Rebecca Vigil-Giron
After being indicted in August on 50 counts related to public corruption, former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron was allowed to keep her job with the state Department of Workforce Solutions. Now, she’s learned she will be laid of Jan. 8 along with dozens of other political appointees.
Vigil-Giron, who has been working as a constitutent liason for the department’s labor and industrial division, is one of 59 political appointees being cut by Gov. Bill Richardson, KRQE-TV reported. Reached by NMPolitics.net, Vigil-Giron declined to comment.
The layoffs are part of an effort Richardson says is expected to save the state $8.3 million a year.
At the time of Vigil-Giron’s indictment, then-Workforce Solutions Deputy Secretary Ken Ortiz stated in a news release that while “the allegations contained in the indictments are serious, they concern actions that are unrelated to (Vigil-Giron’s) work with the department.”
Vigil-Giron and others indicted — lobbyists Joseph Kupfer and Elizabeth Kupfer and contractor Armando Gutierrez — each face 50 counts including money laundering, fraud, soliciting or receiving kickbacks and tax evasion. They’re accused of bilking taxpayers out of millions of dollars between 2004 and 2006 by falsifying invoices to the secretary of state’s office.
Last week, Bruce Kohl, head of the securities division at the Regulation and Licensing Department, said he was also notified that he was being laid off after 15 years in the department. The editor of NMPolitics.net has filed an inspection of public records request with the governor’s office seeking full information about which political appointees are being laid off next month, but the governor’s office has not yet released that information.
Meanwhile, a trial date for Vigil-Giron has not been set.
St. Cyr is a contributing writer for this site and a reporter at 770KKOB.com. He can be reached at peter.stcyr@gmail.com.