Bernalillo County Commissioner Quezada leaves meeting over hiring process decision

Bernalillo County commissioners offer competing visions for how to hire a county manager

Bernalillo County needs to hire a new county manager, but how to do so has become a content…

Bernalillo County commissioners have decided how to hire the next county manager, an issue that divided the board for several weeks. A previous proposal on the hiring process was deferred in March.

The county manager runs day-to-day operations in the county, and current County Manager Julie Morgas Baca will retire at the end of the fiscal year in June.

In a 3-1 vote on Tuesday, the commission approved a hiring process proposed by Commission Chair Barbara Baca that will use a search committee to vet potential candidates, conduct public meetings for community feedback and develop a stakeholder survey.

The Board of County Commissioners will interview the top five candidates and decide who should get the job.

The search committee will be chaired by former county manager Juan Vigil and also includes former county commissioners Tim Cummins and Maggie Hart Stebbins, former Albuquerque Public Schools board president Yolanda Cordova-Montoya and Community Health Worker Initiatives Program Operations Director Venice Caballos.

The qualified candidates’ résumés will be posted on the bernco.gov website.

Debate around Baca’s proposal was heated. Commissioners Walt Benson and Steven Michael Quezada wanted to appoint search committee members. Quezada proposed an amendment to allow each commissioner to appoint someone to the committee, which failed.

“It sounds like you three who have selected this five-person committee are in line, and you should vote that way,” Benson said. “It’s a joke to our constituents. … This is a review board that gets to determine which applicants come before us, and two commissioners have had zero say on who’s on this board.”

Barbara Baca said the hiring process follows International City/County Management Association best hiring practices, and she thinks it will help the commission find a new manager quickly.

“We are going above and beyond what is actually necessary to vet and to choose, by majority rule, our next county manager,” Baca said.

Quezada left the meeting chambers when it became clear that Baca’s motion would pass.

“Why am I here? There is no reason for me to be up here on this dais because I’m not being heard. ... I can represent my constituents better in my office than I can do in here, so I’m going to make a stand right now and I’m going to leave this commission meeting,” Quezada said before making his exit.

Quezada and Benson sponsored their own hiring process proposal, which came up after Baca’s and failed for lack of a second.