Shenanigans
Saturday, June 20, 2009, 10:12pm
Someone called Valencia! on the phone today and had a wild conspiracy theory to share.
You may have seen on our website and read in the Valencia County News-Bulletin that Belen Mayor Ronnie Torres isn’t running for reelection as mayor. It gets interesting after that.
In our article, we pointed out that the mayor said (publicly, we might add) that he isn’t running for anything. The newspaper reported it differently, saying he’s “considering” running for council.
What we know for sure is that Torres wants to be a councilor. What’s unclear is how he wants to get a seat. There’s some speculation Torres doesn’t want to run for council — he sort of said so himself, as we reported.
The conspiracy theorist who called wondered if the mayor might resign soon, get a councilor appointed to the mayor’s seat (likely Wayne Gallegos) and then have that new mayor appoint him to the council.
That’s the safest option for the mayor, but it’s the most politically risky for Gallegos. You see, Gallegos has more than two years left on the council. If he became mayor, he’d have only months left as mayor before the next election, but Torres would take on Gallegos’ remaining two years. Such a move would be unpopular locally and Gallegos would likely suffer for it during the next election in March.
It’s unlikely to happen — but you never know.
What’s more likely is that Gallegos will run for mayor. Torres won’t run for anything. (If he ran for council, he might be up against his two allies and incumbents, councilors David Lopez and Terese Ulivarri, should both be running for reelection.) Once Gallegos wins for mayor, it frees up his council seat. Then, he can appoint Torres to it. It’s politically safe.
We’ve seen shenanigans like this before, and it’s usually about money.
Belen’s municipal judge, Kathy Savilla, retired and got appointed back to the judgeship so she could double dip and siphon a ton of taxpayers’ money from salary and retirement.
Some have speculated that some elected officials and candidates want cushy elected positions just for the health benefits. That’s not to mention that Belen’s councilors and mayor make a load of money — more than any other similarly elected officials in Valencia County.
