Mediation between former Western New Mexico University President Joseph Shepard and New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is scheduled for January — one year after the AG first filed suit against Shepard and university regents for allegedly engaging in a pattern of “greed, self-dealing, and arrogance.”
The mediation talks have the potential to bring an end to the first of several state lawsuits and investigations concerning Shepard, his use of taxpayer dollars and the former regents’ decision to award him nearly $2 million in severance.
“My goal is to get us into a mediation where we can kind of put this situation in the rearview mirror,” John Wertheim, vice chair of the WNMU Board of Regents, told Source NM Monday.
How it began
In late 2023, news reports detailed how Shepard and other university leaders used taxpayer dollars at home and abroad. In New Mexico, Shepard spent nearly $28,000 of university money on furniture from Seret and Sons, a downtown Santa Fe icon, to furnish his on-campus home. Internationally, he and others lodged at upscale resorts in the name of courting international students. At the time, though, WNMU only had 64 international students, more than one-third of which hailed from Mexico.
The New Mexico Higher Education Department and Office of the State Auditor quickly informed Shepard they were opening investigations of their own. In November of 2024, the state auditor released a report that detailed more than $360,000 of “wasteful” and “improper” spending, including on a trip to a Ritz-Carlton resort in Palm Springs, California.
Shepard resigns
A month later, Shepard announced his resignation. At a public meeting, university regents voted to give him a $1.9 million severance payment and a contract to teach business ethics. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham subsequently called on the regents to resign over their “tone-deaf decision to approve a $1.9 million severance package” and their “appalling disconnect from the needs of our state.”
Then, in January, Torrez sued Shepard and the regents in a bid to claw back the severance payment and nullify the teaching contract. Newly appointed regents have since voted to axe that deal and at the time said they hoped it would spark settlement talks.
Much of the litigation and lawmaking surrounding Shepard focused on events that the news media unearthed. But in June, the New Mexico State Ethics Commission sued Shepard following an investigation of its own. The lawsuit accused him of misappropriating “at least” $177,000 meant for an ADA-compliant ramp and walkway and instead spending it to construct a patio near his on-campus house that he later used to host events related to his daughter’s wedding.
Shepard has denied any wrongdoing in each case. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Shepard fights back with new attorneys
When state agencies took action against Shepard, he hired Santa Fe-based lawyer John Anderson, who served as U.S. attorney for New Mexico under the first Trump administration, to defend him. When he decided to file his own lawsuit, though, court filings listed the names of different attorneys.
On Oct. 30, he sued the university as well as several current and former state officials — including Siah Correa Hemphill, a Democrat who formerly represented Silver City in the state Senate; State Auditor Joseph Maestas; Sen. George Muñoz (D-Gallup), who leads the Senate Finance Committee and stood by Torrez during the reform announcement; Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart (D-Albuquerque); and regents Vice Chair John Wertheim, a lawyer who has worked as an adviser to several New Mexico governors. A lawyer representing the defendants has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, citing “legislative immunity” for the current and former lawmakers.
Shepard is represented in his suit by A. Blair Dunn — an Albuquerque-based lawyer who unsuccessfully ran for state attorney general as a Libertarian in the 2018 election — and Jared Vander Dussen — who lost the 2020 Republican primary for New Mexico’s first congressional district, which ultimately went to Deb Haaland.
The suit alleges that state lawmakers in 2022 agreed to send $500,000 to WNMU with the understanding that the university would then give it to a struggling charter school on its campus.
It alleges that lawmakers acted inappropriately in the following legislative session by passing a bill that gave the funding directly to WNMU but did not direct university officials to pass it along to the charter school as they had previously agreed. Since those directions were absent, the suit says Shepard refused to transfer the funds.
He alleges that when he spoke out about it, lawmakers coordinated a “smear campaign” against him.
Dunn in an email to Source NM would not comment on the case.
Editor’s note: The new lawsuit discussed in this story also criticizes prior reporting by Source senior reporter Joshua Bowling.
