State Ethics Commission sues former WNMU president Joseph Shepard

Former Western New Mexico University President Joseph Shepard faces new allegations of diverting public funds for personal benefit in a lawsuit filed Monday by the New Mexico State Ethics Commission.

The state agency alleges in its lawsuit that Shepard diverted funds committed to building a walkway and handicap-accessible ramp, and instead used the money to expand an existing patio and connect it to his campus residence for daughter Sofia Shepard’s wedding in May 2023, at a cost of more than $177,000.

In an interview with the Journal, Shepard called the allegations “total nonsense” and vowed to fight the commission in court.

Shepard, who served as the university’s top executive from 2011 until the beginning of 2025, resigned amid a scandal over his lavish spending on luxury travel accommodations and home furnishings. Shepard justified those expenses, saying they were needed for recruiting international students and entertaining prospective donors at his residence.

Shepard has not been criminally charged, but the Ethics Commission argues in its lawsuit that Shepard violated New Mexico’s Governmental Conduct Act, and seeks civil penalties up to $5,000 and restitution of funds to WNMU for the construction project.

“While a university president has wide latitude to authorize university expenditures or university purposes, the Governmental Conduct Act places a limit on the expenditure of public funds for a private purpose,” the complaint states. “Shepard transgressed that limit.”

The lawsuit presents design drawings, purchase orders and correspondence, as well as sworn statements from the university’s former capital projects director, Joseph Holguin, and former staff photographer Jay Hemphill, who submitted an ethics complaint to the commission last year. Both men left the university in 2024.

When the original project, which would have improved the campus building’s compliance with the American With Disabilities Act, threatened to exceed a $300,000 threshold that would have required a review by the state Higher Education Department, the complaint alleges that Shepard reduced the scope of the project so that it remained below $300,000, but later ordered that the project include “not only a walkway but also an extended patio” connecting the president’s house to an adjacent building “for the purpose of holding wedding-related events.”

The funds for the project, as alleged by the Ethics Commission, were pulled from “a legislative appropriation earmarked for instruction (e.g. faculty salaries and materials) and other general purposes (e.g. capital projects improving classrooms).”

The complaint states that Shepard “micromanaged” construction decisions including grade changes; burying utility lines to serve power pedestals; replacement of trees and planting of grass imported from Arizona; and new brickwork, which inflated costs and required university workers to repair sewer lines damaged by grading work.

The complaint goes on to state that Shepard demonstrated, in discussions with university staff, efforts to declare some of the expenses had university purposes so he would not be required to reimburse WNMU.

Hemphill’s statement alleges Shepard directed an employee to state on a purchase order that flowers ordered for the wedding were to be represented as flowers for graduation, which took place a week before the wedding, telling the employee, “No one will know the difference.”

Shepard firmly denied the allegation, saying Hemphill “is absolutely lying” and that he would present witnesses backing up his own account.

“They’re not lies,” Hemphill told the Journal. “I will testify in front of any court that that’s what I heard.”

Shepard said construction on the WNMU patio began in 2019 as a venue for university functions, including entertaining guests next to his residence. The changes to the project were not to avoid oversight, he said, but because an alternative solution for ADA-compliant access to buildings was found, rendering the ramp unnecessary and lowering the cost of the project.

“I saved the state $120,000 and accomplished the objectives of the original piece, getting access to the driveway and getting access to the house, and improving the land so it didn’t flood into the outbuilding,” Shepard said. “Nowhere in my world do I understand how somebody gets sued for saving the state money and accomplishing objectives.”

Shepard said the new walkway and patio extension had nothing to do with the wedding, and that he paid up-front for rentals of campus spaces as well as tables, chairs and other wedding expenses.

Shepard vowed to beat the lawsuit, which he called unjust. “At the end of all this, I think it’s highly unethical of the Ethics Commission to use their power to go after this lie.”

And he said his plans for teaching a course at WNMU in the next academic year would go forward, taking place online.

“I’m teaching business statistics and business ethics – of all things,” he laughed.

Journal staff writer Noah Alcala Bach contributed to this report. Algernon D’Ammassa is the Albuquerque Journal’s Southern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at adammassa@abqjournal.com.