Ethics board dismisses complaint against Sandoval County Commission chair

The Sandoval County Ethics Board dismissed a complaint filed against Sandoval County Commission Chair Dave Heil on March 14.

The complaint was filed by Marijo Streetz, a Placitas resident who regularly attends commission meetings and participates in public comment.

According to the complaint filed to the ethics board, Streetz accused Heil of interrupting her “with a reprimand consuming 10 seconds of my public comment time with no effort or concern to reinstate my lost time.”

That incident occurred at the March 22, 2023, meeting with Streetz saying she sent an email to Heil the next day to express her disapproval.

Streetz also lists another complaint of Heil “taking the liberty of consuming not only 18 seconds of my public comment time but additionally 25 seconds of Mr. John Veltri’s time as well” on Jan. 24.

“When a person is interrupted while speaking, the interruption derails the message one is trying to project. It deflects attention away from the speaker,” Streetz said. “With us only having two minutes, it’s just really disruptive, and it’s really hard to stay focused on what you’re trying to project.

“Now, if there’s a reason for the interruption, if I’m swearing or I’m doing something that is totally off color, I totally understand that. I do understand that there are parameters that need to be kept, she continued. “We the people have a lot of procedures that we are required to follow in order to speak. We’re respectable and we’re polite. And I feel that the respect needs to go both ways a little bit more. So I don’t know if it’s a deliberate intention to derail — maybe they don’t like what a particular group is saying, I’m not really sure what the reason is — but nevertheless, I just think that the commissioner sometimes uses his position to exert an authoritarian banner.”

Veltri, another regular attendee and public comment participant at the county commission meetings, was one of half a dozen who attended the ethics board meeting in support of Streetz.

“Marijo and I are the only two that are singled out or discriminated against more than once,” he said. “Over the last 2 1/2 years, we have come here to try to make wrongs right, make broken processes better for the good of everybody on both sides of the aisle. We are both nonpartisan. We don’t have a horse in the race. We don’t see color. We don’t see Democrat or Republican. But we come here to try and make things better and work with our commissioners who are here to serve us. I think Chair Heil means well, most of the time, but I think he has a habit of exerting his power a little more than he should instead of trying to hear what is being said.”

Heil attended the meeting but declined to speak when invited to. After the meeting, Heil told the Observer, “The ethics board handled the issue appropriately. It was dismissed because there was no ethics violation.”

Before ruling on the complaint, the ethics board, consisting of Bob Watkins, Keith Brown and Jordan Juarez in attendance and Cindy Adelsberg on Zoom, listened to Compliance Officer Luis Robles give his take on the situation.

“My role as compliance officer is to conduct an initial threshold examination whether all of you have the jurisdiction or the authority to act upon the complaint as it’s presented,” Robles said. “As written and presented today, this is a complaint against a county commissioner for the alleged violation of the complainant’s constitutional rights both under the United States Constitution as well as the New Mexico Constitution. The manner in which the ethics ordinance is written, it is not captured as one of those prohibitive activities that you are given authority to adjudicate. So with many respects, I can understand the complaints and concerns about the way in which allegedly she was treated during the public comment period, but this is outside the purview of the ethics ordinance.”

Members of the ethics board discussed Robles’ comments and the procedure of public comment at commission meetings before Wilkins issued a motion to dismiss the complaint “since the allegations within the complaint, if taken as true, would not constitute a violation of the Sandoval County ethics ordinance.”

The motion passed 4-0.

Juarez, who also attends commission meetings and is running for Heil’s seat, expressed his empathy for Streetz while acknowledging that there is nothing the ethics board can do about her complaints.

“While I empathize with a lot of it, and I’ve sat here, you know, I come to these meetings and I understand the respect level, but at the same time, there’s not much that we can do when it’s such a broad stroke of the brush,” Juarez said. “While I empathize as well, there’s just not much more I can do.”