Ethics complaint
Rights act would aid Egolf, ex-judge says
House Speaker Brian Egolf is accused of conflict of interest
SANTA FE — A retired judge has filed an ethics complaint against House Speaker Brian Egolf over his push to establish a state Civil Rights Act, contending the speaker would benefit from its passage as an attorney whose practice includes civil rights cases.
Sandra Price, a retired state district judge in northwestern New Mexico, filed the complaint last week with the State Ethics Commission and a legislative ethics committee.
The four-page complaint says Egolf failed to disclose conflicts of interest and would obtain personal benefit from passage of House Bill 4, legislation he is cosponsoring to enact a New Mexico Civil Rights Act.
Egolf, a Democrat, is a private attorney in Santa Fe whose work includes personal injury, medical malpractice, civil rights and other civil litigation. He filed a state disclosure form this year reporting that he has a civil law practice and has represented clients before the Health Department and the Taxation and Revenue Department, in addition to the state engineer.
“The complaint is baseless and clearly designed to distract me from my work and to discourage me from fighting for the people of New Mexico,” Egolf said in a written statement.
New Mexico legislators serve part time and don’t draw a salary. They are often either retired or have outside careers that allow them to take breaks for legislative sessions.
The proposed Civil Rights Act would allow lawsuits to be filed in state courts against public bodies to recover financial damages for violations of the New Mexico Bill of Rights. It would include a $2 million cap on damages and provide for the award of attorney fees.
Price’s complaint alleges Egolf’s sponsorship of the civil rights legislation violates ethical standards in state law, including a prohibition on elected officials using their powers to obtain personal benefit or pursue private interests.
She pointed to an online legal profile that estimates about 20% of Egolf’s legal practice is civil rights claims and 40% is civil litigation on behalf of plaintiffs. He should have disclosed that to legislators, she said.
“If passed,” Price wrote about the bill, the speaker “will now have greater access to receiving payments from New Mexico’s local and state governments.”
The legal fees provision in the law, she said, would “clearly and unequivocally benefit the private practice of Speaker Egolf.”
Andrew Schultz, an attorney representing Egolf, said he will seek dismissal of the complaint. One of the two sections in the law cited by Price doesn’t apply to legislators, he said, and the other would prohibit almost any lawyer from serving in the Legislature if it were read the way Price suggests.
“I don’t believe this is a gray area at all,” Schultz said. “I think the claims filed against the speaker have no factual basis, and they have no legal basis under the Governmental Conduct Act, which is the only law cited in the complaint that the speaker was supposed to have violated.”
Allegations of potential conflicts at the Legislature surface routinely.
It’s common for ranchers and farmers to vote on agriculture bills, for teachers to participate in education legislation, and for lawyers to vote on measures affecting the courts and state legal system.
The Governmental Conduct Act calls for legislators to use “the powers and resources of public office only to advance the public interest and not to obtain personal benefits or pursue private interests.” It prohibits legislators from requesting or receiving “any money, thing of value or promise” in exchange for an official act.
In prior years, Egolf himself has made a distinction between laws that affect the public more broadly and bills with an immediate impact on specific pending litigation he is working on.
A year ago, for example, he recused himself from voting on a bill that clarified who may enroll in New Mexico’s medical marijuana program. Egolf said the legislation might affect a pending appeal and underlying case he had filed on how to define a qualified patient for the program.
Price’s complaint is pending with the State Ethics Commission, an independent agency.
New Mexico is expecting a boost in its COVID-19 vaccine supply next week as the federal government continues to push allocations to states.
Announcement of the anticipated increase — 22% over two weeks ago — was made by Health Secretary-designate Dr. Tracie Collins on Wednesday as the state is now administering nearly 11,000 doses a day, up from about 9,000 a day in early February.
At the same time, 64% of those in the 1A top priority group, which includes health care workers and first responders, have received at least their first dose of vaccine,
Collins said. Vaccination of that group began in December.
She said the state is still prioritizing that 1A group, then those 75 years old plus, followed by those 16 and older with a chronic health condition. A little more than 300,000 New Mexicans have received at least an initial dose of the two-dose vaccine regimen.
“The focus is on those who are at the highest risk,” Collins said at the COVID-19 public update.
Under the state’s phased-in plan, the next group to be eligible for a vaccine would be frontline essential workers who can’t work remotely, such as educators and grocery store employees. Then, vulnerable populations in congregate settings, to be followed by adults 60 and over.
“As soon as we can get more vaccine doses and we can get through those groups, at least 60%, then we can open it up to the next group,” Collins said. She said she couldn’t
predict when that might be.
Meanwhile, vaccination appears to be driving down the daily incidence of COVID-19. For instance, there were 281 new cases and 12 additional deaths reported Wednesday.
Bernalillo County had the most cases, at 120, and the top three zip codes with the highest new case counts in the state were located on Albuquerque’s West Side and in the city’s far Northeast Heights north of Interstate 40.
The vaccine now seems to be reducing new cases somewhere between 20% and 24%, said Dr. David Scrase, secretary of the state Human Services Department and lead adviser to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on the state’s pandemic response, at Wednesday’s update.
“This is the most exciting thing that’s happening, I think, in the state right now for those of us who have been working on the pandemic for such a long time,” Scrase said. He added that mask-wearing (ensuring the mask is tight on the face), along with quarantines of those potentially exposed and social distancing, are still important tools to reduce COVID-19 spread. But the threat of new strains of the virus still looms. “What makes us all nervous is that some variants that we’re seeing around the world seem like they may be resistant to treatment or resistant to the vaccine itself,” Scrase said. “That’s going to be a big problem for us. For now, though, the more people we can get vaccinated, the better we are. We are monitoring that closely.”
Scrase also predicted that, with the fewer positive cases, more of the state’s counties would soon move from the strictest red level restrictions to yellow level, which relaxes some of the capacity restrictions on businesses and permits limited indoor dining. Red signifies “very high risk.”
The state reevaluates the county designations every two weeks.
“Our modeling suggests a fair number of additional counties next week (will go yellow), assuming there’s no big change in things, but we’ll see,” Scrase said.
More than half of the state’s 33 counties have moved into the yellow or green designation, which requires the fewest restrictions.