{"id":394,"date":"2006-07-21T14:04:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-21T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/07\/city-manager-says-he-never-promised-to-reimburse-judges-legal-fees\/"},"modified":"2006-07-21T14:04:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-21T20:04:00","slug":"city-manager-says-he-never-promised-to-reimburse-judges-legal-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2006\/07\/city-manager-says-he-never-promised-to-reimburse-judges-legal-fees\/","title":{"rendered":"City manager says he never promised to reimburse judges&#8217; legal fees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/5892\/2386\/1600\/Moore%2C%20Terrence.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/5892\/2386\/200\/Moore%2C%20Terrence.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Las Cruces City Manager Terrence Moore disputed a claim by the attorney for the city\u2019s two municipal judges that he promised to pay the cost of their legal defense against an ethical complaint, which the city is now refusing to pay.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Melissa J. Reeves, attorney for municipal judges Melissa Miller-Byrnes and Jim T. Locatelli, said during Friday morning\u2019s court hearing that \u201cthe city manager originally told the judges their defense would be paid \u2026 and then he reneged on that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><st1:city st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Moore<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said that\u2019s untrue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cI\u2019ve never made that type of commitment,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t have the authority to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The city manager can spend up to $35,000 without council approval. The judges are seeking more than $100,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">In addition, <st1:city st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Moore<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said, \u201cthe questionable nature of the expenditure\u201d is another reason he would not have made such a commitment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">A Feb. 21 letter from the judges\u2019 previous attorney, Jack Brandt of <st1:city st=\"on\">Albuquerque<\/st1:city>, references the fact that the city\u2019s attorney in the matter, Matthew Holt of <st1:city st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Las Cruces<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>, advised the city to not reimburse the judges\u2019 legal fees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But Brandt\u2019s letter also goes on to state that Moore told Brandt the city had not yet decided whether it would reimburse the judges, and thanked Moore for an opportunity to argue for the reimbursement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The letter then goes on to do that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cThat\u2019s the only commitment I\u2019ve ever made, and they confirmed it in writing,\u201d <st1:city st=\"on\"><st1:place st=\"on\">Moore<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The city later decided to take Holt\u2019s advice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><o:p> <\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The complaint against the judges was filed with the Judicial Standards Commission by the city attorney\u2019s office as part of an ongoing dispute about operations at the city\u2019s municipal court. For more on today\u2019s hearing and the dispute, read the next posting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Las Cruces City Manager Terrence Moore disputed a claim by the attorney for the city\u2019s two municipal judges that he promised to pay the cost of their legal defense against an ethical complaint, which the city is now refusing to pay. Melissa J. Reeves, attorney for municipal judges Melissa Miller-Byrnes and Jim T. Locatelli, said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","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=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}