The race to become New Mexico’s next governor has been fraught with eligibility questions, jabs over policy copycatting and misleading campaign advertisements.
But candidates agree on one thing: New Mexico requires drastic change to improve outcomes for its most vulnerable children.
“We have a system that is not working for our kids,” Bernalillo County District Attorney and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sam Bregman said in an interview.
Candidates have big plans for the state’s foster care and child care systems, from splitting the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department in two to relinquishing the governor’s control of the troubled agency, to pausing the state’s budding free, universal child care program in an effort to gather more feedback.
Looming over the candidates’ plans for the office was a searing report published by the New Mexico Department of Justice last week identifying a slew of systemic failures in CYFD’s mission of protecting abused and neglected children.
Within the Justice Department’s more than 200-page report were findings that CYFD has consistently relied on unqualified staff, made late or indefensible decisions related to the safety of specific children, excessively relied on inappropriate housing for foster children — such as group homes and county offices — and devalued foster parents.
Gubernatorial candidates said they were outraged by the findings, and they widely called for structural change at CYFD.
“It’s heartbreaking, and our children deserve better,” said Democratic candidate Deb Haaland, a former member of Congress and interior secretary under the Biden administration. “This is a broken department. We need to start from scratch with it.”
Nathan Burton/New Mexican file photo
Haaland said she supports a proposal that would strip New Mexico’s governor of control over CYFD, transferring that, instead, to an independent commission. Such legislative efforts have failed to gain support in recent years.
Restructuring governance of CYFD in that way would allow for more longevity in leadership of the agency, since members’ ability to serve on the commission would not be tied to the terms of the governor who appointed them, Haaland said.
“Consistency, I think, is very important for these children,” she said. “… Making sure that children have the consistency of care that they need, I think, will make a world of difference.”
Bregman was less committed to the idea, saying it is “certainly something I would consider.” He did, though, echo another idea pitched by the Justice Department and a high-ranking House Democrat this week: splitting CYFD in half, and charging one agency with administering child protective services and the other with juvenile justice programs.
“Right now it is so overextended, managing both child welfare and juvenile justice, right?” he said. “This contributes to … burnout, a lack of focus, inconsistent outcomes.”
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Republican candidate Doug Turner, a businessman who served as state director and campaign manager for former Gov. Gary Johnson, wrote in response to questions by The New Mexican the state must set up improved mechanisms to ensure stability in CYFD’s workforce.
Turner echoed findings by the Justice Department that the state has increasingly deprofessionalized its child protective services workforce, recruiting fewer licensed social workers amid a perpetual turnover crisis that requires fast recruitment. He argued the state must start at the college level.
“We need to fund college certification programs and hire more professors so we can expand our capacity to train and graduate students for social work careers and reduce the caseloads that contribute to job losses,” he wrote.
Ken Miyagishima, the former mayor of Las Cruces running for governor as an independent candidate in the general election in November, said he would reimagine critical programs for children, including those in foster care.
When CYFD needs emergency, overnight housing for children entering state custody and has nowhere else to look, he said the state should tap CYFD employees who have agreed to volunteer to take the children in for $250 per hour. Doing so would help diminish the amount of money CYFD pays out in lawsuits by ensuring foster children stay in safe environments, Miyagishima said.
“That’s a drop in the bucket compared to what we’re spending in insurance and claims,” he said. “And by doing that, we know they’re staying in a safe place to live.”
As part of an effort to improve outcomes for children in their academics, well-being and development, New Mexico this year set aside over $700 million in the coming five years to fund its free, universal child care program.
But Republican candidate Duke Rodriguez, CEO of the state’s largest cannabis company, has expressed concerns the state has rushed into the program and that it has failed to gather input from child care providers in the state’s most rural areas.
Nathan Burton/New Mexican file photo
That will exacerbate struggles to expand capacity to accommodate all the children who need child care, Rodriguez said, adding he believes New Mexico must pause the program.
“I think that the administration took a rush to judgment, rush to initiation and rush to claim victory, that they set aside the needs of the rural communities and only focused on what would work in the Albuquerque metro area,” he said. “And that’s a huge mistake.”