The latest in a series of pending lawsuits against Northern New Mexico College administrators was settled late last week, ending a long-running legal feud between the College and a former employee.
First Judicial District Court Judge Francis Matthew dismissed with prejudice, May 13, the Whistleblower Lawsuit filed by former director of Information Technology Angelo Jacques, dating back to Aug. 4, 2014.
Following the court’s decision to grant an extension of time to file dispositive motions on March 28, pre-trial conferences and jury selection were scheduled for the months of June and July respectively, but the case never made it to trial.
Contacted Tuesday, Richard Rosenstock, an attorney representing Jacques, said per state statute, he would not be able to talk about the details of the case for another six months.
“It’s settled, we had a hearing scheduled, but all that stuff gets pushed off,” he said.
Northern interim president Domingo Sanchez did not return calls for a statement on the settlement.
The College was being represented in the case by Santa Fe-based firm Long, Komer & Associates.
Sanchez served as vice president of Finance and Administration and was Jacques’s immediate supervisor when the latter was working for the College starting in the fall of 2012.
At the time he began his employment with the College, Ricky Serna was serving as vice president of Institutional Advancement, Henrietta Trujillo was the finance director and Bernie Padilla was director of Human Resources.
Only Sanchez and Trujillo remain employed by the College since the lawsuit was originally filed.
Trujillo said she was not aware the Jacques lawsuit had been settled and did not know if the law firm representing the College had been directed to settle any cases pending against the College. She said Sanchez and the attorneys have been handling all of the College’s legal issues.
Sanchez recently went on record, March 15, when the College came to terms in the lawsuit filed by former Environmental Sciences director James Biggs. At that point, Sanchez said administrators are not allowed to comment on legal matters, similar to the way they are restricted when speaking about personnel issues.
Biggs claimed his problems with the College started after he questioned Sanchez about his lack of financial management. He said administrators demoted him and reassigned him to the El Rito campus because he was critical of administration, among other things, such as fiscal mismanagement and misappropriation of federal grant funds.
Similarly, Jacques’s complaint for damages under the state’s Whistleblower Protection Act arose out of what he claimed was administration’s efforts to punish and discredit him and to deprive him of employment after he communicated to them his concerns about “rampant mismanagement, improper employment actions, favoritism and misuse of public funds and equipment,” discovered while he worked as Information director for the College.
In his lawsuit, he further alleged that administrators acted to discredit him as a result of his refusal to take part in activities or practices at Northern New Mexico College that constituted unlawful or improper acts.
The New Mexico State auditor’s office found that during 2012, among other concerns, the College lacked adequate internal financial controls and protections against irregularities.
The state auditor determined internal controls were so deficient that errors and irregularities could go undetected, financial data was not secure and there was failure to segregate certain financial duties, which increased the risk of misappropriation of assets through error or fraud.
According to Jacques’s allegations against his former employer, he provided Sanchez with a preliminary assessment of the state of the technology infrastructure and informed him there had been serious mismanagement of the College’s infrastructure. He also informed Sanchez there was no control of data integrity and the College was completely lacking in inventory control.
This deficiency was later discovered by an audit conducted by the state auditor’s office.
Jacques further alleged that College administrators were using equipment that was purchased for the students through certain federal grant funds. He claimed that the College obtained more than $5,000 of technology equipment through grants, but most of it could not be accounted for.
At the time, Serna was responsible for managing the federal grants and Trujillo, a close associate of Sanchez, was responsible for tracking how grants were used. Jacques also alleged virtually all service contracts had been improperly approved by Trujillo and the College was wasting more than $4,000 a month by improper reviews of approved contracts.
Jacques did not return calls seeking comment on the lawsuit settlement, but went on record in the past to say he would be limited by state statute from disclosing the terms of a possible settlement, or to provide more feedback on his legal action against the College.