The state has released the details of how it plans to pay two of its new secretaries and a deputy secretary with the help of state universities.
Higher Education Secretary Reed Dasenbrock will be paid a total of $257,250 – the same amount he was paid as provost at the University of New Mexico, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The university will pay almost $100,000 of the cost for the higher education department.
UNM will also pay $60,000 of the $175,000 annual salary for new Health Secretary Alfredo Vigil, the tribune reported.
And New Mexico State University will pay the entire $220,000 salary for Deputy Higher Education Secretary Bill Flores, who left his job as the school’s provost and executive vice president earlier this year to take the state job.
By comparison, Gov. Bill Richardson makes $110,000 annually. Dasenbrock and Flores are being paid about $100,000 more than their predecessors, and Vigil is being paid $60,000 more.
While the other two will be considered full-time employees of the state agencies, Flores remains on staff at NMSU as a “special assistant” to the executive assistant and provost, and his duties in that capacity include dealing with the higher education department.
Basically,
NMSU is currently in an active search for a new provost.
The situations are unusual, to say the least. In fact, Dasenbrock technically had to be fired from his job at UNM in order to qualify for a yearlong sabbatical at his current salary of $257,000 that was stipulated in his contract, the Journal reported in a second article. Instead of the sabbatical, UNM will chip in the money to help pay him in his new job.
UNM will actually pay Dasenbrock’s entire salary, and the state will reimburse the school for its portion.
Vigil, for UNM’s part of his salary, has to become a faculty member at UNM’s medical school.
Naturally, many lawmakers are concerned about potential conflicts. Who do you represent when, say, NMSU pays your salary and you have to decide whether to recommend housing a certain program at NMSU or New Mexico Tech? What would you do if the NMSU president, or, say, the president’s assistant, who’s also the niece of a powerful state senator, came to you and asked you to recommend NMSU?
“I think there’s a wealth of conflicts of interest there,” Sen. Tim Jennings, D-Roswell and co-chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told the Journal. “The way the system is set up, there are systems of checks and balances. When the checks and balances go away, then what do we do?”
“There’s no question that, in order to attract qualified people, you have to pony up,” Sen. Kent Cravens, R-Albuquerque, told the Journal. “But putting it in a situation where one institution might have a political advantage over another seems like a stretch. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it.”