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A strife over paramedic staffing is testing the balance of power at the Albuquerque City Hall, which could reshape how the city responds to emergencies.
At the center of the dispute is a City Council rule requiring two paramedics on every rescue unit — a move the Keller administration says hurts emergency response and crosses into the mayor’s authority under Albuquerque’s strong-mayor charter. The fight boils down to this: where the Council’s power to protect public welfare ends and the Mayor’s control over day-to-day city operations begins.
At the June 3 Intragovernmental Conference Committee hearing, lawyers for Mayor Tim Keller said the City Council’s staffing rule makes it harder to respond to back-to-back 911 calls and stretches paramedics too thin. Council attorneys pushed back, saying the rule is about keeping people safe.
The outcome could reshape how much control lawmakers have over public safety and who gets the final say when lives are at stake. After about an hour of deliberations, the committee said it needed more time to make a decision.
How it began
The clash began March 3, when the City Council voted to change how paramedics are deployed, despite strong pushback from Mayor Tim Keller’s administration. Numerous Albuquerque firefighters filled the chambers in support. After more than two hours of debate, the council approved the resolution.
The move came after Albuquerque Fire Rescue (AFR) announced plans to shift some paramedics from ambulances to fire engines in high-demand areas, which AFR said would speed up response times. But not everyone agreed.
Firefighters and union leaders told councilors the change could hurt care and put both patients and first responders at risk. In response, Councilors Dan Lewis and Joaquin Baca introduced a resolution setting a minimum standard of two paramedics per ambulance.
“It’s about the safety of the patient,” said AFR Capt. Greg Montoya. “More importantly, it’s about our safety as well. God forbid one of my brothers and sisters goes down in a fire. We have that two-medic rescue that’s there to treat them as well.”
AFR Chief Emily Jaramillo warned against acting without input from her office, the department’s medical director or the mayor’s team. She said the resolution could lead to longer response times and add pressure to an already strained workforce.
“We are still here having the same conversation with a much busier system, with the same staffing challenges, with my paramedic workforce struggling with burnout on the rescue,” Jaramillo said. “I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t believe that this would provide a better service.”
Before passing the resolution, councilors approved an amendment from Councilor Nichole Rogers calling for the city to relaunch its paramedic training program.
“This gets to the root of the issue,” Rogers said. “We need to be able to be nimble and not have to send our firefighters to Santa Fe, for instance, to get training that we can do here.”
The arguments
Brian Nichols of the Modrall Sperling Law Firm, representing the Keller administration, says the main concern with the City Council’s resolution is the requirement to staff two paramedics on every rescue unit.
That single change — from two firefighters to two paramedics — may seem small, but it changes job qualifications, affects pay and limits how paramedics are deployed, according to Nichols.
He said “paramedic” isn’t just another word for firefighter — while all firefighters are trained as basic EMTs, only some go on to become paramedics, a distinction that’s tied to the city’s collective bargaining agreement.
The administration is pushing back on parts of the resolution that set staffing minimums and tell the fire chief to negotiate changes, saying both cross the line into the Mayor’s job of running city operations.
The fire department isn’t opposed to all of the resolution. It supported similar staffing levels in a 2016 policy because they aligned with national safety standards, said Nichols. What it opposes now is being forced to assign two paramedics to one vehicle.
Instead, the department wants to place one paramedic on a rescue and another on a fire engine. That would allow them to respond to separate calls, expand coverage across the city, and still have EMTs supporting both units.
“It’s a better service to the city,” Nichols said. “It’s better for morale and it’s better for operations in terms of responding to dispatch.”
Justin Miller, who represents the City Council, said setting staffing standards is part of the Council’s role in protecting public welfare and falls well within its authority under the city charter.
“Preserving the city council’s ability to legislate on matters of public welfare that’s squarely within the power of the Council,” Miller said.
He called the Mayor’s view—that staffing is strictly an executive duty—too narrow.
“It doesn’t recognize the history of interactions between the council and the mayor, the executive and the legislature,” Miller said. “The city council, legislating for the welfare of the people, has the power to address staffing at a policy level.”
Miller also argued the mayor had the option to veto the resolution but chose not to. Letting it become law, he said, was a conscious decision.
According to Nichols, the resolution passed 7-2. He said the veto would likely be overridden unless someone changed their mind. “I assume that’s why the mayor acted the way he did, but I don’t know,” he said.
The mayor’s office filed a lawsuit in the 2nd Judicial District Court, asking a judge to get involved, but the judge is letting the ICC finish its process first.
According to the court order, the City Council and Mayor Tim Keller asked for more time to respond to the complaint. The court gave them until June 16 or 20 days after the ICC decides, whichever comes first.
The committee
The Intragovernmental Conference Committee, created in 2009, was designed to settle power struggles between the mayor and City Council without dragging the city into court. The three-member panel aims to resolve disputes quickly and fairly.
Each side appoints one member, and those two select a third to serve as chair.
The current committee includes chair Luis Stelzner, Linda Vanzi for the council, and Bob White for the mayor. Vanzi joined in 2022, White in May 2024, and Stelzner in June 2024.
All three have considerable legal backgrounds — Stelzner co-founded the firm Stelzner Winter Warburton Flores & Dawes, Vanzi is a former district and appellate judge now with Rodey Law, and White is a former city attorney with Robles Rael & Anaya.
As a 68 year old woman living alone with working family members in the city, after reading this article I have little confidence that I would get the help I needed in an emergency. Albuquerque has so many problems.