Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Lump Sums etc.

In recent days The Albuquerque Journal has broken two stories about Republican gubernatorial candidate Susana Martinez's District Attorney's in Las Cruces.

First there was the article that Martinez's office had bought more than $60,000 from one of her deputy DAs, Janetta Hicks (now DA in Chavez, Lea and Eddy counties.) This was done without bidding and without a formal contract.

Then there was one about Martinez awarding employees thousands of dollars in extra pay, much of which in lump-sum payments, in recent years.

In Wednesday's New Mexican, I tie these threads together. It turns out that one of recipients of the lump-sum "out-of-cycle salary increases" was Janetta Hicks. She got a total of nearly $24,000 in two lump-sum payments.

Martinez campaign manager Ryan Cangiolosi defended the salary increases for Hicks and the others saying Martinez's staff earned the money because of increased caseloads and responsibilities.

Cangiolosi also noted that none of Martinez's prosecutors earned as much as a $71,000-a-year "scheduler" in Denish's office, which was noted a couple of months of in the New Mexico Watchdog blog.