New Mexico Department of Health Secretary Patrick Allen speaks during a news conference in March 2023 at the state Capitol. Courtesy/SFNM

Sen. Crystal Brantley, R-Elephant Butte, castigates Health Secretary Patrick Allen at the Capitol on Tuesday over an op-ed in which he accused her of “grandstanding” and making ‘wild accusations’ about New Mexico’s child welfare agency. Brantley had falsely asserted more New Mexico children die in state custody than die by gunfire. State data shows 40 children died by gunfire in 2022, compared to two deaths of children in state custody that year. Photo by Daniel J. Chacón/The New Mexican

By DANIEL J. CHACON
Santa Fe New Mexican

Tempers flared Tuesday at the Capitol over a newspaper op-ed in which New Mexico’s health secretary accused a Republican lawmaker of “grandstanding” and making “wild accusations” about the state’s child welfare agency.

The column, published on The New Mexican’s website about a half-hour before Cabinet Secretary Patrick Allen appeared before the Senate Finance Committee, quickly circulated on social media.

“Mr. Secretary, I just read your op-ed this morning, the one in which you accuse me of grandstanding because of my concerns with [the Children, Youth and Families Department] and child deaths in New Mexico,” Sen. Crystal Brantley, a member of the committee, told Allen after he made a brief budget presentation.

Allen interrupted Brantley.

“Actually, not quite that,” Allen retorted. “It was a concern that the numbers that you tossed out in that hearing were so shockingly wrong that, you know, there’s an old saying that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on, and I wanted to get truth’s boots on.”

During a presentation last week on the future of CYFD and child well-being in New Mexico, Brantley called it an “unfixable agency” and asserted more children had died in the last year while under CYFD’s care than by gun violence.

While Allen oversees the Health Department and not CYFD, he was part of last week’s presentation and signed his name on the op-ed, which was titled “From Sensationalism to Reality: Setting the Record Straight on Gun Deaths.”

The child welfare agency last week attributed data on the number of children who died by firearms in 2022 to the health department.

In the op-ed, Allen wrote 40 New Mexico children were killed by gunfire in 2022 — 20 times more than the number who died in CYFD custody that year.

“Let’s be clear: any child’s death is a tragedy. The Department of Health, along with others across state government, works every day to protect kids and help keep them healthy,” Allen wrote.

“However, it’s nearly impossible to achieve this shared goal in the face of wild accusations that are so far off the mark,” he added. “While we can disagree on strategy, we must agree on the facts. This type of disinformation is dangerous.”

Brantley fired back and castigated Allen for “splitting hairs instead of moving the ball forward” on child well-being in New Mexico.

“We just had a presentation here going over how we’re going to make the risk management fund solvent because CYFD has cost us over $17.5 million in one year alone in wrongful death lawsuits,” she said.

“This isn’t grandstanding to come up to the Legislature to voice the concerns of New Mexico that we are not moving the ball when it comes to child welfare. We are not addressing the crisis, and I’ll tell you during this legislative session, we’re not doing it now because we refuse to adopt policy that’s actually going to be meaningful to save kids’ lives,” she added.

Brantley noted New Mexico still ranks last in child well-being.

“That’s not grandstanding to say, ‘We need to do things to make sure our kids stop dying,’ ” she said.

She chastised Allen for criticizing legislators who want to make meaningful change to child well-being.

“Here’s the bottom line: Kids are dying in New Mexico, and we are not getting anything from the executive, any proposals on how to stop that,” she said.

Brantley asked Allen how many child deaths New Mexico requires to constitute a health crisis.

“I say one, one, one is one too many,” she said. “We have a health crisis in the state. I appreciate the time and input that went in to talk about the details and semantics of a stupid op-ed that doesn’t give one proposed solution on how we stop the deaths.”

Allen tried to reply but was stopped by the committee chairman, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, who told him he didn’t need to respond.

Later, Muñoz told Allen that Brantley was “correct.”

“I mean, we do have a problem at CYFD,” he said. “Last year, we were told that the exec was going to fix it and while we made a Cabinet appointment and change is always slow and difficult, we haven’t seen that.”

In an interview, Muñoz also pointed to the multimillion-dollar settlements in which “all the fault” was placed on CYFD.

“We have a such a problem we don’t need to create more animosity when we’re trying to solve something because we’ve got kids at stake,” he said.

“We’re adults,” he added. “Act like it.”

After the tense exchange in committee, Jodi McGinnis Porter, a Health Department spokeswoman, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “facts matter.”

The Cabinet secretary’s “op-ed sheds light on the importance of accuracy in discussions about child deaths in NM,” she wrote. “It’s crucial to base our perspective on solid foundations to address the challenges faced by vulnerable children in our state.”

In an interview later in the day, Brantley said lawmakers have proposed bipartisan bills to reform the embattled agency, including the proposed creation of an independent ombudsman office.

“That’s been carried for a number of years, and it was last year when we had a new attorney general who came in and said, ‘Hey, let my office assist in this crisis. We’ll house that agency. It’ll provide outside oversight so that they know how to internally fix themselves.’ That was rejected,” Brantley said.

Brantley said lawmakers are being forced to take the matter directly to the voters, noting an Albuquerque Democrat, Sen. Jerry Ortiz y Pino, is proposing a constitutional amendment that proposes to move Children, Youth and Families from the governor’s Cabinet and place it under a new, three-person independent commission.

“Perhaps that’s the solution here, is we’re going to take it out of the executive to try to depoliticize the issue,” she said.

Brantley said the op-ed shows the “narrow focus” of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration instead of trying to fix the overall problem.

“The Legislature is asking for solutions to come forward and instead this secretary spent the weekend drafting an op-ed with personal attacks, splitting hairs over how kids are dying … instead of how are we going to prevent these children from dying,” she said. “That is the question we should all be asking ourselves. He came forward with personal attacks on me yet continues to offer no solutions on how we’re going to save kids.”

Asked whether she supports a slew of gun control measures advocates say are designed to save lives, including children’s, Brantley said she has not seen a bill she specifically supports.

“What we need to do is enforce the laws that are already on the books,” she said. “To come in and create blanket gun policies that impact law-abiding citizens is not going to fix the problem. We still have kids who are breaking the law today and so the creation of more laws doesn’t mean they’re going to start following the laws that are already on the books.”

The drama during the committee meeting surfaced during the Senate floor session.

Though he didn’t specifically name him, Sen. Cliff Pirtle, R-Roswell, called out “somebody of a secretarial level” for misogynistic behavior.

“Hopefully moving forward, we’ll demand more respect for this body and the Legislature as a whole,” he said.

In interviews, other Republican senators defended Brantley, the lone female Republican in the chamber.

Sen. Bill Sharer, R-Farmington, called the op-ed “absolutely inappropriate.”

“The personal attacks on the legislator, on any legislator, are absolutely inappropriate,” he said. “We have to work together.”

Sen. William Burt, R-Alamogordo, said he appreciates Allen’s efforts to improve child well-being in New Mexico.

“He’s got a lot of pressure on him. He’s got a very heavy lift, but I think that trying to put forward plans and ideas to move the department forward and correct some of those problems is a better use of time than writing an op-ed to lambast someone who could help you move that issue along,” he said.

Burt said Brantley was “within her right” to call Allen out for his op-ed, adding “sitting down with someone across the table” works better to resolve issues.

“You don’t compromise on your values, but you can compromise on issues, and that’s how you get things done,” he said. “I think we get caught up in rhetoric and the politics and stuff from time to time as opposed to trying to resolve the issues at hand.”