benavidez<\/a> stands accused of interfering in county personnel matters involving a family member and her campaign treasurer, and her colleagues are being asked to censure her.<\/p>\n

County management investigated the allegations against Duarte-Benavidez and made them public today in a censuring resolution commissioners will consider at their meeting on Tuesday<\/a>. Read the resolution here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The resolution, which was released this afternoon, alleges that Duarte-Benavidez violated the county code of conduct and human resources policies.<\/p>\n

Among the situations detailed in the resolution:<\/p>\n

\u2022 In January and February 2010, Duarte-Benavidez contacted a county employee seeking information on how to assist one of her family members, who is a county employee, with an employment qualification issue.<\/p>\n

The county employee she contacted was not one who would normally deal with such questions, but is someone with whom Duarte-Benavidez had served on a committee. The resolution alleges that the commissioner \u201cused her relationship\u201d with that employee to \u201csecure assistance\u201d for her family member.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Duarte-Benavidez\u2019s campaign treasurer, another county employee, was being investigated in April 2010 for \u201cwork-related misconduct,\u201d the resolution states. The commissioner contacted the internal affairs investigator handling the investigation and asked about it. The investigator notified Duarte-Benavidez that it would be inappropriate to discuss the ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n

County management told Duarte-Benavidez that contact with the investigator was not appropriate. She denied talking with the investigator and then, shortly thereafter, called the investigator again and left a message asking for a return call, the resolution states.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Last month, according to the resolution, Duarte-Benavidez told a county employee that her campaign treasurer had been \u201cset up\u201d to be fired by others in the department where the treasurer works and had been fired for \u201csharing inappropriate jokes and the exchanging of novelty gifts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her comments made their way back to two county employees who were witnesses during the personnel hearing against Duarte-Benavidez\u2019s campaign treasurer. One of those witnesses reported the commissioner\u2019s comments to county management, stating that they \u201cmade me sick to my stomach because that situation was already dealt with and put behind us,\u201d the resolution states.<\/p>\n

Employee names are left out of the resolution. The county didn\u2019t make any details about the situation available beyond what is detailed in the resolution.<\/p>\n

Duarte-Benavidez could not immediately be reached for comment. Before the resolution \u2013 and the allegations against her \u2013 were made public today, she was quoted by the Las Cruces Sun-News<\/a> as saying she didn\u2019t know what the proposed censure was about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m about as baffled as everybody else,\u201d Duarte-Benavidez was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do\u00f1a Ana County Commissioner Leticia Duarte-Benavidez stands accused of interfering in county personnel matters involving a family member and her campaign treasurer, and her colleagues are being asked to censure her at Tuesday’s meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[115],"class_list":["post-27378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-dona-ana-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}