Roundhouse Roundup: Under Richardson, State Worker's Woes Smoothed Over

Summary

---

Former Santa Fe County jail warden Lawrence Barreras, more recently a state Transportation Department supervisor, was the subject of a hard-hitting news profile this week. The department put him on paid administrative leave Monday following the publication of the two-part series.

Investigative reporter Colleen Heild of the Albuquerque Journal documented how Barreras got hired at the dawn of the Richardson administration in 2002 at the Department of Children, Youth and Families despite the fact that he had been fired in 1997 from the state Corrections Department for alleged financial wrongdoing; how he later was hired at the Transportation Department -- at the same time he was a consultant for an Albuquerque architectural firm that was part of a controversial DOT redevelopment project; and how Barreras got a 15 percent pay raise during a time of a so-called salary freeze.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Roundhouse Roundup: Under Richardson, State Worker's Woes Smoothed Over

Barreras always claimed he was fired by Corrections in 1997 because he opposed then Gov. Gary Johnson's moves to privatize prisons. The department said the firing was over alleg...

See the full content of this document

---