Cabinet secretary gets 8% pay raise
Governor’s Office says boost for environment secretary linked to extra duties during pandemic
As a member of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Cabinet, New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney is among the highest-paid employees in state government.
But Kenney has a leg up on the other Cabinet secretaries.
Kenney recently received an 8 percent raise, making him the highest-paid member of the governor’s Cabinet, according to the state’s online Sunshine Portal.
Kenney is now earning $168,480 a year, or just over $12,000 more than the other Cabinet secretaries, the majority of whom are paid $156,000 a year.
Nora Meyers Sackett, the governor’s press secretary, wrote in an email Monday that Kenney received a temporary pay increase “due to the significant increase in job duties and responsibilities caused by COVID19.”
“Over the course of the pandemic NMED has been tasked with ensuring the health and safety of workers and customers statewide, including carrying out tens of thousands of rapid responses, running the state’s wastewater surveillance testing program, and coordinating with businesses to ensure safe practices and establish mobile testing programs, all of which Secretary Kenney has coordinated and executed on top of his existing responsibilities of overseeing the department’s mission of protecting New Mexico’s water, air and land,” she wrote.
Sackett did not respond to several follow-up questions, including when the temporary pay rate increase from $75 an hour to $81 an hour went into effect, whether Kenney received back pay and why other Cabinet secretaries whose workloads also
grew as a result of the pandemic, such as Human Services Secretary David Scrase, didn’t receive more money, too.
Revelations that Kenney received a temporary pay increase come after records revealed his special assistant, Justin Garoutte, received a $32,000 raise earlier this year along with a promotion for a job the state government didn’t advertise.
The temporary salary hike also comes about three months after Kenney tweeted a gif of actor Tom Cruise from the film Jerry Maguire shouting, “Show me the money!”
New Mexico Environment Department “employees can’t sustain current workloads within our existing budget,” Kenney tweeted in February during the 60-day legislative session. “Adding unfunded mandates from the @NMLegislature will break #NMED.”
Maddy Hayden, a department spokeswoman, referred inquiries about Kenney’s temporary pay increase to the Governor’s Office.
Larry Behrens, a spokesman for the Western states chapter of Power the Future, a nonprofit fossil fuel advocacy group, was highly critical of Kenney’s raise.
“I can’t think of anything more pathetic than radical environmentalists handing themselves massive raises while New Mexico’s families suffer under the worst unemployment rate in 30 years,” Behrens wrote in an email.
“I guess leaders in this administration feel if you’re going to continue to attack New Mexico’s energy workers it helps to have a 5-person media relations office,” he added. “The message is clear: if you’re part of the eco-left inner circle, there’s plenty of green for you because the taxpayers are footing the bill.”