But the lopsided vote belied the strong opposition presented from faculty and student representatives, as well as some state lawmakers.

Opponents in a Senate committee hearing held early Monday, and later on the Senate floor, complained that the university had become politicized during Koch’s tenure as president of UNM board of regents and that top administrators’ pay had skyrocketed compared to spending on some student-focused programs.

They also lamented the university’s 44 percent graduation rate and pointed to the falling faculty-to-student ratio at UNM. The teacher-student ratio has fallen from around 15 to 1 in 1998 to 21 to 1 in 2008.

“Through faculty senate votes [and] student association votes, the overwhelming view of those not in power … is there is a real problem [with] how much administration is spending on the most bloated senior management,” Sen. Eric Griego, D-Albuquerque, said on the floor Monday. “It’s unconscionable. We shouldn’t give anyone a pass.”

The vote on Koch’s nomination presented another front in a longstanding war between faculty and the UNM administration and its board of regents. UNM faculty overwhelmingly cast a no-confidence vote in UNM’s top leadership last February, saying the university was being run like a “political patronage machine.” The vote against Koch was 482-7.

Koch resigned as president of the UNM board of regents following the faculty vote of no confidence. But he remained on the board, meaning Monday’s vote by the Senate was to re-confirm as a regent.

The Senate’s vote followed a marathon committee hearing Monday morning in which the Senate Rules Committee recommended approving Koch’s nomination.

Among opponents’ biggest gripes was the amount of money spent on top administrators over the last few years as funding for some academic programs has languished.

The cost of administration at UNM had jumped to $8.2 million in 2008, up from $2.6 million in 2002, Dr. Tim Lowery, a UNM professor, told lawmakers sitting on the Senate Rules Committee Monday morning.

Faculty members and student representatives also told lawmakers at the committee hearing that they believed the university was placing more emphasis on sports than the university’s core educational mission. A troublesome lack of trust had grown up between faculty and the board of regents and administration.

Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said the battle over Koch’s nomination boiled down to a central tension between two “very different ways in how a university operates.”

“We’ve moved into a corporate model,” Ortiz y Pino said on the floor of the Senate, where Koch’s nomination was sent following the Rules Committee’s recommendation that he win confirmation. “The regents are the corporate board and they work with the senior management. That’s certainly a model well established in industry. It’s a new model for the university.”

But Koch had his defenders.

Regis Pecos, who works for House Speaker Ben Lujan, commended Koch for working on tribal issues.

“We have never had that access,” Pecos, a former governor of the Cochiti Pueblo, said during the Rules Committee hearing. “I have the highest respect for his integrity.”

Added Sen. President Pro Tem Tim Jennings, D-Roswell: “You can work with Mr. Koch.”

Defenders, in fact, described Koch as a man who got things done, although they admitted there had been mistakes.

For his part, Koch said what was needed at UNM was a detente between the warring factions.

“I’ve never been asked once to go before the faculty committee,” Koch said. Then he added, “There’s been no communication by either side. That’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

The vote to confirm Koch came after a year after his name was put up for re-confirmation. His name was up for confirmation during last year’s legislative session, but his confirmation hearing never was scheduled before the Senate Rules Committee during the 2009 legislative session.

The Senate also confirmed Emily Caitlyn Wisdom and Gene Gallegos as UNM regents Monday afternoon.

The collaborative, formed in 2005, aimed to make more efficient the delivery of services to the mentally ill and those struggling with substance abuse.

The state brought together all the state agencies delivering those services into the collaborative. The collaborative is invested with the authority to hire a for-profit company to manage the state’s behavioral health system.

It’s hired two companies since 2005.

“After serving for 40 years as a behavioral health professional, I think it is imperative to point out that, through the state’s contracts with the New Mexico Interagency Behavioral Purchasing Collaborative, 80 million dollars a year are going out of the state, with a significant profit margin, while services to those who really need them are less accessible,” Ortiz y Pino said in a press release.

Ortiz y Pino’s legislation comes more than a week after Gov. Bill Richardson directed the collaborative to put the state’s $1 billion contract out to bid.

The directive came seven months into the troubled tenure of Optum Health Care, which won the state’s 4-year, $1 billion behavioral health contract last year.

Optum’s performance has not lived up to state officials’ expectations, especially after it was discovered that hundreds of providers statewide had to wait up to several months to get paid for services already rendered.

The problem was Optum Health’s electronic claims management system, which the company had touted as a way to promptly pay nonprofits and others working with the mentally ill and those struggling with substance abuse. The system failed under the crush of real-world use soon after it went live July 1.

The problems left many providers cash strapped and disillusioned. The state recently reached an agreement whereby Optum would pay $1.5 million into two separate funds in lieu of a penalty.

Photo by Phoney Nickle.

This week Gov. Bill Richardson announced plans to end a policy that allows state workers to retire and then return to work, collecting both a salary and a pension. By the governor’s own count, more than 500 state workers are so-called “double dippers.”

