Cabinet secretary's management style: Off with their heads!
Editor's note: This column was updated March 6, 2023. The column about turnover in the state Department of Cultural Affairs, Sherry Robinson wrote incorrectly that the director of the International Museum of Folk Art was among a string of terminations in the department. This director resigned to take another position. Robinson regrets the error.
Confirmation hearings are usually placid events with sponsors, supporters and the candidate all making nice. If and when Debra Garcia y Griego’s confirmation comes forward as secretary of the Department of Cultural Affairs, you can expect a different kind of proceeding.
Garcia y Griego recently fired the highly respected State Archeologist Eric Blinman, who for 17 years directed the Office of Archaeological Studies (OAS).
Within a week, a forcefully worded letter reached the governor with 120-plus signatures of his fellow professionals. Now an addendum is circulating to allow more people to sign the letter.
Blinman, said the letter, “is a man of integrity, honesty and humility. To summarily dismiss a man who has devoted 34 years of his professional career to this state is an outrage.”
The letter says the firing shows Garcia y Griego’s inability to constructively address the department’s many challenges and bureaucratic failures. Rather than seek collaborative solutions, manage and take responsibility for her department’s internal administrative functions and address shortcomings, she instead punitively looks for scapegoats.”
The “excessive turnover in senior management” in her four-year tenure has led to “instability, loss of institutional knowledge and leadership, and declining morale within the organization.”
Garcia y Griego, the former director of the City of Santa Fe Arts Commission, has canned three directors of the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, all appointed by the governor. Garcia y Griego chose two of them herself.
She’s booted the governor-appointed directors of the New Mexico History Museum, Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Museum of Natural History and Science, and the Farm and Ranch Museum.
Also on the list of rolling heads: the acting director of New Mexico Arts, deputy director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, director of marketing for the Museum of New Mexico, and the director of Policy, Legislation and Facilities Management within the Office of the Secretary.
Appointees serve at the pleasure of the governor and the DCA secretary, so they can be fired without cause. According to the letter, the firing may have been connected to late reporting of OAS financial transactions, “which contributed to a larger DCA audit finding.”
Blinman told the Albuquerque Journal he’d tried for two years to get a deputy director. The answer was no. Then he lost a finance position and took on that responsibility, so he was doing the jobs of three people. He also referred to “bullying and threats and retaliation from the secretary.” In January Blinman complained to human resources about the department’s hostile environment.
The how of Blinman’s firing is as important as the why. He was excavating beneath the Palace of the Governors when DCA summoned him to a meeting. An hour later Deputy Secretary Michelle Gallagher Roberts fired him, took his state laptop and cell phone, and banished him from the building except to retrieve personal belongings under escort.
Read more All She Wrote:
What’s so far unreported is that DCA changed the OAS’s locks so precipitously that employees couldn’t secure the building for the night. They jury-rigged a closure to the 33,000-square-foot facility, which holds most of the state’s archaeological collections.
Margie Marino, director for six years of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, told the Journal she “was given five minutes to decide if I wanted to retire or get fired.” After Garcia y Griego’s appointment in 2019, she said, directors were not able to make a decision without the secretary’s approval. Each director had years of experience but “couldn’t make a decision for what we have experience in.”
Blinman’s supporters ask the governor to withdraw the nomination, but the governor so far is standing behind Garcia y Griego.
Even if the Senate refuses to confirm her, a cabinet secretary whose only management tool is firing people remains at the helm of an important agency.
This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Cabinet secretary's management style: Off with their heads!
