Over the last couple of months, the Albuquerque Journal has focused on the top lobbyist for the University of New Mexico, who is also the son of a powerful state lawmaker. That has produced a couple of interesting articles that give some insight into the way things work in
A Feb. 10 article focused on Marc Saavedra’s $45,000 salary boost from March 2007 to February 2008. That was a 50 percent increase, from $90,000 to almost $135,000. During that same time, the average UNM employee’s salary jumped 7 percent.
The article contained a gem of a quote from UNM Executive Vice President David Harris.
“I don’t believe that,” he said when told Saavedra received the first of two raises – from $90,000 to $125,000 – in June 2007. “I don’t think he received a $35,000 increase.”
But the son of Rep. Henry “Kiki” Saavedra, D-Albuquerque and chair of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee, did receive the pay boost.
The younger Saavedra said the first and biggest raise was to bring his salary in line with that of his predecessor, who had been making just over $110,000 annually, and was also due in part to UNM’s success lobbying for funding from the Legislature. The second raise was apparently given when Saavedra took on additional supervisory duties, according to the article.
Both raises came after Saavedra’s August 2006 arrest for aggravated drunken driving, the Journal revealed in February. He was on unpaid leave and required to have an ignition interlock device to drive.
Examining the DWI
On Sunday, the Journal unveiled a second article examining Saavedra’s DWI. After he was arrested, he signed a “Last Chance Agreement” in which he agreed to not consume alcohol as long as he worked for UNM. He pleaded guilty to the DWI charge and received a deferred sentence.
But Saavedra, while agreeing to consume no alcohol, has spent at least $1,500 of UNM money on alcohol for those he was lobbying. Some of the tabs obtained by the Journal reveal the purchase of quite a bit of alcohol while listing only a few people present, but there may have been others drinking without a record of their doing it. Two dozen receipts Saavedra submitted to UNM for reimbursement weren’t itemized, so it’s not possible to know if or how much alcohol was served in those instances. And there are questions about whether some receipts were submitted for reimbursement in a timely manner.
Saavedra also, days after his arrest and while he was ordered to stay out of liquor establishments, met with some lawmakers and others at the Alley Cantina in
To top it off, one event at a
The bigger picture
There are a lot of questions about the way Saavedra does business being raised by the Journal articles. But there’s a bigger picture here. KRQE-TV in
The KRQE story includes a list of state agencies and local governments and how much they’re paying lobbyists. While much of the money UNM spends on lobbyists comes from private endowments, most governments are using taxpayer money to lobby the Legislature for more taxpayer money. The City of Las Cruces, for example, paid lobbyist Ray Davenport $52,500 in 2007, according to the KRQE database.
Of course, such investment often reaps rewards, or governments wouldn’t spend so much money doing it. But it’s important that the public know about it, and about connections like Marc Saavedra’s. He’s essentially lobbying his father, the top appropriator in the House, for funding for a public university that employs him and over which his father has a great deal of power.
Click here for the KRQE database of government agencies that employ lobbyists.