A special liaison? Not when money is tight
Even when the budget is tight, it appears that the city of Santa Fe can find new ways to spend money, especially when it comes to paying for additional positions. Take, for example, the discovery that despite laying off dozens off temporary workers, Santa Fe found enough money to hire a tribal liaison.
The job is a bit fuzzy — building relationships with surrounding pueblos and tribes — but certainly nothing that hasn’t been tried before, at least at the state level. In the Department of Tourism, there’s a staffer dedicated to coordinating efforts with the state’s 22 tribes and pueblos. It’s part of a focus on Native tourism, a key economic development activity for tribes all across the state. Other state departments also have individuals charged with working with tribes.
In Santa Fe, we learned through Daniel J. Chacón’s reporting that Rima Krisst, a noted photographer and public relations professional, wrote to Mayor Javier Gonzales shortly after his election suggesting the position. He liked the idea, and eventually, the job was advertised and then reposted. Only one person applied the first time. In the second go-round, four people answered the application, including Krisst. She won a $28,000 contract in May, calling for her to work with Natives “for the purpose of promoting a healthy and coordinated relationship for the benefit of tourism in Santa Fe and the corresponding Native American communities.”
It’s clear that the request for proposals process was reopened after Krisst wrote the mayor via personal email again in October asking about the job. Whether that reposting really was simply to widen the applicant pool, we won’t ever know. Tourism Santa Fe executive director Randy Randall himself said, “taken out of context, it could be misunderstood,” referring to his email to the mayor in which Randall discussed reopening the request for proposals after Gonzales asked Randall to interview Krisst. “But, no, there was no effort to have anyone selected in particular.”
No effort, but the person who first suggested the job, talked to the mayor directly (and recently, took prom photos of the mayor’s daughter) ended up in the position. It’s true that Krisst spends a great deal of time photographing area pueblos, earning “official” photographer status. She has extensive contacts among tribal members, despite not being Native herself. Our questions are less about her qualifications than about the process. It’s subjective whether the other applicants, some of whom are Native and with local experience in tourism, are more qualified.
That Krisst isn’t actually a tribal member seems to be a positive in Randall’s eyes, a strange bit of reasoning. He told the newspaper that with a non-Indian, there could be less chance of favoritism. Seriously? The idea being that a San Ildefonso Pueblo or Tesuque tribal member would naturally favor his or her home to the detriment of other tribes? It’s insulting to suggest that only a non-Native could be fair. We know that Randall knows better.
For city officials, it’s important to remember that not every good idea can be funded. In tight budget times, tapping into the state’s existing Native tourism efforts might be more fiscally responsible. Santa Fe doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Until more money pours in, the $28,000 could be spent in other ways, perhaps keeping downtown clean or removing graffiti so that the tourists we do attract see a sparkling city. As one canny letter writer put it, Santa Fe has done without a tribal liaison for 400 years. Surely, in these days of tight budgets, we could continue on our merry way for a few more years.