Civil Rights bill will devastate Taos County budget
House Bill 4 and the substitute bill filed Feb. 5 is still a horrible bill and gives no insight, direction or funding for any kind of effective reform to take place. I urge everyone to go to nmlegis.gov and read it for yourself. I watched the news last Saturday morning as one supporter said, “knowing they can be sued is an incentive for government employers to make changes.” Huh? What changes? Decreased budgets for police, EMS, fire departments, schools, hospitals? Are those the changes she meant? Or is it to decrease their already underpaid and overworked staffing? Or maybe it’s to further limit the general services so those local governments can afford increased insurance premiums? Maybe that is it.
HB4 and this pathetic substitute bill is really nothing more than another unfunded mandate that offers no guidance on what reform is needed, intended or even what they think it should be. And it gives no credit for all the reform and liability reduction that has happened in the past many years.
But one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize HB-4 is not about reform at all, it never was – it is about lawyers and law firms looking for the “deep pockets” of our local and state government so they can make millions. Why else would it include all attorneys’ fees (which are by-and-large outrageous) to be paid by the defending government body and raising the tort (liability) cap to $2 million from 1.05 million? Bottom of page two says it all. It is not about accountability or reform at all.
Imagine for a minute that someone dials 911 and reports their father is having a heart attack and the ambulance crew that is already on another call takes 40 minutes to arrive. And when loading the 330-pound man they accidentally drop him from the bed to the floor because he’s just too heavy for two tired workers to lift in the tiny bedroom. Even though the delayed arrival time and the drop isn’t intentional, and even though they have been saying for years they need more funding, staff and ambulances, that won’t matter. Nor will it matter that for years the local government has been asking for funding grants to supplement the deficiencies. The city, town or county government was negligent. “Chaching!”
How about when an officer is backing out of a driveway after arresting a drunken, loudmouth wife beater and in the chaos he backs over a 9-year-old kid riding his bike in the street. Although not intentional and one can argue “the kid should have been supervised” it won’t matter. The city, town, or county was negligent because they didn’t train the officer in driving/backing since he graduated the academy in 2018. “Chaching!”
How about when three inmates decide to attack another inmate because they “think” he is a snitch or homosexual, or just because they are bored and he “looked at them wrong.” The already overworked and understaffed detention officers (DOs), the only three available at that moment, take two minutes to get there and stop the beating. Then its 30 minutes for medical to arrive because they only work during the day. It won’t matter that the city, town or county has been diligently working to recruit and retain staff for years. It won’t matter that one of the DOs injured his shoulder while breaking up the fight and had to have surgery to repair his rotator cuff and missed 24 weeks of work during his painful recovery and will probably never have full movement of his shoulder again. But the battered inmate can collect $2 million plus attorney fees because “the city, town or county “failed to protect me.” “Chaching!”
Oh, by the way – under this hideous bill the DO can’t sue his employer for a claim of negligence leading to his injury even though he’s complained for two years that they need help and he was planning his departure to another job the next week. Huh, I guess Blue Lives really don’t matter to some lawmakers after all.
I could go on, but you should get the point by now if you didn’t already see it for yourself. HB-4’s substitute is still horrible. It does nothing to bring reform – what it will bring is costly lawsuits against local governments, all public safety disciplines and schools and cost us, the taxpayers, more. This will do nothing more than suspend or delay the reform and training that is already in place and planned for the future. Period. It will do nothing more than cost taxpayers in the end and as a result they will get even less services.
And as of right now we don’t even know if local governments will be able to obtain affordable insurance or what the cost will be. Oh ya, do you know what happens when the local government doesn’t have the money to pay a claim or it exceeds their coverage? The debt gets paid from the already deficient local government’s budget. What happens if the debt exceeds the budget? That debt could go on the tax rolls and is passed along to the taxpayers in the next cycle.
These same civil rights claims that I mentioned above can be pursued right now in federal court, and are, successfully, when there is negligence. When negligence is proven those plaintiffs collect significant compensation. And agencies that employ those officers or other public employees are, in fact, often held accountable too. The NM tort claim act, as it is right now, strikes a reasonable balance between economics and plaintiffs rights. This is how it was intended and how it needs to remain. We can’t let that slip away, certainly not at the expense of what this bill will cost the New Mexico taxpayers.
For the sake of our county, towns, villages, schools, hospitals, and other state- or government-funded organizations and their future, I urge you to reach out to your county commissioners, state representative, other lawmaker, and Gov. Lujan Grisham and tell them to vote no on HB-4.
Signed by the Taos County Sheriff’s Office Command Staff as residents of Taos County,