Gov. Bill Richardson’s brother-in-law by marriage scored a high-paying state government job late last year, the New Mexico Independent is reporting.
Bill Walsh beat out four other finalists to become deputy director of the New Mexico Retiree Health Care Authority, a job that pays him $85,000 per year, the article by Trip Jennings states. Walsh is married to a sister of First Lady Barbara Richardson. He’s an exempt employee who works at the pleasure of Richardson.
The agency’s executive director, Wayne Propst, said the agency went through a competitive hiring process before selecting Walsh for the job in November. He said he was not pressured to hire Walsh.
“For a variety of reasons we eliminated the other candidates. He’s doing a good job,” the Independent quoted Propst as saying. “He does have a right to make a living.”
The article states that the other official involved in hiring Walsh, Retiree Health Care Authority Board Chairman Alfredo Santistevan, also said he wasn’t pressured to make the hire.
It’s the second time Walsh has worked somewhere that had a connection to Richardson, the Independent reported. He worked at the scandal-plagued Peregrine Systems Inc., a software company, from 2000 to 2002. Richardson was on the company’s board of directors from February 2001 to June 2002.
The company was involved in a fraud scandal around that time, and another Richardson brother-in-law, former Peregrine CEO Stephen Parker Gardner, is serving an eight-year sentence in federal prison for his role in defrauding investors.
Jennings’ article doesn’t directly tie Walsh to that scandal and points out that Walsh was apparently highly qualified for the job he now holds. Read the article by clicking here.
Meanwhile, the governor refused to answer today when asked whether he or anyone in his office knew that Walsh had applied for the job, Jennings reports in a separate blog posting. Instead of answering, the governor “threw up his hands and remained silent as he exited a press conference held in his Cabinet room at the Capitol.” The governor did the same thing in response to a question from Jennings last week.