Ledes from the Land of Enchantment

Doña Ana County Sheriff faces complaints over promotions

LAS CRUCES – Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart faces an employment discrimination complaint by one of her sergeants who claims he was wrongfully denied a promotion and a code of conduct complaint related to the same incident. 

DASO Sgt. Eric Flores was told he was the third top-scoring candidate in a process to select three new DASO lieutenants last summer, but he didn’t get the job.

Who gets promoted, and by whom, within the ranks of county law enforcement has left in limbo officers like Flores and highlights a growing rift between county leaders.

Stewart, an elected official, accuses County Manager Fernando Macias — who reports to the elected Board of County Commissioners — of improperly interfering in the promotion of DASO officers and undermining her authority to manage her agency.

It’s not the first time the sheriff and county manager have tussled over personnel matters. In December, the two clashed after Stewart proposed that DASO support staff at her agency temporarily work from home on a rotating basis, in light of increased daily cases of COVID-19. Macias effectively vetoed that policy, ordering the employees to report to work like other county employees. 

Emails and other public documents requested by the Las Cruces Sun-News reveal Stewart in a figurative standoff with Macias and the county’s HR department over how to shape DASO, leading to allegations of dishonesty and deception within leadership and discontent among those told to fall in line.

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Flagged by HR

Flores says the decision to pass him over for the promotion violated county policy and New Mexico’s anti-discrimination statute. 

A Doña Ana County Sheriff vehicle is shown in Las Cruces.

As detailed in his complaint, Flores said his promotion was flagged by the county human resources department because his wife is also a sergeant at DASO, which would place him above her in rank. 

The nepotism policy states, “Immediate family members may not be hired, assigned, transferred or promoted if by doing so it would create a supervisor/subordinate relationship with another family member.” 

That allowed for Flores to be promoted as long as he remained outside his wife’s chain of command. Indeed, such an accommodation was made when he was promoted to sergeant in 2018, his wife being a deputy at the time. Macias and Stewart agreed in separate interviews that similar solutions have been implemented historically in similar cases at the agency.

Yet Stewart denied that nepotism was legitimate grounds for denying Flores a promotion, claiming in an interview that the county had selected three candidates over Flores anyway and then attempted to blame her for raising nepotism as an issue before moving on to the next candidate on the list.

“It wasn’t an issue raised by us,” she said. “They tried to blame me for saying that.” 

Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart, is seen at a press conference on Tuesday, June 28, 2021.

Macias said the county proceeded with the top-scoring candidates and that Flores would have been third if the sheriff had affirmed she would assign him outside of his wife’s chain of command. 

Yet when Macias asked in a Sept. 27 email, “Will you accommodate (Flores) so that he does not supervise his wife. Please make it simple, yes or no,” Stewart’s response was a single word: “No.” 

Mutual accusations of dishonesty

Flores said the sheriff had previously advised him that the nepotism policy should not present an obstacle to his promotion and that she suggested he sue the county, even providing him with an attorney’s phone number. 

Later, he said Stewart told him the county had decided to promote another candidate, moving him down to fourth place. At a subsequent meeting with HR, by Flores’ account, Macias told him he was still eligible as long as Stewart confirmed he would be assigned outside of his wife’s chain of command. 

A Doña Ana County Sheriff tactical vest is shown in Las Cruces.

Flores accuses the sheriff of dishonesty, in violation of county standards of conduct; unlawful discrimination on the basis of spousal affiliation; and an article of the deputies’ union contract pertaining to promotions. Deputies, including sergeants, are represented by the Communication Workers of America. 

In an interview, Stewart insisted that three lieutenant candidates were selected before HR discussed the nepotism issue with Flores, rendering any promise she made about assigning him moot. 

“I’m not going to give it any credibility after the fact,” she said. “The three had been chosen, so for me to go down that path was — it was irrelevant.” 

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Dispute over promoting lieutenants

The process for selecting candidates for lieutenant last year was contentious, as shown in email correspondence and memos obtained through public records requests. 

By county ordinance, the candidates are required to undergo a competitive merit-based process.

Doña Ana County Manager Fernando Macias, center, listens as Sheriff Kim Stewart addresses the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.

Expressing a desire to improve the promotions process, Stewart entered into a contract with an outside facilitator to manage proceedings that included examinations, interviews before a panel and evaluations by subordinates.

Macias approved the contract but said in an interview he was later surprised to learn the process had proceeded to interviews without HR being informed. 

As he and HR staff asked questions about the process and the panelists, Macias said, “We were met with considerable resistance to that, and I’m not sure why that occurred.” 

“They were finding all sorts of reasons they didn’t want to go through with the permanent positions,” Stewart said. “Every few days it was a different problem.” 

HR director Deborah Weir and Macias requested a meeting with the facilitator to review the members of the panel and selection materials to assure they complied with county policies and directives. After that meeting took place, they expressed approval. 

Weir told the Sun-News there was also an opportunity for the sheriff to raise considerations besides how the candidates scored. In email correspondence, Stewart referred discretely to pending investigations involving candidates for lieutenant, disciplinary history and examination scores. 

‘You show all the signs of developing snitches’

Yet Stewart appeared to grow frustrated by the county’s questions and sought to halt the process altogether, seeking temporary lieutenant appointments instead. Macias refused to sign off on those, appointing three permanent candidates based on their scores. 

Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart is seen at a news conference at the Doña Ana County Sheriff’s Office in Las Cruces on Tuesday, May 11, 2021.

“When they’re interim appointments, there’s a great deal of flexibility in terms of who gets into that slot,” Macias said. “That appeared to me to be just a method of putting in individuals other than the top-scoring candidates.” 

“There were no finalists. There were raw scores only,” Stewart argued. “Fernando picked these people. … They called them to HR separately, on separate days within a week and a half span, and told them they’re a lieutenant.” 

Weir told Stewart in an email that she could file memos of justification if she wished to promote candidates other than the top scorers, but the sheriff did not do so.

“You will pick who you want,” she wrote in a scorching email to Macias on Sept. 10. “I will make it known to them I didn’t pick them. I can’t trust them at this point, if ever. My picks will know my choices. Your selections will be beholding to you and your inquisitiveness about internal DASO operations will be continually fed. I have worked snitches for many years and you show all the signs of developing snitches.”

Months later, in our interview, Stewart expressed a different attitude toward the new lieutenants: “They’re all people who have been here for years. They are all people who could do the job … I can work with any of these people. I do every day.” 

Powers of sheriff and county manager

She said “meddling” in the promotions process by the county delayed the promotions of lieutenants the department needed and degraded morale by creating a perception that promotions were being rigged.

“It was disruptive in the delay. It was disruptive in the game playing that went on around it,” she said. “It built a lot of distrust in the process with people in our shop looking at it both above and below. … It created discontent.” 

Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart holds up the DASO pandemic response plan as she calls out the county manager for attempting to disallow her staff to work from home on Dec. 22, 2021.

Macias maintained that he and HR were seeking to maintain “the integrity of the outcomes of the competition for merit positions,” and coherence with county policies and directives. 

In her dispute with Macias over letting administrative staff work from home on a rotating basis, Stewart had appealed to the board of county commissioners to intervene, writing emails to Chairman Manuel Sanchez as well as Commissioner Lynn Ellins. She presented it as a matter of a sheriff being usurped from their authority to deploy personnel as they see fit.

The commissioners stayed out of it. 

On Dec. 14, the board unanimously approved a one-year extension of Macias’ contract with a 4 percent pay raise to $197,392 and a life insurance policy increased to $200,000.

Stewart said she took that as a sign that the commissioners would not help in distinguishing her authority from that of the county manager’s office. “Basically, what they did was say they approve of this path,” she opined. 

Instead, she said she would try to pursue statewide legislation to define the boundary between an elected sheriff’s authority and that of a county manager.

On Thursday, Stewart announced she would be running for a second term as sheriff.

When is an undersheriff not an undersheriff?

In her interview with the Sun-News, Stewart also responded to questions about the temporary appointment last year of DASO’s executive secretary, Andrea Ferrales-Narvaez, as undersheriff one year after saying she would eliminate the position.

Ferrales-Narvaez served as undersheriff for approximately 15 weeks before leaving the county. Stewart said that despite her position title, the secretary was not engaged in law enforcement and “had no authority” at DASO. 

Stewart ended the appointment on Jan. 5 and Ferrales-Narvaez is no longer an employee of the county. 

The Sun-News reached Ferrales-Narvaez, who was not immediately available for comment.

In July 2020, Stewart told ABC-7 news that the undersheriff position was “antiquated” and cited budget concerns in her decision to eliminate the position — one of the two positions, along with executive secretary, the sheriff may appoint under statute. 

Newly seated Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart, left, looks over a document with Undersheriff Jaime Quezada on Friday, Jan. 4, 2019 at the Doña Ana County Government Center, 845 N. Motel Blvd., in Las Cruces.

Her undersheriff at the time was Jaime Quezada, who received an annual salary of $86,683. At the time of the announcement, an internal complaint involving Quezada was under investigation, according to county records, but the allegations were found to be unsubstantiated. Quezada left the county that September and currently works in the private sector. 

However, on Sept. 7, 2021, Stewart informed HR in an email: “I am appointing Andrea to Undersheriff. … I don’t believe I have to justify this move to anyone.” 

The move raised the secretary’s annual salary from over $47,000 to the undersheriff’s salary of $86,683.

The sheriff told the Sun-News that she used the position’s salary line to boost her secretary’s pay because Ferrales-Narvaez “was doing far, far more than her pay at the time” yet was not eligible for a salary increase. 

“She was never the undersheriff,” Stewart said. “She had no authority. … Her hourly wage went up because, frankly, she deserved at the time for that to happen.” 

Even so, for approximately 15 weeks, Ferrales-Narvaez’s position title was “undersheriff,” and Stewart criticized the county for publicizing the promotion over her objections. 

“They put her on as the undersheriff on the website so that it created controversy for us,” she said. “It created controversy where there was none.”

If she wins another term, Stewart said she was open to possibly appointing an undersheriff who might function as a chief deputy of some sort, but had not worked out a detailed plan. 

Stewart, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018, faces a primary challenge in June. Fellow Democrat James Frietze, a retired New Mexico State Police officer, announced his campaign for sheriff in September of last year. 

Algernon D’Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, [email protected] or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

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