I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
For a primer in how lobbying works in Santa Fe, check out the Albuquerque Journal’s story today on a former top chief aide for Gov. Bill Richardson going to work for a company that coordinates the state’s administration of behavioral health.
The former top aide, Dave Contarino, is close to Richardson, who called Contarino his "most senior and trusted aide a couple of years ago when Contarino left as Richardson’s chief of staff to work on the governor’s re-election campaign. Richardson occasionally even calls Contarino by a pet name, George.
ValueOptions, meanwhile, is a firm that oversees the state’s $300 or so million program that administers mental health and substance abuse services to about 70,000 New Mexicans, including many low-income clients on Medicaid.
The state is going out for proposals on the program and will award a new four-year deal in December.
ValueOptions has said it will seek to renew its contract.
Executives at ValueOptions have made it a point to contribute to both the governor’s presidential campaign as well as his 2006 re-election campaign.
But now they are doing what many smart companies do when they seek — or want to keep — public contracts: they hire individuals who are close to powerful decision makers.
Why? A call to Contarino to ask him why he thought he was hired was not immediately returned to the Independent.
But here’s a stab. As anyone around politics has observed, politics is relational, meaning someone with a personal relationship to a decision maker stands a better chance at getting access than a total stranger … or an acquaintance.
It’s why the lobbying corps at the New Mexico Legislature has so many former lawmakers and legislative staff. And it’s why you read about former congressional staff lobbying their erstwhile bosses in Washington.
People trade on personal ties. It’s part of what greases the political process.
