New top 2 Aggies better earn those big paychecks
New Mexico State University regents appear to have abandoned prudence and fiscal restraint when replacing outgoing Chancellor and President Garrey Carruthers.
The regents decided to hire two executives to fill the position held by the former governor. And the icing on the cake is that they voted to pay incoming Chancellor Dan Arvizu and new President John Floros a combined $950,000, much to the chagrin of the university’s faculty and the head of the state Senate Finance Committee.
Arvizu will receive a $500,000 salary, while Floros will be paid $450,000 a year.
To put that in context, Carruthers was receiving a $385,000 salary as NMSU’s chancellor and president, and new University of New Mexico President Garnett Stokes is receiving a $400,000 salary.
At NMSU, Arvizu and Floros will oversee a budget of about $800 million. By contrast, UNM President Stokes is responsible for a $3 billion budget and the state’s only medical and law schools.
The NMSU contracts also include the potential for nearly a quarter of a million dollars in incentive pay related to “growth of the student body, research portfolio and overall revenues.”
Floros’ bonus potential is up to 20 percent, or $90,000. Arvizu’s incentive pay potential is up to 30 percent, or $150,000.
NMSU regents defend the bloated compensation packages, calling them an investment in growing the student body in a financially sustainable way after many years of decline and expanding the influence and research contributions of NMSU.
It’s true that NMSU’s enrollment has declined by 22 percent in the past six years. But will throwing buckets of money at two executives reverse that trend? NMSU likely has fewer students, in part, because of our state’s changing demographics and the fact there are fewer New Mexico high school graduates for universities to compete for these days.
It’s also worth noting the NMSU Board of Regents’ decision to hire these high-priced executives comes less than two years after NMSU was taking drastic measures to cut millions from its budget due to revenue shortfalls.
“When you approach a million dollars in payroll, new payroll ... coming on the heels of really austere times for the state of New Mexico, it sort of surprises me,” Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming and Finance chairman, told the Journal. “The regents seem to forget where we are financially.”
The situation is made all the more bizarre by the fact Gov. Susana Martinez, who appoints regents, has spent years reining in the cost of state government, asking agencies to tighten their belts and do more with less.
That said, it appears this is a done deal. The ball is in Arvizu and Floros’ court to prove skeptics wrong by growing enrollment, the research portfolio and overall university revenues — by significant margins. For the sake of NMSU and our state, we’re rooting for them to succeed.
But we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that regents are taking quite a gamble here. If Arvizu and Floros fail to live up to the hype, it will be yet another example of taxpayers getting taken for an expensive ride.