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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Vigil-Giron Back in A State Job

By Dan Boyd
Journal Capitol Bureau
       SANTA FE — Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who has a controversial legacy as a former secretary of state, has landed a government job under Bill Richardson's administration.
    Since Oct. 6, Vigil-Giron has been the constituent liaison for the Department of Workforce Solutions' Labor Relations Division. She will earn a salary of slightly more than $60,000 a year.
    Vigil Giron's duties will include analyzing draft legislation, conducting employee training for the Human Rights Bureau and dealing with constituent complaints, a department spokeswoman said Wednesday.
    Vigil-Giron, a Democrat, served three terms as New Mexico's secretary of state, from 1987 to 1990, 1999 to 2002 and from 2003 to 2006.
    The Workforce Solutions job is Vigil-Giron's second hire in state government since she left elected office in 2006.
    In February 2007, she was chosen to be the executive director of the New Mexico Film Museum in Santa Fe. She declined to take the position after a political uproar arose over her lack of qualifications for the $85,000-per-year job.
    Vigil-Giron sought the Democratic nomination for 1st Congressional District seat earlier this year, but came in second in a three-way primary election contest won by Martin Heinrich.
    Just weeks before the June primary, Vigil-Giron came under fire when a federal audit found she had authorized paying $6.3 million for a voter education campaign while New Mexico's secretary of state but didn't keep records of how more than $3 million of the money was spent.
    Her tenure as secretary of state also was marked by a 2006 incident in which 200,000 voter identification cards that were fraught with errors, and in some cases sent to dead people, were returned to her office as undeliverable.
    Vigil-Giron, an active supporter of Gov. Bill Richardson's presidential campaign, has said she intends to run for lieutenant governor in 2010.
    She could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening, and the Governor's Office did not respond to Journal questions about her employment with Workforce Solutions.