I didn’t write this article last October when I discovered that Mayor Pro Tem Destiny Mitchell had been hired as the Fiesta Coordinator by MainStreet T or C because she was running for reelection and it was within 60 days of Election Day. We are a 501(c)(3) newspaper, which prohibits interference in an election.
I did email her, however, and asked her how being the city commissioner overseeing Fiesta wasn’t a conflict of interest to also be hired by MainStreet T or C as the Fiesta coordinator, as well as bringing up another conflict of interest, which we will get to later. She didn’t answer.
Mitchell did not disclose she intended to take or that she had taken the job at a city commission meeting, as required by the Government Conduct Act, which would have, hopefully, prompted a thorough discussion of possible or actual conflict of interest.
It’s hard to believe her fellow city commissioners weren’t aware of her conflict. City commissioners have a duty to hold themselves, fellow-city commissioners and city staff to account and to uphold the rule of law.
MainStreet T or C is the city’s contractor or “subrecipient,” hired to run Fiesta. MainStreet is dependent on the city for its existence, receiving $45,000 to $60,000 a year for their yearly operations. Last year’s Fiesta was the 75th and the city commission paid MainStreet an additional amount–about $52,000–to make it bigger. In its dependency, how could MainStreet fail to give a city commissioner the job of Fiesta coordinator for the asking?
Mitchell evidently already had the job as Fiesta coordinator by December 2024 and had the gall to sign the MainStreet application asking for over $64,000 in city funds but receiving $52,000. See the application and contract at the end of this article.
On page 9 of the document, within the contract, it definitively states:
“24. Interest of Members of the City: No member of the governing body of the City and no other officer, employee, or agent of the City who exercises any functions or responsibilities in connection with the planning and carrying out of the program, shall have any personal financial interest, direct or indirect, in this Agreement; and the Contractor shall take appropriate steps to assure Compliance.”
So it looks like Mitchell, her fellow commissioners and Mainstreet were in cahoots in ignoring the contract’s legal “Compliance” requirement that echos two laws within the and Government Conduct Act:
10-16-3. Ethical principles of public service; certain official acts prohibited; penalty.
A legislator or public officer or employee shall treat the legislator’s or public officer’s or employee’s government position as a public trust. The legislator or public officer or employee shall use the powers and resources of public office only to advance the public interest and not to obtain personal benefits or pursue private interests.
Legislators and public officers and employees shall conduct themselves in a manner that justifies the confidence placed in them by the people, at all times maintaining the integrity and discharging ethically the high responsibilities of public service.
Full disclosure of real or potential conflicts of interest shall be a guiding principle for determining appropriate conduct. At all times, reasonable efforts shall be made to avoid undue influence and abuse of office in public service.
No legislator or public officer or employee may request or receive, and no person may offer a legislator or public officer or employee any money, thing of value or promise thereof that is conditioned upon or given in exchange for promised performance of an official act. Any person who knowingly and willfully violates the provisions of this subsection is guilty of a fourth degree felony and shall be sentenced pursuant to the provisions of Section 31-18-15 NMSA 1978.
10-16-4. Official act for personal financial interest prohibited; disqualification from official act; providing a penalty.
It is unlawful for a public officer or employee to take an official act for the primary purpose of directly enhancing the public officer’s or employee’s financial interest or financial position. Any person who knowingly and willfully violates the provisions of this subsection is guilty of a fourth degree felony and shall be sentenced pursuant to the provisions of Section 31-18-15 NMSA
A public officer or employee shall be disqualified from engaging in any official act directly affecting the public officer’s or employee’s financial interest, except a public officer or employee shall not be disqualified from engaging in an official act if the financial benefit of the financial interest to the public officer or employee is proportionately less than the benefit to the general public.
No public officer during the term for which elected and no public employee during the period of employment shall acquire a financial interest when the public officer or employee believes or should have reason to believe that the new financial interest will be directly affected by the officer’s or employee’s official act.
Last October, in my email to Mitchell, I asked for financial documentation of how public monies had been spent on Fiesta. As coordinator, Mitchell could control those monies, including the amount of compensation she was to be paid. No answer.
I only recently sought city records of how the $52,000 and $60,000 or so were spent by MainStreet last fiscal year. Their quarterly subrecipient reports to the city make no distinction between the two pots of money, give no financial accounting but merely a narrative of the events held.
I didn’t dig deeper last October because of her candidacy. And then I decided to drop the Fiesta conflict of interest because after the election, at a December 2025 city commission meeting, Mitchell said she wasn’t going to be “doing Fiesta,” referring to the upcoming May 2026 event.
