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Monday, October 26, 2009
A Long-Fought Battle Over Her Reputation
FOR THE RECORD: This story stated that Lorraine Dominguez, the former executive director of the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women, had filed a restraining order against KRQE-Channel 13 investigative reporter Larry Barker in 2004 after an encounter between the two during Barker's reporting for a story on Dominguez's work performance. Dominguez says she filed for a restraining order, but a check of district and magistrate courts in Santa Fe and the Santa Fe Sheriff's Office turned up no such document. In the same column, a reference to a criminal complaint should have made clear that it was filed by Dominguez, not by police or the district attorney. It was not pursued.By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Journal Staff Writer
Five years have passed since Lorraine Dominguez crossed paths with KRQE-Channel 13 reporter Larry Barker, their confrontation so intense she said she could feel that what was coming would have lasting, loathsome effects.
Which it did.
She had been the executive director of the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women then, and Barker had been, well, Barker.
Which is to say, he had made a name for himself as an investigative gotcha guy, doggedly sticking his mustache-accentuated nose into the seamy cracks of politics and public life where corruption, fraud and greed fester.
Supplied with evidence from a source Dominguez identifies as a disgruntled employee, Barker aired an investigative report in February 2004 accusing her of falsifying her time cards and doing personal things on the taxpayers' dime.
Barker's report, which ran with a "no comment" from Dominguez, led to pressure from the commission and government higher-ups to oust her from the $51,000-a-year position she had been appointed to by Gov. Bill Richardson the year before.
Two days later, she resigned.
Dominguez said she felt forced to quit because she had been denied an administrative hearing. She had also learned commissioners were holding an emergency meeting the next day to call for her firing.
Rather than go through that — and provide additional fodder for circling media — she stepped down.
"They had said on TV that it would be handled swiftly and appropriately," she said. "Well, it was swiftly, but they didn't understand appropriately. It was swiftly, like you're gone."
Resigning was a tough thing to do for a woman raised on politics and public service.
Born into a family of self-described activists in Bernalillo, Dominguez was deemed "one of the next big female players in state politics" in a Journal article in May 2003.
For most of the last 25 years, she has held numerous Democratic Party leadership roles, including as a Sandoval County commissioner — the only Hispanic woman to hold that post — and two terms as Sandoval County assessor.
She is now in her second term as Sandoval County treasurer.
That she was elected to public office twice since her high-profile resignation might have been enough to prove she had weathered the media storm.
But it wasn't enough for her.
For five years she has worked to clear her name.
It's what her father, Esequiel Dominguez, taught her.
"He used to say, 'If you haven't done anything wrong, stand proud and strong and continue to do what you do for the people,' " she said. "So that's what I am doing."
A Department of Labor hearing conducted in March 2004 to determine whether she was eligible for unemployment benefits found no evidence she had falsified her time cards and that her resignation was not for "misconduct."
"They concluded I had been forced to resign solely because of the media attention," she said.
No one from the commission had shown up to contest that contention.
An audit commissioned by the Commission on the Status of Women in no way discredited Barker's story. In fact, it confirmed it and sent even further suggesting that "at the worst" Dominguez had committed fraud.
Dominguez fought back, and in August 2006 she filed a lawsuit against auditor Gwen Farner.
"We sued the auditor because she's the one who made the remark about criminal behavior," said Dominguez's attorney, William Tryon.
This February, the lawsuit was settled. Details are confidential, but what is public are two statements Farner made in court records in which she admits she had not been provided with the information that likely would have supported Dominguez's contentions.
So what had really happened? Dominguez said it was a combination of things, including mistakes in payroll made by a new clerk that were already corrected by the time the Barker story aired.
Dominguez contends that as an "exempt" employee she was not subject to the usual 9-to-5 grind and that it was not uncommon for her to flex her time, often working on weekends and evenings to cover or even exceed the 40 hours a week she was being paid for.
Barker might have known that had he interviewed her. But she said she refused to speak to him, claiming their confrontation had traumatized her.
(Dominguez had filed a restraining order against Barker. Criminal charges had also been sought, but prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to prove he had done anything wrong.)
Instead, she said she submitted two letters to KRQE explaining her side of things and offering to speak to anybody else at the station but Barker.
KRQE news director Iain Munro, who was not at the station at the time, said he was not aware of the letters, nor was anyone he asked.
Despite that, Munro said he was confident in Barker's story.
"Everything that Larry got I stand totally behind," he said.
Just as Dominguez stands behind hers.
Last month, she returned to speak before the Commission on the Status of Women, standing proud and strong as she declared her vindication, requested a correction to Farner's audit and warned that never should media dictate how the commission should be run or who should be sacrificed for public consumption.
That, for now, will suffice. In her own way, she has made what peace she can.
"I'm back where I belong," she said. "God takes you and puts you where you need to be, and for me that's serving the constituents."
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg.
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