{"id":38083,"date":"2022-10-03T17:40:23","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T23:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-ag-wants-states-anti-corruption-law-strengthened\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:42:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:42:05","slug":"new-mexico-ag-wants-states-anti-corruption-law-strengthened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-mexico-ag-wants-states-anti-corruption-law-strengthened\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico AG wants state&#8217;s anti-corruption law strengthened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=6b7d6ca0-3a33-49e5-8afd-2a8ccd9df8b4&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1450\" alt=\"New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas wants to create a special investigative unit to guard against hate crimes and terrorism in response to the August mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Balderas on Tuesday asked the Legislature to provide funding for five new employees as a precaution against potential attacks on public schools, retail stores and other vulnerable public venues.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas wants to create a special investigative unit to guard against hate crimes and terrorism in response to the August mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Balderas on Tuesday asked the Legislature to provide funding for five new employees as a precaution against potential attacks on public schools, retail stores and other vulnerable public venues.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Susan Montoya Bryan\/Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>ALBUQUERQUE \u2013 New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas is calling on lawmakers to strengthen the state\u2019s anti-corruption law.<\/p>\n<p>A recent ruling by the New Mexico Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of criminal charges against four defendants, and Balderas told the Albuquerque Journal that the court \u201ctook away from citizens a very necessary tool to prosecute public officials who use their public office for their own personal gain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The case dealt with the dismissal of ethics charges against a series of former public officials, including a former Do\u00f1a Ana County treasurer, an ex-district attorney and a former taxation and revenue official.<\/p>\n<p>The Journal reported that the state Supreme Court\u2019s unanimous opinion centered on the enforcement of three provisions in the Governmental Conduct Act \u2014 subsections that direct officials to treat their positions as a public trust, conduct themselves in a way that justifies the confidence placed in them by the people and disclose conflicts of interest.<\/p>\n<p>The high court ruled the sections were never intended by legislators to be enforced as criminal statutes and the language doesn\u2019t \u201cspell out what act or omission is required for its violation and does not establish criminal elements that could inform clear jury instructions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The state Legislature is set to open a 60-day session in January when lawmakers may take up legislation revising ethics laws and other statutes, according to the Journal.<\/p>\n<p>Balderas, a Democrat whose term ends this year, told the newspaper that he\u2019s urging lawmakers to work with the ethics agency to \u201cstrengthen these laws in order to build public trust with our community which has grown skeptical and tired of corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>removed \u2018necessary tool to prosecute public officials,\u2019 Balderas says <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4116,133,168],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-courts","tag-crime"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83908,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38083\/revisions\/83908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38083"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}