Dona Ana Commissioners won’t pursue sheriff’s censure

Dona Ana County Sheriff Kiki Vigil is firing back at commissioners after they publicly announced the county will not pursue a censure on him Tuesday.

Despite dodging the strongest form of reprimand, Vigil says the matter is not over.

“Saying things like Human Resources is broken. That’s basically a general statement about an entire department,” Chairman Billy Garrett said.

Chairman Billy Garrett tells ABC-7 it’s no secret Sheriff Vigil has been outspoken at commission meetings. But as ABC-7 reported in September, the investigation was after a former employee reported a possible violation of the county code of conduct.

The allegations included the following: the sheriff reported to have said to opposing counsel at a trial that “HR is corrupt”, the sheriff was alleged to have acted in a threatening manner to county employees, he alleged to have spoken badly about the human resources department and he allegedly contributed to a “toxic environment” for county employees.

“Two of them the investigator couldn’t find any additional information to support the allegations, one of the allegations was too broad,” Garrett said.

But now Vigil questions whether or not an investigation even happened. He claims commissioners are targeting him and vows to continue speaking his mind.

“For Billy Garrett to go on for ten minutes or more to come out and basically throw me under the bus is inappropriate,” Vigil said. “I’ve never stated that HR was corrupt you know, like he stated yesterday. I’ve never made that statement. I’ve made statements about HR being broken and I will continue to state that.”

Garrett mentioned that the county did censure County Treasurer Dave Guterriez for solicitation of sex with an employee. He says Vigil’s inquiry was different because it was not as serious and there simply weren’t enough facts to prove the misconduct.