Geier

Mayor-elect Tim Keller has decided that for the foreseeable future the job of turning around the troubled ABQ police department and getting a handle on the crime epidemic will be kept all in the family.

The prospect of bringing in a chief from out of state with no ties to APD was in effect shelved as Keller said his national search for a new APD leader may not be completed until the end of next year, well over a year after he takes office this Friday.

That was seen as a victory for the public safety unions that ardently supported Keller and who have not been keen on bringing in an outsider.

In announcing the appointment of former Rio Rancho Police Chief Michael James Geier as interim APD Chief, who served 20 years with APD, Keller said Geier will be free to apply for the permanent post.

That sounded similar to what Mayor Berry did in 2014. He announced a national search for an APD chief only to make local Gorden Eden his permanent selection. But the comparison ends there. Eden was a politically connected lifelong government official while Geier's background in law enforcement is substantial.

Keller also named a team of three interim deputy chiefs, all of them with long service in APD during the troubled tenures of Chiefs Schultz and Eden. Senior Alligator analysis:

The new mayor has picked his team and if they are able to clean up the APD mess, fine. But if they are too attached to the past culture and unable to make the needed sweep, the APD mishaps will continue and these appointments will come back to bite him. 

The complete Keller announcement and bios on all appointees is here. Keller also met with BernCo District Attorney Raul Torrez Tuesday to discuss the crime crisis. Video of that is here.

Another point APD watchers noted was Keller's comments concerning the appointment of a civilian public safety director to oversee APD as he talked about in his campaign.

That, like an out of town chief, appears to be on hold. Keller said he has not been able to find a suitable pick. That gives his APD interim choices a free hand to succeed or fail on their own in the first critical months of his administration.

With a 62 percent win under his belt Keller has been given a wide berth by the public and his APD team will be given the wait and see treatment. But that won't last forever. Even as the mayor-to-be was announcing his moves the city was about to set a new modern day record for murders and the Bernalillo County Sheriff's department was confronting a management crisis of its own. All of that and more is waiting for Keller on Day One.

DON'S DARING QUOTE

Don Harris

When ABQ GOP City Councilor Don Harris compared the Central Ave. bus project known as ART to the Golden Gate Bridge, we called it over-the-top. Reader Dan Otter sees it this way:

Hey Joe, It looks like you are never going to come around on ART. The point Harris was making is that most of these types of projects are controversial during build out. While I feel for businesses affected by the ART construction, that’s now over. It looks to me like the already solid businesses survived and the one’s that weren’t so strong to begin with struggled. 

Aesthetically, Central looks much, much better. Let’s see what happens next. Even supporters don’t know exactly how this will play out. One thing is clear: the future is not automobile centric development. It’s multi model and I think Albuquerque has taken a bold step forward. 

Reader Alan Schwartz differs:

My favorite over-the-top quote was when then Tourism Secretary Monique Jacobson suggested that the Spaceport theme building would be as iconic and in a class with the Sydney Opera House. Ironically, while the Spaceport management continues to cite the use of the facility for filming car commercials as one of their "successes," the theme building never appears in the ads. As is the case with ART, so far the Spaceport critics seem to be right.

PEARCE CASH

There's no one who thinks Republican US Rep. Steve Pearce won't be well-financed for his 2018 Guv run so a federal court decision allowing him to shift nearly a million in cash from his congressional campaign fund to his gubernatorial kitty was somewhat anti-climatic. It in no way "reshapes" the Guv race because of the millions Pearce is expected to raise from traditional GOP donors, particularly the wealthy oil and gas sector. And Dem Guv frontrunner Michelle Lujan Grisham has already surpassed the $1.5 million mark in cash.

The bigger worry for Pearce is Bernalillo County. The sweeping mayoral win by Tim Keller--20 plus points over his GOP foe--points to an increasingly deep blue sea of voters in the state's most populous county. It will take more than a court order to get them to pay any mind to the conservative Pearce. What's his plan to deal with that?

FUNNY HEADLINE

Toulouse Oliver calls for sexual harassment training for NM lobbyists

Reader quip: Our lobbyists need to improve their sexual harassment skills?

THE BOTTOM LINES

We mangled the last name of incoming ABQ Chief Administrative Officer Sarita Nair in the first draft of the Tuesday blog. Somehow it ended up as "Najar." We were probably thinking of Dan Najar, one of the more effective but under-the-radar lobbyists in the state. How's it going, Dan? You're not related to Sarita, are you?

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2017