{"id":4065,"date":"2008-12-12T11:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/12\/outgoing-nmsu-regent-unloads-on-richardson\/"},"modified":"2008-12-12T11:18:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T17:18:00","slug":"outgoing-nmsu-regent-unloads-on-richardson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/12\/outgoing-nmsu-regent-unloads-on-richardson\/","title":{"rendered":"Outgoing NMSU regent unloads on Richardson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the members of the New Mexico State University Board of Regents<\/a> that the governor announced he was replacing<\/a> last month is unloading on Bill Richardson<\/a> in an e-mail.<\/p>\n

Bob Gallagher claims in a recent e-mail to members of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association<\/a>, of which he is president, that Richardson informed him during a profanity-laced meeting in November that he would not reappoint him to the board. Gallagher, currently the NMSU regents\u2019 chairman, leaves the position at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo weeks ago I was summoned to the Governor\u2019s office… The 20 minute meeting was sprinkled frequently with his favorite word, half of which is \u2018mother!\u2019 I was yelled at, cursed at, and completely taken to the wood shed for my comments concerning the regulatory environment in New Mexico,\u201d Gallagher wrote to association members. \u201cHe said he was sick and tired of reading articles from \u2018all over the ____country\u2019 about how bad the business climate is in New Mexico for our industry. Based upon that he then informed me that he would not be reappointing me to the (NM State University) Board of Regents, in order to pay me back for these comments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Gallagher wrote in the e-mail that he was only revealing details about the conversation to the association because several members inquired about the possibility of him serving in the U.S. Commerce Department<\/a> now that Richardson has been nominated to be the commerce secretary.<\/p>\n

In response to the e-mail, Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Gallagher, \u201cas usual,\u201d is \u201ctailoring his version — a mostly fictional version — of a recent meeting with Gov. Richardson so that it puts him in a favorable light with his employer, the oil and gas industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality, Gallegos wrote, is \u201cstarkly different,\u201d beginning with the fact that Gallagher, not the governor, requested the meeting, because he was \u201cwaging a campaign to keep his seat\u201d on the NMSU board.<\/p>\n

Gallegos said Richardson did raise the issue during the meeting of recent comments by Gallagher about the \u201cadministration\u2019s handling of oil and gas industry regulations meant to protect the environment,\u201d but said that was \u201cunrelated to the regent issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was after that discussion — which was tense but nothing other than cordial, and certainly not profanity-laced, contrary to Gallagher\u2019s crude characterizations — that Gallagher pled for the governor to allow him to keep his seat on the Board of Regents,\u201d Gallegos said. \u201cHe even vowed to tone down his public remarks regarding oil and gas in exchange for keeping his seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guv wasn\u2019t happy with NMSU presidential search<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

But the governor, Gallegos said, informed Gallagher that, while he \u201ccarefully considered\u201d reappointing Gallagher, \u201che had decided to give somebody else an opportunity to tackle the challenges at NMSU.\u201d He also told Gallagher he was not happy with the way Gallagher had handled the NMSU presidential search process, Gallegos said.<\/p>\n

Richardson\u2019s appointments of new regents came less than a week after the regents, led by Gallagher, suspended their search for a new president<\/a> to replace Michael Martin, who left earlier this year to be chancellor at Louisiana State University\u2019s main campus in Baton Rouge. In scrapping their search process after spending some $90,000, Gallagher and others complained that a state law requiring the regents to publicly name five finalists was unfair and hampered the process. The Las Cruces Sun-News<\/a> and Albuquerque Journal<\/a> were highly critical of Gallagher\u2019s complaining about the state law he said doomed the presidential search.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor repeatedly made it clear to Gallagher that his decision was not contingent on Gallagher changing his tone, by way of rebuking Gallagher\u2019s offer to throttle back the rhetoric in exchange for retaining his regent position,\u201d Gallegos said. \u201cTo the contrary, the governor encouraged Gallagher to \u2018do what you feel you have to do\u2019 on behalf of his oil and gas clients, but that it would not change the governor\u2019s position on either responsible protections for the environment or the regent decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallagher declined last month to talk with me about his meeting with Richardson, and he did the same on Thursday in response to an inquiry about the e-mail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat e-mail is (oil and gas association) business,\u201d Gallagher said. \u201cI am not sure how it got out. It was an internal memo.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the members of the New Mexico State University Board of Regents that the governor announced he was replacing last month is unloading on Bill Richardson in an e-mail. Bob Gallagher claims in a recent e-mail to members of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, of which he is president, that Richardson informed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}