BernCo attorney’s contract extended
Term goes from two to four years; salary also boosted by almost 10%
Bernalillo County’s top attorney received a major vote of confidence from his bosses last week.
Commissioners voted unanimously to extend Ken Martinez’s employment contract through Aug. 8, 2021, and to boost his salary by $15,000.
Martinez, a former state representative who took over as county attorney in December 2015, still had four months left on his old two-year contract, but commissioners opted to replace that contract with a new one that will expire in four years.
Under the new contract, his salary will go from $155,000 to $170,000, an increase of about 9.7 percent.
Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins raised concerns about the county entering into a fouryear contract with an employee, noting that the makeup of the commission changes every two years. She tried unsuccessfully to change the contract so that it would be a two-year instead of a nearly four-year extension.
Her motion failed for lack of a second.
“My reservations about this contract have nothing to do with any reservations about our county attorney’s performance. I think it’s been excellent,” Hart Stebbins said. “I’m very proud of the decision that the county commission made about 18 months ago to hire him. He’s been great. My concern about this is that it goes from a twoyear contract to a four-year contract.”
Hart Stebbins said she has been on the commission for about eight years and this is the longest contract for a county manager or county attorney that she has seen.
“I think that it makes sense for us to have a two-year opportunity to review the contract and I have always argued we should have some kind of a performance review, which we still need to put into place for both the county manager and the county attorney,” she added.
Many of the provisions contained in Martinez’s old contract carried over to the new one.
The county can terminate him for cause without any additional obligation. But if the county were to fire him without cause, Martinez would be owed 6 months’ salary and benefits, unless there are fewer than six months left in his contract. In that case, the county would have to pay him for the time remaining in the contract.
Martinez, meanwhile, would be required to give the county four months’ notice if he were to decide to terminate the contract.