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.
Gov. Bill Richardson announced Friday that the New Mexico Film Museum will suspend operations effective June 30 as a budget saving measure. The move will save about $177,000 per year, the governor’s office said, mostly through savings on the salaries of the museum’s two employees.
Director Sharon Maloof is retiring at the end of May, the governor’s office said Friday.
Maloof, a political appointee, had come under fire for being the most highly paid museum director in the state—for a museum that did not have a building or other employees. The museum’s only other employee is a part-timer whose contract is up on June 30, 2010, the governor’s office said.
“While the Museum has hosted a number of screenings and educational events it is imperative that we concentrate our resources on the core mission of developing our film production industry, including supporting the local independent film making community,” Richardson said in a press release issued by his office.
KRQE investigative reporter Larry Barker covered Maloof’s job in a February story about Gov. Richardson’s pledge to cut jobs:
The film museum is perhaps New Mexico’s most unusual cultural property. It’s not in the phone book, and there are no exhibits, no visitors and no staff. In fact, there’s no museum.
What they do have, however, is an executive director. Last year, the governor put Maloof in charge of a staff of none at a nonexistent museum paying her $88,000 a year. Maloof became the highest-paid museum director in the state system administered by Cultural Affairs Secretary Stuart Ashman, a member of Richardson’s cabinet.
Yet Ashman was not involved in establishing Maloof’s salary.
“That’s set by the (human-resources) director in the governor’s office,” he told News 13.
So why would legislators fund a museum director’s job for a nonexistent museum? Well, they didn’t.
The Legislature decided not to fund the position, but the executive branch decided to do it anyway.
“That’s right,” Ashman said.
And that money shuffle doesn’t sit well with the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
“The resources that are being used by the Office of Cultural Affairs need to be dedicated to the museums,” Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, said. “They don’t need to be dedicated to this unauthorized position that absolutely has no facility.”
Last month Ashman cut Maloof’s salary to $55,000.