Back to Mitchell’s second conflict of interest.
In October 2025 I not only queried her about Fiesta, I asked her how it wasn’t a conflict of interest for her to be a city commissioner and to be employed by the Geronimo Springs Alternative Pathways Program.
The GSAPP is a school that prepares people for and proctors General Education Development tests, which is an alternative to getting a regular high school diploma.
It’s the same conflict-of-interest scenario as Fiesta. GSAPP is a subrecipient, a contractor of the city that has employed Mitchell.
Subrecipients receive money from the city’s general fund or Lodgers’ Tax fund and/or the use of city assets. In order not to violate the anti-donation clause (Article IX, Section 14 of the state constitution https://nmonesource.com/nmos/c/en/item/5916/index.do#aIXs14 ), the subrecipient must perform a service beneficial to the people that is roughly equivalent in value to the money and/or assets given.
The service GSAPP provides the city is preparing potential city employees to take the GED exam. State law requires this level of education to qualify for state-agency employment.
The city recently renovated the Gardner Learning Center, where GSAPP is housed rent free, with the use of city assets such as tables, chairs, computers, projectors, internet connections, electricity, water, heat, etc., saving GSAPP many thousands of dollars in start-up equipment purchases, yearly rent and ongoing utilities.
Compounding the conflict of interest is another city-commissioner connection. GSAPP is not a 501(c)(3) and cannot accept donations or funds; it is doing so by using City Commissioner Ingo Hoeppner’s 501(c)(3) organization, ACT (acknowledge, create, teach). So GSAPP involves two city commissioners benefiting and furthering their personal interests with the use of city assets.
Neither Mitchell nor Hoeppner disclosed their potential or actual conflict of interest in a city meeting when GSAPP being housed in the Gardner Learning Center came up.
Still, I had decided not to write an article on Mitchell’s Fiesta or GSAPP conflicts of interest as a waste of time. I sought advice and was told not to write about it. Both were good causes and I was being too overweening in pointing out rule-of-law violations.
Then Mitchell said, in a recent city commission meeting, she is president of the T or C Chamber of Commerce (Hoeppner is also a member of the Chamber board). It was not a declaration of or acknowledgement of conflict, but a kind of boast that she was a sort of ambassador for business promotion for the city.
As if business promotion is a duty of the government. As if business promotion is one and the same with good government. As if she, as a city commissioner, is serving the people’s interests by serving business interests. Corporatocracy not democracy.
I decided to make my concerns public. The next city commission meeting I went to the mic. I premised my public comment with the statement that “business interest is special interest.” I then asked how it was not a conflict of interest for Mitchell to be president of the Chamber of Commerce, to have been employed by MainStreet as Fiesta coordinator and to be employed by GSAPP, which are both getting public money and or city assets.
Mitchell, as is her habit, didn’t explain herself then or since.
Mitchell bragged in her Sentinel candidate responses last fall that she is transparent, oddly holding up her non-public communications and those out of the public eye as evidence. This is how a good-ole-boy government operates.
Ethical city commissioners only have power while sitting as a body in publicly noticed meetings. They have zero authority to act as individuals. Debates, discussions, fact-finding, opinions, and the basis of their decision making on behalf of their constituents should be stated in public meetings. Mitchell contributes little input during city meetings.
Mitchell met in private with PreReal about the city forming a business-government economic development organization, divulged not by Mitchell, but by PreReal’s Patrick Pharris during his presentation at a recent city meeting. Pharris said he sought out the elected officials from T or C and Elephant Butte he knew were amenable to business development. T or C residents filled the hall, protesting the use of and mingling of city funds, policy making and lobbying with private business. Various speakers pointed out the inherent conflict: business seeks profit while the government is supposed to serve the people.
About a year ago Mitchell, in a Facebook post, not transparently and officially in a city meeting, said she was in favor of selling 10 acres of city property to PreReal near the river that would ruin the Healing Waters Trail, river views and access to them. She favored the private-business dense housing development over the preservation of public recreational space, access to river views and the riparian environment. City residents filled the hall then too, and prevented the action.
But the people can only protest and try to prevent action on what they know about, hence this article. A warning that Mitchell is not transparent and has already demonstrated her propensity for backroom- and self-dealing.
Mitchell is expanding her spheres of influence and conflicts of interest, not correcting them. Now she’s Chamber president and Mayor Pro Tem, the two positions overlapping like a bad-government Venn diagram. Democracy and transparency are much more likely to die and corporatocracy and secrecy to thrive in that area of overlap.