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.
Lawmakers hit New Mexico’s secretary of the Department of Transportation, Gary Giron, with questions Wednesday about a controversial piece of legislation that, in their opinion, would “politicize” the agency’s six district engineers.
The state district engineers act as managers of their respective areas, making sure that, among other things, construction work is done on time, efficiently and on budget.
Currently, the six engineers are part of the state’s classified system. But the legislation, HB794 (pdf), sponsored by House Speaker Ben Lujan, D-Santa Fe, would remove them from that system and make them exempt employees who are appointed by the governor.
State workers in the classified system are somewhat protected from arbitrary termination and the everyday politics of state government.
Exempt employees, on the other hand, are political appointments. The district engineers, should they become exempt, would conceivably find that, like all other political appointments, their jobs are subject to the whims of the state’s chief executive.
That possibility raised a few red flags among state lawmakers, not the least because Gov. Bill Richardson has earned some unwanted publicity for the number of exempt positions he’s created during his tenure.
One of those concerned lawmakers was Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, who asked Giron about the legislation during Giron’s confirmation hearing before Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday morning.
“District engineers function at a high level of independence and influence policy decisions as part of their jobs,” Giron said to Ingle. “They do meet the requirements for governor-exempt policy-making position. I understand the issue about compromising district engineers or the quality of their decisions. It is my commitment… that they will be held to high standards of performance even with the new law if it were to pass. Their decisions will be expected to be ethical and well-reasoned.”
Ingle listened patiently, but Giron’s answer obviously didn’t satisfy him.
“We’d have a complete change of engineers in every district every time we changed the governor or changed the secretary,” Ingle responded. “I’m afraid these things are going to get really political. I think that’s really dangerous for our highway department.”
Ingle said he feared that a district engineer who challenged a politically connected road contractor for doing bad work in his district would wind up “getting his butt fired.”
“I’m not saying that’s what you are going to do, or allow to happen. It will happen if this bill passes,” Ingle said.
Sen. Dianna Duran, R-Tularosa, said she feared that if the legislation were to pass it would make it harder for lawmakers to get local help to solve local road and transportation problems.
“I would hate for it to be as it is … with other agencies where you have to go to the secretary and wait months for any response,” Duran said. “I think having those district engineers are critical to those of us who have needs around the state. I’d rather deal with the local engineers.”
Republicans weren’t the only ones to express some trepidation.
“I think there’s some concern,” said Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell.