With the state facing a potential $1 billion shortfall next year, double dippers are increasingly becoming a subject of scrutiny. And after Richardson announced five-day furloughs of state workers, that scrutiny is even more focused on those retirees who have returned to work in political jobs appointed by the governor. Those appointees are called “unclassified” or “exempt” because their salaries are not determined by the state’s official pay scale.

Take, for example, the deputy cabinet secretary for the state General Services Department. Between the $99,424 Marilyn Hill earns at GSD, and the $68,000 yearly pension she takes home from the state’s Public Employees Retirement Association (PERA), Hill makes more than $167,000 a year, state records show.

Another Richardson appointee, Jeffrey Riggs, makes $158,000, thanks to his $96,928 salary as Deputy Director of the state Educational Retirement Board (ERB) and his $61,656 yearly PERA pension, according to state records.

PERA administers pensions for thousands of public-sector employees, including those who have retired from state, county and municipal governments. The ERB pays out public-sector pensions to retirees of local and state educational systems.

Another Richardson appointee, Frances Ray, an administrative assistant at the state Department of Workforce Solutions, takes home $89,000. Her  job pays $82,000 while she gets nearly $7,900 in PERA pension each year, records show.

Unlike most state workers, retirees who return to work do not contribute to the pension system–but the state continues to pay into the system on their behalf, according to Mary Frederick, deputy executive director at PERA.

Richardson’s plan, which he wants state lawmakers to pass during the January regular session, would change current law to prohibit state agencies from hiring retirees only 90 days after they’ve quit. Instead, retirees could only be hired a year after they’ve left work with the state.

Other proposed changes would include stopping PERA retirement payouts while an individual is collecting a state paycheck. Altogether, Richardson’s office has estimated that his proposals could save $7 million every year.

But some critics point out that Richardson’s proposal targets future double dipping, not current practices. As New Mexico attempts to tame a huge budgetary shortfall this year and an even larger one projected for next year, every dollar saved now by curbing current double dipping would help, they say.

“We need to prevent state government retirees from receiving any retirement benefits, if they return to state government jobs,” state Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, who is running for lieutenant governor in 2010, said in a statement released this week. “The hundreds who are now double dipping into state funds need to choose: are they state workers or are they retirees. They can then be paid accordingly”

“At a time of growing, massive unemployment, it is immoral to have one person drawing two checks when two people could each be drawing one,” he added.

Carter Bundy, political director of American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees, Council 18, said his organization favors limiting double dipping to county and local governments as well.

“We are in favor of extending restrictions to double dipping, whether it’s at the local, county or state level,” Bundy said. AFSCME represents thousands of state, county and municipal employees.

What Hill, Riggs and Ray make stands in sharp contrast to what most New Mexicans earn. New Mexico’s median household income in 2007 was $41,509, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Household income can include income from several earners living in the same house. Median means that half the households earned more, while half earned less.

Defenders of double dipping say that not all of those who retire and then return to work are gaming the system. Many perform essential services for the state; some have essential experience not found in other potential employees.

“This whole thing is just a political scapegoating manipulation,” the state’s Natural Resources Trustee Jim Baca — himself a double-dipper — recently wrote on his blog. “It cuts a large swath without looking at the real consequences of throwing experience overboard.”

Baca is a former state land commissioner and Albuquerque mayor.

“I don’t think that employees should be able to walk out of the office one day and back in the next day as a double dipper,” Baca wrote. “That is a manipulation of the system. Fix that manipulation and keep options open for calling on expertise when necessary.”

Richardson's budget secretary, Katherine Miller, answers questions in the Senate.

SANTA FE — Three days into the special legislative session, a nearly $900 million structural deficit continues to confound Gov. Bill Richardson and the New Mexico Legislature.

Richardson and lawmakers face a challenge unseen in decades: a $200 million deficit for the budget that ended June 30 and another $650 million shortfall this budget year.

And the stress is showing.

“For each day we’re here, that’s one teacher and one teaching assistant,” state Sen. Howie Morales, D-Silver City, said, referring to the nearly $50,000 a day it costs to fund the special session. “What does that mean for a small school district? We’ve been here three days. It’s time we moved on to solutions.”

As of Monday afternoon, hopes for an imminent deal appeared dim. Richardson and top lawmakers seemed no closer to a agreeing how to close this year’s shortfall than when the session began Saturday.

House and Senate leaders plan to meet this morning to see how if their plans are close.

Meanwhile, Richardson, the state’s bigger-than-life chief executive and former presidential candidate, finds himself in a position unusual during his six-year tenure, attacked from both the political right and left.

Republicans and conservative Democrats blame him for not putting the brakes on spending leading up to the special legislative session, a charge his staff says misstates the facts. Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, are crying foul that he is opposing tax increases, and is only open to spending cuts.

“I think this is very irresponsible behavior,” Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, an Albuquerque Democrat running for lieutenant governor, said Sunday. “He doesn’t want to be the bad buy. He wants us to be the bad guys.”

