By MILAN SIMONICH
The Santa Fe New Mexican
New Mexico’s Republican legislators enjoy lecturing everyone else about fiscal responsibility.
Listen to them long enough, and you might believe they’re committed to pinching the nickels and squeezing the dimes.
These days, the Republicans should be censuring two of their own members, state lawmakers Luis Terrazas and Gabriel Ramos.
Terrazas and Ramos in December publicly said the president and regents of Western New Mexico University should be left alone to run the institution as they saw fit. The two legislators were tired of critics who said Western’s administration wasted money on international travel and furnishings for the presidential residence.
Here’s what has happened since.
Western’s Board of Regents voted 5-0 to authorize a $1.9 million lump-sum payment to then-President Joseph Shepard in return for his resignation. The regents concluded the deal with Shepard five days before Christmas, while the campus slept.
In a brief, choreographed public meeting, the regents made sure not to mention how much Shepard’s payout cost taxpayers.
As if the $1.9 million gift weren’t bad enough, the regents also handed Shepard a full professorship in Western’s School of Business that pays him another $200,000 a year. He won’t face a crushing load when he returns from a paid sabbatical. Shepard is to teach two online classes per semester.
His teaching salary for one year is five times higher than the median household income in Silver City, where Western is based.
After all that damage was enshrined in a contract, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called on Western’s regents to resign. Four of the five quit.
Only the student regent remains. He also holds the title of board treasurer and is empowered to authorize payroll checks and to oversee other financial matters.
That doesn’t seem to be a smart system. But it’s in keeping with clubby management at Western, where about 3,500 students are enrolled.
Because the university no longer has a functioning board of regents, Western cannot hire an interim president. A spokesperson for Lujan Grisham says the governor is busy finding a new leadership team.
“We are actively working to fill the vacant seats on the Western New Mexico University Board of Regents. Interviews are scheduled to begin as early as Monday,” Lujan Grisham’s aide wrote in an email.
“The governor has already made calls to initiate the process, and we currently have nine individuals who have been recommended by leaders in higher education, community leaders, and the Legislature. These individuals are being vetted and prepared for interviews. Additionally, we have received résumés and letters of interest from about a dozen other candidates, bringing the total pool to nearly two dozen.”
Students at Western aren’t appeased. Several demonstrated on campus last week while carrying signs skewering Shepard and his former bosses.
“Such a baaaaad president,” one sign read.
“We are not Shep’s sheep,” said another.
“Let me on the board of regents so I can party!” was the message on a third.
State Attorney General Raúl Torrez continues investigating the balloon payment the regents made to Shepard. Torrez hopes to recover the money, but his chances seem minuscule.
Regents who approved the payout to Shepard were appointed by Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, and confirmed by the Senate. The fact that the regents were irresponsible, even stupid, probably won’t negate the deal they authorized.
Shepard on Jan. 2 deposited in a bank the amount of the payout after taxes — almost $1.14 million. Deducted were $623,534 in federal taxes; $108,258 in state taxes; and more than $38,000 for the Federal Insurance Contributions Act.
As for Shepard’s full professorship, he is contractually promised at least $200,000 annually for five years. Teachers in Western’s School of Business say that deal violated university rules. To be eligible for a full professorship, someone has to teach a full load of classes for more than seven years.
Western’s Faculty Senate, docile until recently, could make a case to undo Shepard’s full professorship.
But if there’s to be any real reform, it will have to originate at the state Capitol.
Legislators should move to dissolve fiefdoms like the one that bestowed undeserved money on Shepard. Instead of every university having a board of regents, there should be one panel for all research institutions and another for regional schools such Western and New Mexico Highlands University.
That change by a constitutional amendment would reduce parochialism and make it simpler to track how universities spend public money.
Two super boards of regents also would lessen the influence of hometown boosters such as state Rep. Terrazas and state Sen. Ramos. The two Republicans claimed Western was being picked on instead of compared to other schools’ expenditures.
Students carrying protest signs know better. Money that might have gone for scholarships or to recruit good teachers was handed to Shepard.
Silver City has seen its share of unfairness, including historic struggles of organized labor in the mining industry. But management might never have trampled workers and consumers the way the last batch of Western’s regents did.