{"id":10010,"date":"2009-12-04T16:42:45","date_gmt":"2009-12-04T23:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=10010"},"modified":"2009-12-04T16:42:45","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T23:42:45","slug":"senator-questions-hirings-at-health-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/12\/senator-questions-hirings-at-health-department\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator questions hirings at health department"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sue

Sue Wilson Beffort<\/p><\/div>\n

A day after the governor’s office announced the layoffs of 59 political appointees<\/a>, a Republican senator is asking questions about “emergency hires” at the state Health Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort<\/a>,\u00a0R-Sandia Park, is questioning the DOH’s hiring of 90 employees, some of whom she claims are family members of senior department employees, at the same time the governor’s administration has a hiring freeze and the state faces a massive budget deficit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magnitude of hires — after the freeze — of unqualified people who are fast-tracked into training for financial positions is problematic and is creating morale issues,\u201d Beffort said at the Legislative Finance Committee meeting in Santa Fe today.<\/p>\n

The senator said she’s been told that some of the new hires are being trained for permanent, higher-level positions ahead of other employees at the department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is dissatisfaction among current, qualified employees who have been waiting for that training so they can improve their careers — instead, these new hires who were brought into the Department of Health after the hiring freeze are receiving it,\u201d Beffort said.<\/p>\n

DOH spokeswoman Deborah Busemeyer told NMPolitics.net the new hires are for “critical positions” that are excempted from the hiring freeze, and most are helping at H1N1 clinics.<\/p>\n

“All of our hires have been approved by the State Personnel Office as being critical positions,” Busemeyer said.<\/p>\n

Busemeyer said she was not aware of the nepotism charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A day after the governor’s office announced the layoffs of 59 political appointees, a Republican senator is asking questions about “emergency hires” at the state Health Department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-10010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-roundhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}