Added House Minority Whip Keith Gardner, R-Roswell: “The truth is, a real executive would have already fixed this by saying I’m cutting across the board my own budget to reduce my expenditures in order to accommodate the income coming in. The reason that we are here in special session is because the executive refuses to do what his job is, which is to cut expenditures.”

A column by Las Cruces Sun-News managing editor Walter Rubel, a former state Capitol reporter, best exemplifies the mood. Copies of the column have made the rounds with state lawmakers at the Capitol.

Rubel’s column profiles a 2005 report by the states Legislative Finance Committee that he says predicted the financial mess the state now finds itself in.

Rubel wrote:

“Projected recurring revenue growth may be too low to support the estimated recurring expenditure level in [fiscal year] 09 to [fiscal year] 10,” the report said.

Days after that 2005 report, Gov. Bill Richardson dismissed any suggestion that the state should consider reigning in spending. He had big plans and an ambitious agenda, and he wasn’t going to let any Chicken Little bean counters get in the way.”

State lawmakers and staff, especially those on the Legislature’s finance committees, view the column as a bit of vindication. Certain lawmakers for years have warned that New Mexico’s revenues weren’t stable after the 2003 state income tax cuts at the same time that state spending increased. If the price of gas and oil dropped, or the national and state economy stumbled into a serious recession, they said, New Mexico would face serious problems.

As it happened, both the drop in oil and gas tax revenue as well as a deep recession occurred.

The anger at Richardson is almost palpable in the Capitol, although most state lawmakers still decline to share their feelings publicly.

But that anger was on public display in the state Senate Monday.

State senators dragged in Richardson’s budget staff for a marathon grilling, during which budget secretary Katherine Miller deflected criticisms for nearly three-and-a-half hours.

“Since November, we’ve reduced the number of state workers by 760 employees and reduced payroll by $1.3 million on a bi-weekly basis,” Miller said in response to charges that the administration had not cut expenses.

Later in the day, the governor’s office issued a statement in response to the state lawmakers’ criticisms.

“I am disturbed that some lawmakers have seriously mischaracterized the results of these important cost cutting measures,” Richardson said in the release. “The truth is, there have been real results and savings to the State of New Mexico. In just the past eleven months, we’ve cut payroll by millions while making sure services to New Mexicans are not affected.”

The release had a different number than Miller gave to state lawmakers. The governor’s statement said “the state has nearly 1,300 fewer employees than when the hiring freeze took effect on November 15, 2008.”

State lawmakers also quizzed Miller why the state had a $200 million shortfall for the budget year that ended June 30. The state hasn’t closed the books on last year because the Legislature needs to appropriate $200 million to pay all that year’s bills.

Miller told state lawmakers that it was a revenue problem. The Legislature had allotted so much in expenses for last year, but revenue didn’t keep pace with expenses. In fact, revenues dropped precipitously in the last months of the year, in April, May and June.

Miller said the administration “does not have the authority to not allot the money the Legislature has allotted.”

That answer didn’t go over well with Sen. William Payne, R-Albuquerque.

“I don’t read the statute that the governor can spend until he says I will call the Legislature in to fix this thing,” Payne said. “It’s not the Legislature‘s job to come in and clean up” after the governor.

Also catching the lawmakers’ ire was the issue of Richardson’s political hires.

Sen. John Ryan, R-Albuquerque, questioned Miller on how many individuals Richardson had appointed to political jobs at state agencies.

Ryan and Miller sparred over the number: Ryan placed the number somewhere in the mid 500s; Miller said it was around 450.

The breadth of legislative anger over the issue manifested itself when a majority of state senators signed onto legislation Ryan plans to introduce limiting the number of so-called exempt employees to 200.

Gov. Bill Richardson signed into law a bill authorizing $137 million in public bonds that will provide the developers money upfront to help pay for the infrastructure for Winrock Town Center.

“Today I am very proud to be here to sign a bill that grants Winrock a new life, one which will completely transform this area,” Richardson told a small crowd gathered at Winrock Mall for the bill-signing.

As envisionsed, the roughly 80-acre property near I-40 on Louisiana Avenue would include a 70,000-square-foot multi-screen Imax theater, a 130-room hotel, 180,000 square feet of office, retail and restaurant space, and more than 400 residential units. The project also plans for more than 6,000 parking spaces.

Developer Gary Goodman of Goodman Realty Group said the project already has lured several tenants for the project. And he hopes to break ground this fall with plans to open doors on the project at the end of 2010 or early 2011.

“That’s what we are driving for,”Goodman said Wednesday.

The bill that Richardson signed into law also clears the way for Hunt Development Group to issue $27 million in bonds in a similar fashion for the third phase of the company’s Uptown development. That third phase, called Quorum, calls for a seven-story hotel, offices for both lease and purchase, shops, residential condos and extensive parking structures on the now-vacant 7.5 acres bounded by Louisiana, Indian School and Uptown Loop NE.

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