Fill in the Blank: “____ has worked for and with every Governor since Gov. Jerry Apodaca,” the press release reads.

Ready for the answer? Dorothy “Duffy” Rodriguez, a former deputy secretary at the Department of Health who earlier this year was at the center of two whistleblowers’ allegations of nepotism and fraud. (Read SFR’s coverage here.) So far, neither allegation has been proven—but when Rodriguez left the DOH in April, many of the comments on SFReeper.com were euphoric.

“Duffy…was a corrupt bully who was feared by all in the agency,” one commenter wrote. Another described the news as “too good to be true!”

But Rodriguez has a brand new job: Secretary of the Taxation and Revenue Department, where she’ll replace Rick Homans—who in turn will take over from Steven Landeene as director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, according to a press release from the Governor’s office. And the wheel turns.

So much for oversight: A federal audit of alleged fraud and shoddy accounting practices at the New Mexico Department of Health—scheduled to be completed next month—has been postponed, SFR learned today.

Last week, SFR reported on a personnel shake-up at the DOH. Those small changes, along with an impending US Department of Agriculture audit, were rare bright spots in a department plagued with allegations of fraud, nepotism and favoritism. (For prior coverage, read SFR’s Jan. 13 cover story.)

But Patricia Mancha, a spokeswoman for the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, told SFR today that “the audit has been postponed until likely mid-July, and it will not be completed until possibly the end of August.”

Contrary to a rumor circulating in some parts of Santa Fe, Mancha says the audit wasn’t postponed because the state requested more time. “That would not be something we would comply with,” Mancha says. Nothing like a federal agency flexing its authoritative muscle…a few months late.

Alfredo Vigil, DOH Secretary

State employees can work on New Year’s Eve, according to a press release just in from the Governor’s office; the Dec. 31 furlough day will be shifted to Friday, March 5, 2010. The furloughs, which apply to 17,000 state employees, “will save another $8.1 million – on top of the $8.3 million that will be saved by the elimination of several state exempt positions,” the release states.

The 4,100 employees exempt from furloughs include direct patient care in hospitals and health facilities—and while I’m not saying hospitals work better without receptionists, another exciting chapter of the DOH hiring-during-hiring-freeze story has unfolded.

Last week, I posted a legislative complaint sent to Gary Chabot, an analyst with the Legislative Finance Committee, alleging practices of nepotism and the moving of DOH funds “in a questionable manner.” Today, Chabot sent along DOH Secretary Alfredo Vigil’s response, sent to Vigil on Wednesday, Nov 25—one day after Chabot alerted Vigil to the complaint. (The e-mail’s after the jump.) Continue reading »

State Senator Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Bernalillo

Senator Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Bernalillo, is on the fiscal warpath, and she wants the New Mexico Department of Health to own up to nepotist practices in hiring—during a hiring freeze.

The Department of Health, Beffort says, hired approximately 91 new employees after Gov. Richardson declared a hiring freeze. It’s not the first time—at least 62 people were hired during the 2008 hiring freeze—but this time, Beffort’s righteously mad.

“I have been called by people in the Health Department that are demoralized by the nepotism that has been going on in hiring non-emergency people,” Beffort says. “After the hiring freeze, the Health Department hired, I think, 91 people. They said they were all critical people, so I backed down.”

She’s done backing down. Continue reading »

For the second time, the Santa Fe Institute for Natural Medicine is running low on cannabis, proving once again that there is no way for a single non-profit producer to meet the statewide medicinal demand.

This time, however, SFINM says the Department of Health is doing something about it.

“The Department of Health is aware of this urgent situation and is working to issue a second producer license,” SFINM’s site tells its clients.

SFR received a screen capture of SFINM’s password-protected site from an anonymous client late Thursday evening. We have not yet received confirmation of this information from the health department. (Update, Oct 2: Acting program coordinator is out until Oct 6, so we probably won’t see movement *that* soon.)

In August, SFINM was completely out of stock and told clients it would resume distribution (with a new strain, “Big Buddha’s Cheese,” no less) in October. Now October’s here and some Santa Fe patients will wait until November.

Citing “overwhelming demand,” SFINM has stopped accepting orders and canceled most of its October delivery schedule:

The Albuquerque delivery scheduled for October 17 has been pushed back to October 31.

The Santa Fe delivery scheduled for October 24 has been pushed back to November 7.

The Alamogordo delivery also scheduled for October 24 is “expected” to arrive on schedule.

Here’s SFINM’s big caveat and finger-point: “Unfortunately there may be many times that all items are out of stock. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but the law limits the amount we can produce.”

In 2007, the New Mexico Legislature passed a law allowing the DOH to set up a medical cannabis program. For the dispensary aspect, DOH decided to go with a non-profit licensing system, limiting each producer to 95 plants.

So far, the DOH has only approved one producer of the 21 producer applications it has received. There are more than 540 card-carrying medical cannabis patients in New Mexico, only a fraction of which are permitted to grow for themselves.