Las Cruces touted its first City Council with all six Councilors female. A fair question is whether this all-female cast of Councilors has achieved any qualitative improvements in city government or city services. I consider only public safety and public works.
If Johana Bencomo is typical, the Councilors are subservient to Mayor Miyagishima. As I have noted before, when she spoke in support of a citizens’ police review board, the mayor scolded her for being disloyal to the police, and she immediately and contritely withdrew her support. Since then, given his aggressive opposition to police reform, they have opposed a citizens’ group formally constituted and empowered to review police performance. They have also failed to exercise oversight themselves or to enact policies and practices to define and support police professionalism.
If Casandra Gandara’s close friendship with City Attorney Jennifer Vega is typical, the Councilors take their lead from Vega on matters affecting public safety. The sisterhood is strong but fecklessness in avoiding public discussion of three important episodes:
The choke-hold killing of Antonio Valenzuela by Officer Christopher Smelser and the City’s $6.5 million, City Attorney-approved settlement of the lawsuit. As part of that settlement, the City agreed to several reforms. They have not publicly questioned whether the LCPD has complied with them. No questions, no answers, no transparency, no accountability.
The mauling and maiming of Julian Valenzuela by a K-9 loosed by LCPD Officer Mathew Dollar on the victim after he had surrendered. They have not publicly questioned why the Officer Involved Shooting Task Force, a self-serving police organization answerable to no one, exonerated Dollar. No questions, no answers, no transparency, no accountability.
The killing of Amelia Baca by Officer Jared Cosper and the City’s $2.75, City Attorney-approved settlement (a federal suit is still pending). They have not publicly questioned why the Officer Involved Shooting Task Force decided not to charge or exonerate Cosper and, instead, referred the case to the local District Attorney. No questions, no answers, no transparency, no accountability.
To ask these questions, the Councilors would have to question Police Chief Miguel Dominguez about LCPD’s conflict-of-interest participation in and leadership of that task force and, in the Baca killing, LCPD’s biased public-relations audio-visual of the event. They would have to risk the Mayor’s accusation of not supporting the police.
Despite large settlements paid by the City, the Councilors have not publicly discussed the problems arising from self-insurance, which the Mayor touts. He has to. Otherwise, he would have to admit that the city is uninsurable. No insurer takes the risks of large settlements for incidents of police misconduct so frequent and egregious that premiums would not cover them. The City’s response is to take the City Attorney’s advice—easy for Council, costly and risky for citizens—to deal with police misconduct: make settlements rather than undertake police reform. That is, she urges Councilors to reject reform, approve settlements subsidizing police misconduct, and keep taxes high to pay for them. Through the sisterhood, Vega thus imposes excessive costs on Las Cruces.
The Councilors have been unconcerned about ineffective, expensive public works projects. They tolerate obvious managerial and technical incompetence—project failure, wasted resources, environmental damage—on a large scale. They tolerate squandering taxpayer money and reducing funds for social programs which they profess to support. Again, they likely fear that the Mayor will accuse them of disloyalty to City employees if they discuss staff incompetence.
An outstanding example because of its size is the failure of a flood-control project by the Public Works Department under David Sedillo and his deputy Tony Trujillo. It shows poor leadership, and arrogant and incompetent staff. Years ago, as Trujillo knows, PWD held public meetings to explain an over-designed, over-priced plan; ignored citizen input for a simpler design at lower cost; then last year adopted and executed a different, over-designed, over-priced, three-phase plan. When the $500,000 first try at Phase 1 failed, PWD ignored more citizen input and, for an additional $100,000-plus, doubled-down for more of the same. With Phase 1 a failure, Phases 2 and 3 are on hold. City Manager Ifo Pili will likely repeat the Garza administration’s management strategy; abandon project, fund no remedial action, let site degradation continue—the city’s environmental policies be damned. It could have been worse; had citizens not intervened, PWD would have cut down mature trees on the site—just because. (Nor do Pili and Sedillo care about trash dumped on city property. For over 6 months, they have promised citizens to require the farmer-lessee to remove piles of useless irrigation tubing and a long-abandoned tractor. Peeved with me, they refuse to honor their promises by enforcing municipal codes.)
This first all-female cast of Councilors may mark the arrival of gender equality in City government, but they have not improved the quality of city government. They care not about the causes and costs of police misconduct and the costs of public works fiascos. They prefer public silence to transparency and accountability. So they decline to ask questions, get answers, and enact public policies and city ordinances; and to supervise the City Manager and, tacitly, the Police Chief. They prefer an amiable City Manager slack in exercising managerial authority, tolerant of staff arrogance and incompetence, and reluctant to hold anyone accountable for poor performance and wasted resources. But, to City Council’s relief, Pili is no “militarist” who manages more than backscratches.
Because their inaction betrays their lofty words, these Councilors impose undesirable consequences of their fecklessness on citizens. They avoid police reforms; citizens still fear undisciplined police officers. They accept wasting funds on failed public work; some citizens—homeless, hungry, or unhealthy—thus have no roof over their head, no food on their tables, and no doctors to treat their problems. They are too scared to ensure the proper allocation and application of resources to public services and too uncaring to meet urgent human needs. They have not even asked the City Manager how his war on poverty is going, but, then, they have no way to measure progress or failure, and have to take him at his word that filling potholes and improving lighting on East Madrid counts.
Touted as the City’s first all-female cast of Councilors, they impede greater public safety or public works, and increased assistance to the need. Are they impediments because they are female? No. But touting this cast of Councilors for being all female does invite scrutiny of their performance in light of continued government deficiencies. Plainly, in two important areas, they do not measure up, and none of them is going to.
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