Travelers Insurance plans to drop coverage for Santa Fe this summer [The Santa Fe New Mexican]

Jan. 26—The city of Santa Fe is searching for a new liability insurance provider after being notified by its current carrier it will cease to provide coverage when the fiscal year ends in June.

City officials did not say why the carrier would no longer be providing coverage, but in an email, City Manager John Blair said officials will be assessing how to reduce claims.

The city paid out more than a half-million dollars in settlements last year, including $300,000 to a former police officer who filed multiple lawsuits alleging the city withheld records on complaints to the Santa Fe Police Department's Internal Affairs department. She also alleged she faced retaliation from the department's leadership.

The city is insured by Travelers Insurance for claims under $1 million. In a Jan. 6 email, Blair wrote Travelers had notified the city it will stop providing coverage June 30. He added the city conducts an annual insurance renewal process, which is currently underway, and is "on track" to have a new carrier in place by July.

"City staff are also assessing what we can proactively do to improve City operations, prioritize capital improvements — basically anything strategic to reduce the number of claims," he wrote.

Representatives for Travelers, which is headquartered in New York City, did not respond to requests for comment.

City officials did not respond to inquiries about why Travelers said it would no longer insure the city or whether the city has had an unusually high number of payouts in recent years.

Berkley Insurance, headquartered in Greenwich, Conn., provides coverage to the city for claims of more than $1 million.

The city paid out at least $516,000 in settlements in 2023, according to public records.

In response to a public records request for all 2023 settlement agreements, which is still pending, city officials provided documents for settlement agreements from eight lawsuits. They included two payments for lawsuits alleging the city violated state open records law, one from a driver whose vehicle was struck by an on-duty police officer's vehicle and four from people who received payments after injuring themselves or others on city property they alleged was not property maintained.

In one of the settlements, Claire Romero received $1,400 to help pay for medical bills for her family's dog, Mila. In a 2021 lawsuit, Romero alleged an unsecured steel bollard at the entrance of Cielo Vista Park fell on one of the dog's paws, fracturing a toe.

Other settlements included a woman awarded $25,000 after falling on an icy city sidewalk and fracturing her wrist; a woman awarded $30,000 after suffering "severe and disabling injuries" from falling on an uneven slab of concrete while walking on the Santa Fe River Trail; and a woman awarded $75,000 after slipping on an icy city sidewalk and fracturing her ankle.

Jeremy Lucero was awarded $35,000 after his vehicle was struck by the vehicle of Santa Fe Police Officer Jesse Campbell. According to a complaint, Lucero was stopped at a red light at the intersection of Cerrillos Road and Fourth Street on June 13, 2020, when Campbell's police vehicle hit with the rear of Lucero's vehicle, causing "heavy damage" and giving him "serious accident-related injuries," according to the complaint.

Retired lawyer and former city councilor Steven Farber received a $50,000 settlement in April from an open records lawsuit in which he alleged the city stonewalled his requests for documents about a rezoning proposal.

The largest settlement, a $300,000 payout to retired Santa Fe police officer Michele Williams, also dealt with open records laws. Williams filed a lawsuit against the city in 2021 contending it violated the state Inspection of Public Records Act by providing incomplete records to a request for complaints to the police department's Internal Affairs division.

A second lawsuit alleged the city violated the Whistleblower Protection Act; Williams claimed she faced retaliation at the department after she raised concerns about a fellow employee committing what she alleged was time card fraud. In the lawsuit, she said she was transferred to an administrative position and told she was the subject of an Internal Affairs investigation.

Williams also raised concerns about discrepancies in the police department's evidence locker following a gun buyback, after which she was told she was the subject of another Internal Affairs investigation, according to her lawsuit.

Williams was a Santa Fe Police Department employee from 2001 to 2019, retiring at the rank of lieutenant. In a 2019 interview, she said she retired in part because she felt she had "hit a glass ceiling" for women at the department and would not be able to rise any further up the ranks, an allegation police leadership denied.

The complaint said the alleged retaliation is what led Williams to retire from the department earlier than she planned.

"With defendants having taken two retaliatory actions against Ms. Williams for her reporting to her employer communications regarding improper, if not illegal, acts, Ms. Williams reasonably believed she had no future with the department and reasonably feared her employment would be terminated following her indefinite period of administrative assignment," the complaint stated.

In exchange for receiving $300,000, the settlement agreement stated Williams would release the city from all claims pertaining to the lawsuits and abide by the terms of a confidentiality order. The city did not admit any wrongdoing.

Williams' attorney, Thomas Grover, who has represented a number of whistleblowers, said he rarely sees instances in which the former employer attempts to address the wrongdoing his clients allege. In this case, he said, the city made non-financial amends as well.

"I can't say they made everything right ... but they definitely came to the table because she had some pretty severe claims," he said.

Williams previously was awarded $15,825 in damages and attorney's fees in a lawsuit she filed against the city for failing to produce records under an Inspection of Public Records Act request pertaining to missing sexual assault examination kits.

Grover said the city routinely falls short when it comes to following open records law.

"It just really flaunts that," he said.

The city's settlement payouts this year have already exceeded what it paid out in 2023. On Jan. 16, a judge approved a $1 million settlement from the city to the estate of Cristian Marban-Tafoya, who died in jail in September 2022. According to legal documents, police drove Marban-Tafoya to Presbyterian Santa Fe Medical Center to be assessed for a drug overdose but never took him inside after he became combative. He then was driven to the county jail. He was found dead in his cell the following morning.

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