Bernalillo County manager to resign. County commissioners praise her leadership.

Bernalillo County announced the resignation of County Manager Julie Morgas Baca on Monday after nine years on the job.

“I think being the county manager really is the highlight of my career, and I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done,” Morgas Baca said Monday. “It was a very difficult decision for me to make. I really love our staff, and there’s a lot of respect and support amongst our staff, and I’m going to miss that.”

She was appointed to the position in 2015, and her tenure as county manager will end in June at the close of the county’s fiscal year.

Morgas Baca will leave the post a year before her contract is scheduled to end. In 2022, the county commissioners extended Morgas Baca’s contract until October 2025. They also increased her annual salary to $215,000. Prior to being county manager, Morgas Baca was deputy county manager for eight years and worked at the Hispanic Cultural Center.

After 33 years in public service, Morgas Baca is retiring to spend more time with family and friends, she said. Supporting the business community was one of her top priorities, and working to build up behavioral health services and open the crisis triage center, which is expected to open in late spring or summer, was a highlight of her tenure.

The announcement praised the outgoing county manager for her work on behavioral health programs, ensuring county services continued during the COVID-19 pandemic and overseeing the renovations and move to Alvarado Square.

“I wanted a facility that was less intimidating to our community and I wanted it to be easy to be able to access our services,” Morgas Baca said of the Alvarado Square move.

Having Morgas Baca through the end of the fiscal year and during the budgeting process will help create a smooth transition in leadership, District 1 Commissioner Barbara Baca said. The county manager runs day-to-day operations for the county, including hiring and budgeting.

“I would like to thank Julie for all her hard work and know that we will continue to carry out many of the initiatives she started,” Baca said in a statement. “Julie has put her heart and soul into her work here at Bernalillo County and it has been a pleasure to work with her.”

District 4 Commissioner Walt Benson also praised the outgoing county manager’s work.

“I had the opportunity to work with her on many successes including helping transition MDC inmate medical care to UNMH, keeping operations running during the cyberattack that shut down the county IT systems, and her concerted efforts to maintain a healthy and responsible budget — ensuring we earned the highest bond rating possible,” Benson said in a statement.

District 2 Commissioner Steven Michael Quezada said in a statement that Morgas Baca was instrumental in the county achieving “significant milestones including extensive infrastructure projects throughout District 2, the purchase of Anderson Farms for open space, her leadership during COVID, her oversight of Behavioral Health and her excellent financial administration of the budget.”

Quezada said he wants the process for selecting a new county manager to be similar to the selection of the Albuquerque Public Schools superintendent, with town hall meetings and public information sessions.

The county commission is responsible for hiring the county manager, but the hiring process has not been outlined yet, Baca said. The commission chair, Baca said she is reaching out to all of the commissioners and to people who have gone through the hiring process in the past to determine what it should look like.