Two years in the past, on the daybreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Albuquerque Metropolis Council up to date the emergency powers ordinance to grant new authority to the mayor throughout a public well being disaster.
On Monday, the council basically revoked it.
The legislative physique — which has undergone vital turnover since March 2020 — voted 5-4 to restrict the mayor’s command throughout an infectious illness outbreak that “presents a risk (to residents’) well being or security” or threatens to pressure native medical sources.
Per the council’s 2020 motion, the mayor might order the closure of streets and locations of mass meeting, cancel metropolis occasions, reallocate as much as $1 million inside the metropolis’s finances to deal with the disaster and extra.
However the change accredited Monday eliminates that language and permits the mayor to situation solely “advisories and suggestions” throughout a public well being disaster.
Councilor Dan Lewis sponsored the change and mentioned Monday that Mayor Tim Keller had hardly invoked his powers throughout COVID-19, deferring largely to orders issued by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration.
However the metropolis’s Chief Working Officer Lawrence Rael, certainly one of Keller’s highest-ranking appointees, mentioned the mayor’s administration opposed eradicating the general public well being powers. He mentioned the administration had relied on a number of the procurement flexibility they offered, together with to supply lodge rooms and vaccines for people who find themselves homeless.
“There have been some particular … conditions that occurred in numerous areas of the town the place we needed to transfer shortly,” Rael mentioned.
However Lewis dismissed that argument, saying he didn’t imagine the powers bestowed by the 2020 ordinance change have been the one path to dealing with such conditions.
These expenditures “might have been achieved in quite a lot of methods, together with (getting) help from the council,” he mentioned.
Councilors Lewis, Renee Grout and Louie Sanchez — all of whom took workplace simply this 12 months — voted for the change together with Brook Bassan and Trudy Jones.
Councilors Isaac Benton, Pat Davis, Tammy Fiebelkorn and Klarissa Peña voted towards it.
