By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
Deanna Archuleta resigned Tuesday from the New Mexico State Game Commission, less than two weeks after taking over as commission chair. Her departure leaves the seven-member board with only three members, not enough to muster a quorum to hold meetings.
Archuleta said Wednesday she left the commission to devote more time to her job as a principal with the Vogel Group, a Washington DC lobbying firm. She joined the firm’s government affairs practice last month from ExxonMobil, where she had worked as a lobbyist.
“The truth is I started a new job,” Archuleta told the NMWF in a telephone interview. “And to be honest, the commission is just taking more time than I expected. And with the commitments I have in my new job, I feel like I’m not serving the people of New Mexico in a way that I’d like to. So, I felt like it was best to step down.”
Before Archuleta’s work for ExxonMobil, she had worked as an advisor to the U.S. secretary of the interior and was the deputy assistant secretary for water and science under President Barack Obama.
Archuleta’s departure from the commission is only the latest in a series of departures that has kept the commission shorthanded over the most of the past four years of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s first term. The governor’s press office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Archuleta’s departure on Wednesday.
Roberta Salazar-Henry of Las Cruces resigned in October. In her resignation letter to the governor, she stated, “Although I am very proud of the trust my fellow commissioners showed in allowing me to take the lead in improving many of the Department of Game and Fish programs and services. I am very disappointed that much needed structural change did not occur during my tenure.”
Two other former commissioners, Joanna Prukop and Jeremy Vesbach, have said that Lujan Grisham forced them out because they refused to follow the governor’s orders to support a state program that purported to allow private landowners to close public waters to public access. The governor has received campaign contributions from some landowners who had received certificates from the game commission stating that rivers and streams over their property were closed.
Last March, in response to a legal challenge brought by the NMWF and other groups, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that the commission’s program of certifying public waters as closed to the public was unconstitutional.
Archuleta said she’s not aware of the Governor’s Office engaging directly on commission issues. “I have not been outreached by the Governor’s Office and told to vote for an action one way or another,” she said. “I think they’ve left that to the commissioners.”
The NMWF is supporting a bill pending in the New Mexico State Legislature that would reduce the governor’s power to remove game commissioners by specifying they could only be removed for cause in proceedings before the New Mexico Supreme Court. The bill, HB184 sponsored by Rep. Matthew McQueen, cleared its first hearing before the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Jan. 30.
“The New Mexico Wildlife Federation was instrumental in establishing our state’s game commission more than a century ago,” said Jesse Deubel, executive director of the NMWF. “What was true then is still true today: our state needs to insulate wildlife-management decisions from politics. We’ve seen game commissioners removed for standing up for the public and we’re all suffering as a result. It’s time for a change.”
Prukop said Wednesday she believes the Legislature should be more involved in vetting and confirming commissioners. Although the members of many other state boards and commissions are voted on in the New Mexico State Senate, game commissioners have not been confirmed for many years.
“To me, it gives legitimacy for those commissioners to act,” Prukop said of the confirmation process.
Archuleta said she doesn’t see the bill to reform the game commission as necessary. “ I’d like to see more engagement by the legislators in the choosing of the commissioners,” she said. “I think that would really be helpful for many, at least the confirmations to go through.”
Tirzio Lopez, commission vice chair, said Wednesday that the commission seemed to be operating well under Archuleta’s leadership. “From what I could see, legislation was going through the process and she was involved, as a chair should be, in representing stakeholders and the department. That’s what I can say so far.”
Lopez said it’s clear that more game commissioners are needed. “As you know, there are only three left, so we can’t hold a meeting,” he said. “So we will hopefully get more commissioners that are onboarded so we can serve the public and stakeholders and everybody involved.”
Lopez said he’s never received any pressure from the Governor’s Office on how to vote on commission issues. “For myself, I can say that it will be difficult to do anything now without having a quorum, and I hope by our next meeting we will have a quorum in order to pursue the stakeholders’ and state’s business and pursue what’s best for wildlife in the state.”