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By Daniel J. Chacón, Santa Fe New Mexican
State agencies continue to struggle to fill vacancies.
But that isn’t stopping them from asking for more positions.
“On top of the existing 19.4% vacancy rate statewide, we’re seeing agencies asking for another about 1,600 positions,” Micaela Fischer, deputy director of the Legislative Finance Committee, told lawmakers Tuesday.
“They’re asking for an additional $157.4 million to help fund those positions and also sometimes there’s a little extra on top to give increases to existing positions,” she said during a presentation on employee compensation and vacancies.
Fischer noted the Legislative Finance Committee received a $1.2 million appropriation last year to conduct a “larger look” at state personnel and compensation, and the classification system.
“This hasn’t been done in New Mexico since about 2000,” she said, adding a request for proposals was issued over the summer.
“It’ll be wrapped up by May, and we’ll have some hopefully good recommendations coming out of that process to the Legislature for next session,” she said.
Wayne Propst, secretary of the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration, said he’s managed four state agencies during his nearly 20 years in state government.
“This is the toughest environment I’ve ever faced in terms of both recruiting and retaining good employees,” he said. “Barely a week goes by where I don’t hear of a talented employee who is leaving the state and virtually every time I ask where they’re going, the answer is Los Alamos.
“It’s just really, really tough to recruit and retain good employees,” he added, “but I don’t know of a single Cabinet secretary who isn’t doing everything they can … to fill the positions that we have. Nobody wants to have a 20% or 15% vacancy rate.”
Sen. George Muñoz, a Gallup Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said state agencies often blame the State Personnel Office for slowing down the hiring process and questioned whether agencies should handle their own human resources.
“I may be the bearer of bad news,” he said, “but somewhere today, I heard … ‘Should we just turn this over to agencies and give them the staff and get rid of SPO?’ I don’t know if we need SPO anymore because SPO seems to be the hangup in agencies.”