Secretary of state seeks to block Guadalupe County hospital mill levy from appearing on ballot

SANTA FE — A legal dispute is intensifying over whether a New Mexico county missed a key deadline to put a hospital mill levy on the November general election ballot.

The New Mexico Supreme Court last week temporarily halted a district court judge’s order authorizing the mill levy for Guadalupe County Hospital to be put on the Nov. 5 ballot.

The state’s highest court then scheduled oral arguments to be held Wednesday in the case.

Those actions came after Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s office filed a motion arguing county commissioners had missed a statutory deadline for approving ballot questions. That deadline is 70 days before a general election.

In response, attorneys for the Santa Rosa-based hospital and county officials argued the secretary of state lacks the legal authority to block a county-level ballot question.

They also said that not allowing the mill levy to appear on the ballot — such levies must be approved by voters every eight years — would mean a $800,000 per year hit to the Guadalupe County Hospital, which has a roughly $9 million annual budget.

“If this question is not included on the ballot, it will likely result in a decline of services and may result in the hospital having to close or reduce days when it is open,” the attorneys argued in their Supreme Court reply brief.

The dispute is playing out just two weeks before absentee and early in-person voting begin in New Mexico.

The hospital’s attorney in the case, Daniel Ivey-Soto, said the secretary of state’s actions in the case have come as a surprise to local officials.

“We did not anticipate that,” he told the Journal, adding Guadalupe County officials had tried to follow the proper procedure for getting the mill levy on the ballot after realizing it was set to expire this year.

He also said Guadalupe County Hospital is the only health care center for a large swath of eastern New Mexico residents.

Ivey-Soto is a state senator from Albuquerque who was defeated in the June primary election by fellow Democrat Heather Berghmans. A former state elections director, he has clashed at times with Toulouse Oliver over election-related issues at the Roundhouse.

Lindsey Bachman, the Secretary of State’s Office director of legislative and executive affairs, said Monday it’s the secretary of state’s job to ensure election deadlines set by the Legislature are enforced.

“The secretary is not charged with determining which situations merit exceeding deadlines, but rather, strict enforcement of those deadlines so in every election, election obligations can be met, and each election administered properly,” Bachman said.

She also said the secretary of state should have been included in the initial court petition filed by Guadalupe County officials to get the mill levy on the ballot.

With the case still in limbo, Ivey-Soto and attorneys for Guadalupe County officials argued in their latest court filing the state itself may now be violating federal election law.

That’s because a federal law requires states to send ballots to registered overseas and military voters 45 days before Election Day. The 45-day mark for this year’s general election was Saturday.

Given that backdrop, the Secretary of State’s Office filed a separate lawsuit in a Santa Fe-based district court on Saturday seeking to compel Guadalupe County Clerk Robert Serrano to certify the general election ballot, even as the Supreme Court case plays out.

No court hearings had been scheduled in that case as of Tuesday.