The City of Española received a letter on Aug. 4 from the New Mexico Department of Justice’s Governmental Counsel and Accountability Division regarding a possible violation of the State’s Open Meetings Act.
The City had until Monday to respond to the alleged June 27 violation.
Española resident Cynthia Lentini filed the Open Meetings Act complaint.
“These frivolous mistakes are costing the city taxpayer, and it is a direct connection tot the vigil administration,” Lentini said in a telephone interview. “The city council has allowed this and enabled Mayor (John Ramon) Vigil and his behaviors for so long, they paid the price for it.”
According to Lentini’s complaint, District 4 Councilor Justin Salazar-Torrez motioned for a recess of the June 24 council meeting until the next regularly scheduled meeting on July 8. The motion passed 5-3.
A special meeting was then scheduled for June 30 and the agenda and materials were posted on the city’s website on June 27.
The alleged violation, according to Lentini’s complaint, is that the city listed the same ordinance on the June 30 agenda as it did on the June 24 agenda, but failed to properly advertise its intention to take any action.
The specific ordinance listed in Lentini’s complaint is Ordinance 2025-006, or an ordinance authorizing the city of Española to opt in to local elections for the election of municipal officers commencing in November 2027.
According to state statute, “any ordinance proposed for adoption by the governing body of any municipality must take place at least two weeks prior to consideration of final action upon the ordinance in open session of the governing body.”
Due to the recess, the June 24 agenda could not be heard until July 8. If the council wanted to take action on June 30, it would have had to advertise the ordinance in the newspaper of general circulation of the municipality on June 16.
Passage of this ordinance would have changed the city’s election schedule to mirror that of the state. Rio Arriba County already conducts its elections on the state schedule and this would have allowed city races to appear on ballots of elections run by the county clerk. The city had a deadline of June 30 to pass the ordinance if it wanted to follow this schedule.
According to the ordinance, this would save the city $125,000 that it would have to spend to conduct its own election.
The ordinance would have also extended the term of the mayor and other councilors. Those whose terms would end in 2026 would be extended until the end of 2027, and those whose terms would end in 2028 would be extended until the end of 2029.
Lentini said this was the main reason for her decision to file the complaint.
“I filed it as soon as they tried to run that meeting (on June 30),” she said. “They tried to extend the terms and tried to extend the mayors term.”
Mayor’s Response
Vigil wrote in a text message that the city will respond to the letter regarding the complaint with help from City Attorney Frank Coppler.
“It is my belief that the OMA complaint arises from unlawful directives issued to the Clerk’s Office by certain members of the City Council,” Vigil wrote. “Some Council members have declined to seek guidance from the City’s General Counsel, instead relying on their own interpretations of the law.”
Vigil also wrote that this complaint is now directly related to an ethics complaint recently filed by City Clerk Carla Martinez.
According to Martinez’s complaint filed on July 22, which was addressed to Vigil and the councilors, Mayor Pro Tem and District 2 Councilor Peggy Sue Martinez is at fault for the violation listed in Lentini’s OMA complaint.
“The Mayor Pro Tem Martinez instructed me to schedule a special council meeting to discuss agenda items that had been recessed until July 8, 2025, by the council on June 24th, 2025, including an ordinance regarding opting into the state election schedule, a personal interest of hers,” Carla Martinez wrote in her complaint. “Since the issue had been recessed by a majority vote of the council, it was not proper for the Mayor Pro Tem to try to reschedule the item contrary to the council decision. This also violated the Open Meetings Act requirements for a recessed meeting.”
While Carla Martinez places blame on the mayor pro tem, her office also made a mistake regarding the ordinance.
The day after the ordinance was originally scheduled to come before Council, on June 25, a legal ad in the Santa Fe New Mexican stated the ordinance had been passed and would go into effect five days after the ad was published.
This is not the first time Lentini has filed complaints regarding the city’s failure to follow OMA and the state’s other sunshine law, the Inspection of Public Meeting’s Act.
They have done nothing to fix the issues, she said.
“I would wish that they would hire qualified clerk personnel,” Lentini said. “I know they have been sued for OMA and IPRA violations. They are completely unnecessary if we have qualified people working for the people and not the mayor.”