Silver City residents Carolyn and Josh White recently began putting up signs calling for the ouster of Joseph Shepard, president of Western New Mexico University. The Whites are critical of public expenditures by Shepard and his wife, Western First Lady Valerie Plame. The couples also were adversaries in litigation for ownership of the house where this sign stands. The Whites prevailed. Photo by Milan Simonich/The New Mexican
By MILAN SIMONICH
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SILVER CITY — Joseph Shepard, president of Western New Mexico University, says he has a crack staff that checks him if he inadvertently tries to make an improper public expenditure.
Western’s gatekeepers somehow missed the mark on Shepard’s wife, former CIA officer and author Valerie Plame.
She is not an employee of the university, but Shepard calls Plame Western’s first lady. State records show Plame for years has bought items with a state purchasing card.
Patricia Trujillo, acting Cabinet secretary of the state Higher Education Department, wrote a wide-ranging letter to Shepard that criticized Plame’s purchases.
“As a non-state employee, the president’s spouse should not be issued nor authorized to use a state procurement card,” Trujillo wrote.
Shepard in a lengthy briefing last week to his board of regents did not mention Plame’s use of the care. Rather, Shepard said, mistakes can occur.
“I know there’s a probability that things will come out that we didn’t follow a particular procedure precisely. Human error does enter into it,” Shepard told the regents.
He declined to be interviewed for this column. I also made two written requests through the university publicity office to speak with Plame. A staff member of the school said my requests were not received.
Western, a regional university with an enrollment of 3,500, has been under legislative scrutiny and a media microscope in recent weeks because of international travel expenditures by Shepard, Plame and members of the board of regents. Their trips to Greece, Spain and Zambia were first reported by Searchlight New Mexico.
Trujillo said the university’s leadership did not perform a cost-benefit analysis to justify $100,000 spent on overseas trips during the last five years. She suggested Shepard and Western’s regents consider suspending international travel until the worthiness of the program can be calculated.
Western’s regents rejected the recommendation. Shepard did not respond to the letter from the Higher Education Department, but a lawyer representing Western wrote back to assert the school’s independence.
“As you know, WNMU is a constitutionally enabled body of the State of New Mexico. As such, it is separate from state agencies and other forms of government,” stated the attorney, M. Karen Kilgore.
That position might put more heat on Shepard’s seat in the next couple of days. He is scheduled to appear before the Legislature’s budget committees to discuss his school’s financial needs.
Already he has been grilled about purchase card practices by his hometown senator, Democrat Siah Correa Hemphill. She serves on the Senate Finance Committee, a panel Shepard is to appear before on Thursday afternoon.
Could the Legislature reduce funding to Western in protest of Shepard’s overseas trips and other spending?
“I’m meeting with staff and colleagues to discuss the best approach,” Correa Hemphill wrote in an email. “I also have a meeting scheduled with the Gov tomorrow to discuss the situation with her.”
Shepard wields enormous power in Silver City, population 9,300. The university is one of the area’s major employers, along with a mine and a hospital.
Many in town are quick to praise Shepard, especially for making aesthetic improvements to the campus.
Bobbi Dodson, Western’s director of professional development, was among several people who lauded him in front of his regents.
“Thank you, President Shepard, for your unwavering commitment to this university,” Dodson said.
The opposite view came from Mark Donnell, a retired Silver City physician with an affinity for Western. He criticized Shepard and the regents.
“Several of you have been exposed as complicit in the extensive corruption that Dr. Joe Shepard has orchestrated at this university over the last five years,” Donnell said. “His use of more than $100,000 of university funds to benefit himself, his wife and several board members makes him unfit to continue to lead this university.”
Around town, a few purple yard signs, Western’s school color, assail Shepard as a self-promoter without substance.
“The Joe-Show” Must Go (and “The First Lady” too”) read the signs.
They were created by Silver City residents Carolyn and Josh White, who were in a bitter lawsuit against Plame and Shepard over the purchase of a house. The Whites prevailed, though they say Shepard used his power and connections to unfairly attempt to wrest the property from them.
“We want to make clear there are people in town who want to see him gone,” Josh White said in an interview.
Shepard is in his 13th year as president of Western. He and Plame married in October 2020, four months after she lost the Democratic primary election for Congress in Northern New Mexico.
Plame’s critics in Silver City are campaigning against her as well. Some are circulating copies of a news story about a lecture Plame gave years ago at Youngstown State University in Ohio.
She said the main lesson she learned from her 2003 outing as a covert CIA operative was the importance of holding government accountable. A good start would be Shepard taking away Plame’s state purchase card.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505.986.3080.
