“I never knew why I was put on administrative leave,” Cantin said. “I was an at-will employee. They don’t need a reason to get rid of me.”
It turns out Cantin was kept out of the loop on a lot of issues. She worked for Madrid about a year, “but after the first couple of days he stopped talking with me about things. I never got to share what was going on with departments.”
“I just put my head down and did what I was told,” Cantin said. “You have to do what you are directed to do.”
She suspects she was sent home on paid leave because of the local citizens’ smart-meter initiative ordinance. “It was the Monday following the Thursday agenda review on the petition for the smart meters,” Cantin said. She told Madrid she missed the deadline for getting the people’s initiative ordinance published in the Sentinel and “it couldn’t go to public hearing at the next meeting.”
“It was my deputy clerk’s responsibility,” Cantin said, “but as city clerk I am to blame. I should have checked.”
Cantin was unaware her missed deadline and the subsequent delay in the public hearing suited Madrid’s plans to go ahead with the $1 million contract with Landis + Gyr for services and smart meters.
The contract had an easy-out termination clause if the City didn’t cancel within 12 weeks of “deliverables.” After that, the City would have to pay for them. Madrid said the City was within the 12-week window at the Jan. 29 public hearing on the initiative ordinance. Asked how much the deliverables cost, he said “$1 million.”
He didn’t cancel the contract beforehand “because I didn’t think it was in the best interests of the public,” Madrid said after the meeting, demonstrating his intention of ignoring the people’s ordinance to ban smart meters, including blocking a special election to decide the matter.
Cantin defended putting the initiative ordinance to publication, claiming it is required by State law 3-17-3A. That law applies to ordinances brought by the City Commission, not the people.
But Cantin insisted the people still needed to be notified of their ordinance. “It is sufficient defense in any suit to prove no notice by publication was made,” Cantin said, so delaying the public hearing by putting the people’s initiative ordinance to publication was not a ruse.
In addition, she was told by City Attorneys John Appel and Jay Rubin and Madrid that the City Commission would meet the Jan. 2 deadline laid out in the State law on initiative ordinances by voting to put the ordinance to publication at the Dec. 11, 2019 meeting.
But State law 3-14-18 on initiative ordinances only recognizes three possible actions the City Commission could take: approval, amendment or voting it down. The law says nothing about publication.
“That’s true,” Cantin agreed.
Cantin took the heat for another delay authored by Madrid and City Attorneys John Appel and Jay Rubin.
She did not “approve as to form” a petition brought by Ron Fenn on Oct. 18, 2019 on the smart meter moratorium. Without her approval, it could not be circulated for signatures. She eventually approved a petition as to form Nov. 1, delaying the process by two weeks.
“I did bring it to the City Manager’s and the attorneys’ attention that the [Fenn’s] petition was correct,” Cantin said, “but I was directed not to accept it.”
Cantin was gone by the Jan. 29 meeting, when the City Commission voted down a resolution that would have scheduled a special election. The people’s vote on whether smart meters should be banned for 10 years was blocked.
“I didn’t know that,” Cantin said, sputtering “it was the people’s right.”
On her last day with the City, Cantin said she was pulled into Madrid’s conference room, along with “the HR analyst.” They handed her a letter informing her she was on paid administrative leave while being “investigated.” The letter did not state what she had done wrong.
“After one week I hadn’t heard anything and I got scared,” Cantin said. She started looking for a job and got one with the New Mexico Municipal League in Santa Fe, “working for the program development director.”
The City would not fulfill document requests for Cantin’s resignation letter, the letter placing her on leave and the investigation results, claiming an exemption under “confidential personnel matters.”
“The resignation letter should have been public,” Cantin said. “I put some stuff in there I thought they should look at. I said ‘you should look at this and this,’” she said, not finishing the sentence.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Cantin said. “I’ve never made a move that didn’t turn out to be a good thing.”