SPO Announces Thawing of Year Old Freeze. NM Agencies May Resume Hiring and Promotion Actions.
A year and four days after Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a COVID – 19 emergency order freezing hiring and other personnel actions, the State Personnel Office (SPO) announced a thawing of the order.
On April 26, 2021, SPO issued a memorandum to New Mexico Cabinet Secretaries, Agency Heads and Human Resource Managers, writing that agencies “are no longer required to secure exemption request approval from the State Personnel Office (SPO) and Department of Finance and Administration (DFA) for recruitment or personnel actions. Actions submitted to date will be reviewed by SPO and DFA as required under State Personnel Office General Memorandum 2020-002.”
The freeze issued a year ago by Governor was a reaction to the fear there would be a reduction in state revenues due to the pandemic. It was the first of two actions which impacted state employees and state agencies.
The second action came when the Governor and the Legislature eliminated a scheduled 4% pay raise for all state and school employees in June of 2020.
But the pay and promotion freeze was not evenly administered.
As first reported by The Candle in February, “While discussions were taking place to deny” state and school employees a 4% raise promised about two months earlier, the governor quietly “approved giving the people in her Roundhouse offices between $144 and $357 more per week.”
According the the new SPO memorandum, “Agencies shall resume their normal internal business processes to advertise positions through the SHARE Recruitment Module. No additional approvals are required at this time.”