2015 Legislative Session

Keller administration to review pending DWI vehicle seizure lawsuits against the city

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Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller this week told city police officers to stop the city’s DWI vehicle seizure program. Under existing ordinance, the police department can impound vehicles after DWI arrests, but before the driver has been convicted. Keller called on the city council to permanently change the policy, but there are still pending lawsuits by people who allege the city violated state law and the U.S. Constitution by taking vehicles and then charging owners to release them. Albuquerque’s Chief Administrative Officer Sarita Nair said city attorneys are evaluating each case individually before taking any further action. “Our legal department is doing a case-by-case review of every case, whether it’s in the initial stages, whether it was set for a hearing at the city administrative hearing level or whether it’s in the district or higher courts, to make sure that we handle all the cases consistently, fairly and transparently,” Nair told NM Political Report.

Dukes Up Albuquerque

Metal mayor: Keller introduces metal band before ABQ concert

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Just days after his inauguration, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller was onstage again. This time, in front of a crowd of screaming fans of the heavy metal band Trivium. “My name is Tim Keller,” he told the crowd. “I’m your new mayor and I love heavy metal!”

A KOAT-TV photojournalist was at the show and taped Keller, wearing a Trivium shirt, telling the crowd that Albuquerque “is an awesome metal city” and introduced what the mayor called one of his “favorite bands.”

Matt Heafy, the lead singer and guitarist for Trivium, said on Twitter it was “an unprecedented honor” to have Keller introduce the band. Keller is well-known as a fan of heavy metal music and has often attended shows in Albuquerque.

Quick Reads

Facebook chooses ABQ for program to aid small businesses

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Facebook is aiming to help small businesses improve “digital skills” in Albuquerque and several other cities around the country. That’s the word from Mark Zuckerberg, the social media giant’s CEO. Zuckerberg announced the decision, of course, on Facebook. “Today we’re announcing a new program called Facebook Community Boost to help small businesses in the US grow, and to help more people get the digital skills those businesses need. Since 2011, Facebook has invested more than $1 billion dollars to support small businesses,” he wrote.

Navajo

Three years after attack, urban Indian population remains vulnerable

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ALBUQUERQUE – With cuts and bruises on his face, back and shoulders, Jerome Eskeets frantically told police about the violent assault he barely survived the night before. In his 30s, Eskeets had been sleeping in an empty lot on Albuquerque’s west side with friends and relations, Allison Gorman and Kee Thompson, who like Eskeets were Dine’, as members of the Navajo Nation call themselves. This story originally appeared at New Mexico In Depth. Soon after talking to Eskeets, police found Gorman’s and Thompson’s bludgeoned bodies. The 2014 crime shocked Albuquerque, the state and occasionally made national news as the cases against the three defendants eventually arrested in the brutal killings — youths Alex Rios, Nathaniel Carrillo and Gilbert Tafoya — worked their way through the court system.

Richard Berry

Candidates question value of Mayor Berry’s ‘groundbreaking’ ABQ crime report

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The “groundbreaking research” Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry commissioned on crime — the city’s No. 1 issue — may sit on a shelf unused when his successor takes office Dec. 1. Why? The two candidates headed for a mayoral runoff election next month, two-term Republican city councilor Dan Lewis and Democratic state Auditor Tim Keller, said the information about crime concentration likely won’t guide their crime-fighting plans if elected.

2017 Albuquerque Mayoral Election

ABQ voter turnout higher than recent elections

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Albuquerque voters came out in numbers not seen in a decade for Tuesday’s election. A total of 97,419 voters, or 29.01 percent of registered voters, cast ballots in the election that saw Tim Keller and Dan Lewis head to a runoff and defeated  the Healthy Workforce Ordinance in  a razor-thin vote. Four incumbent city councilors won reelection, while a fifth district will find out its next councilor in a runoff election on Nov. 14, the same day as the mayoral runoff. Just under 97,000 people voted in the mayoral election this year.

campaign finance

Realtors and developers give big money to ABQ mayoral candidates

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The amount of money being raised and spent so far in the Albuquerque mayor’s race is already an unprecedented $2,646,494. Of that, 68 percent comes from private contributors to candidates. An often heard saying about elections is that candidates spend their time asking anyone they can find for money to fund their campaigns. But a look at the campaigns of the three candidates raising the most in private dollars suggests one constituency is being asked a lot more than others. The real estate and land development sector has given roughly $1 of every $4 raised so far in the Albuquerque mayoral race once you subtract public financing dollars for one candidate and a half-a-million-dollar loan another candidate gave to himself, an NMID analysis shows.

Albuquerque Newsdesk

Polls show ABQ mayoral race that could be headed towards runoff

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Two polls are out on Albuquerque’s mayoral race. And it looks like there will be a runoff, with State Auditor Tim Keller running in the lead. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, voters will then decide between the top two candidates in a November runoff election. The first round of voting takes place on October 3. A KRQE-TV poll released earlier this week showed 22 percent of registered voters would support Keller in next month’s mayoral election.

U.S. Department of Justice

DOJ threatens to withhold crime-fighting resources over ABQ immigration policies

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The Department of Justice says for the city of Albuquerque to qualify for a partnership to combat violent crime, the city will have to comply with efforts federal immigration enforcement for immigrants who are detained. To qualify for the cooperation and funding, the DOJ says Albuquerque, and three other cities, must answer questions on how the city cooperates with federal authorities on immigration

“By protecting criminals from immigration enforcement, cities and states with so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “We saw that just last week, when an illegal alien who had been deported twenty times and was wanted by immigration authorities allegedly sexually assaulted an elderly woman in Portland, a city that refuses to cooperate with immigration enforcement.”

The term “sanctuary-city” does not have a specific definition, but the term is usually used to refer to municipalities that don’t fully cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on enforcing federal immigration laws. The federal program in question is the Public Safety Partnership, announced in June by the DOJ. The City of Albuquerque currently does not use city resources to help federal authorities apprehend or identify undocumented immigrants unless otherwise required by law.

2017 Albuquerque Mayor

Big money dwarfs public finance in Albuquerque mayor’s race

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Ricardo Chaves says he won’t accept any outside cash to help in his quest to become mayor of Albuquerque. “I won’t take any campaign money, because I don’t want to be beholden,” Chaves said in a recent interview. “I want to represent all the people not just the special interests.”

So the 81-year-old retired Albuquerque businessman who founded Parking Company of America is relying on a different pile of money to push his mayoral candidacy over the line: his own. To date, Chaves has pumped more than $500,000 into his campaign war chest, mostly through loans. This story originally appeared at New Mexico In Depth and is reprinted with permission.