Fired NNMC director may get more money

Judge’s decision may take total past $1M

Ajury’s decision in May to award a former Northern New Mexico College employee nearly $420,000 in a lawsuit filed under the Whistleblower Protection Act could exceed more than $1 million when all is said and done.

Last week, Santa Fe District Court Judge Francis J. Mathew doubled the $239,451 portion of the award that the jury allocated to cover Melissa Velasquez’s loss of wages after she was fired in 2014.

With interest, the total judgment against Northern in the Velasquez case — only the latest in a series of costly lawsuits brought by former employees of the Española-based college — is now $676,402, says Mathew’s written order.

The award total also includes $180,000 that the jury provided for emotional distress suffered by Velasquez, former director of Northern’s El Rito campus, who says she was dismissed after reporting waste, fraud and abuse of federal grant money.

But the cost for the four-year school will go still higher in the case. Mathew said Velasquez also can recover “litigation costs and reasonable attorney’s fees in an amount to be determined” by the judge.

Two days after the judge increased the award, Velasquez’s attorney Christopher Moody filed a series of motions that could add another $434,000 owed by the college, including $200,245 in attorney’s fees.

Velasquez had worked at the college for two years before she was appointed El Rito campus director in November 2011 under former NNMC president Nancy “Rusty” Barceló. Velasquez’s lawsuit claimed she was demoted to the position of coordinator of continuing education at the school’s main campus in Española after she reported financial abuses.

She also said she reported to at least three top-ranking administrators her suspicious that two college employees not under her supervision were getting drunk on the job, but nothing was done about it. The college later blamed her for a “failure to address this problem as a pretext to eliminate her from a supervisory role,” her lawsuit alleged.

The college can still appeal

the jury’s original ruling in Velasquez’s favor.

Mark Komer, the attorney representing the college, said Thursday a decision on whether to appeal won’t be made until after Judge Mathew rules on the latest set of motions. He declined to comment on the decision by the jury or the judge.

In one new motion, Velasquez is asking to be reinstated at the college and also asks the court to make NNMC pay more if it doesn’t take her back.

“Should the Court deny reinstatement as infeasible, Plaintiff (Velasquez) seeks an award of front pay for a reasonable period of time to afford her the opportunity to secure alternative substantially equivalent employment,” the motion states.

“Based on her fruitless job search over two years and ten months from the termination date to the time of trial, it is logical to infer that it will likely take her an additional two years to secure suitable employment,” it continues. “Plaintiff should therefore be awarded her lost compensation for an additional two years.” Based on the pay rate she was receiving, two years worth of salary and benefits totals $169,000, according to the motion.

In addition, Moody filed motions to include more than $11,000 in gross receipts taxes and interest on the back pay at a rate of 15 percent, another $36,000.

Moody did not return a phone call from the Journal on Thursday.

According to the court filings, NNMC is opposing all the motions, except the one seeking attorney’s fees.

Velasquez claimed she was fired after she took various complaints — about malfeasance by college regents, mistreatment of females at the college, and the waste, fraud and abuse in grant programs — to Gov. Susana Martinez, the Higher Education Department and the state Auditor’s Office.

The college claimed she was let go as part of a “reduction in force” due to a financial crunch. Most, if not all, administrators she levied the allegations against are no longer employed by the college.

Velasquez’s suit is one of four whistleblower cases filed against NNMC claiming retaliation in recent years, but the only one that went to trial.

Last year, the college settled two complaints totaling $540,000. A third was settled earlier this year, but the amount of the settlement won’t become public record for at least another month.

The state’s Risk Management Division paid a total of $222,500 in the settlements reached with former assistant professor James Biggs and ex-Information Technology director Angelo Jacquez, leaving the college on the hook for $317,500. It’s unclear how much Risk Management will pay in the case of Patricia Perea, who coordinated the college’s summer bridge program and settled with the college in January, or in Velasquez’s case.

A call from the Journal to the division was not returned Thursday.

Current NNMC President Rick Bailey Jr. also could not be reached. He’s been on the job for less than a year and inherited a financial mess.

The college started falling behind on audits in 2010 and was later placed on a watch list by the U.S. Department of Education. Its use of federal grant money also came under scrutiny by the Department of Education and the state’s Higher Education Department. Budgetary problems led to a tuition hike in 2013, the layoff of about 20 employees and cuts in trade programs at the El Rito campus.

Earlier this year, the state Auditor’s Office released reports finding financial irregularities, including the theft of $200,000, which led to the resignation of the head of the college’s business office and the potential misuse of 744 hours of unapproved leave by former college president Barceló, amounting to about $87,000, not including taxes and benefits.