Former Española city manager Gus Cordova has accepted employment with a private firm to which he directed city business as one of his final acts in office.
Cordova’s name now appears with the title “senior vice president” on recruitment advertisements from the Mercer Group, a government head-hunting firm that Cordova had the city contract with in June, for $10,000, to find his replacement. A search letter for Alamagordo’s city manager, featuring Cordova’s signature and business card, arrived in the city’s own mailbox last week.
Cordova did not return calls seeking comment. Mercer Group President James Mercer said after Cordova had left Española at the end of June, he mentioned an interest in entering the consulting business. Mercer suggested he join the Group.
“I try to make absolutely certain that there’s not either a perception or reality of conflict of interest,” Mercer said. “In Gus’s case, he had already severed his relationship with the city of Española or else I wouldn’t have talked to him.”
Nonetheless, his new job riled at least one of Cordova’s former foes on the City Council.
“There’s nothing to say that Gus wasn’t completely doing his job, but it leaves you with the feeling that perhaps he did have a vested interest, and if he hadn’t, maybe your money would have gotten spent differently,” Councilor Danielle Duran said.
Cordova signed the $10,000 contract with the Mercer Group in June after he’d already tendered his resignation. The decision immediately came under fire, partly because the Council hadn’t been involved and partly because the search failed to produce an acceptable candidate. The city eventually rejected all of the Group’s recommended managers. Mayor Joseph Maestas promoted City Clerk Veronica Albin to acting city manager, a position she still holds.
Maestas said Monday that the search is no longer active. Albin was never hired for the job outright because she didn’t apply for it and doesn’t meet the minimum qualifications — namely, a bachelor’s degree and at least seven years of experience. But several councilors have praised her performance and even Maestas, who initially resisted the idea of retaining Albin as city manager, said there’s no immediate plans to make a change.
“We need some stability here in City Hall,” Maestas said.
New Mexico Municipal League President William Fulginiti said state government has guidelines prohibiting ex-employees from turning around and doing business with their agency for one year, but there are no such guidelines for municipalities.
“I don’t think there’s anything unethical about what Gus is doing,” Fulginiti said. “Other people who have been city managers in the past have been hired by search firms like that because of their contacts. I think it makes sense.”
Mercer said another of his vice presidents, Bill Tallman, retired from the city of Santa Fe just before coming to the Group.
As for that senior vice president title, Mercer said he gives nearly all of his 32 professionals that title. A high title is necessary for business development, he said.
“We don’t pay them a lot of money, so titles are easy,” Mercer said. “It’s kind of like a bank. Everybody in the bank is a vice president.”
Duran said Cordova was also hired recently by the Regional Development Corporation, after serving on a selection panel that awarded them a $250,000 Los Alamos County contract in 2007. She called the news of his newest gig “incredible.”
SUBHED
The city’s Mercer Group contract was unpopular from the start — for one, the Council loudly complained that they’d been left out of the loop when Maestas and Cordova chose to contract with the company.
“It was done and we found out about it after they had already been hired,” Mayor Pro Tem Alice Lucero said.
It was also clear in the proposal that Cordova, at the time an unpopular figure in City Hall, was a friend of the Group. Cordova was given a central role in the company’s recruitment proposal, and he was listed as a reference.
“We have conducted search work for Gus Cordova when he was Town Manager of Taos and he can testify to the quality of our work,” the proposal states.
Cordova’s involvement was part of the problem, according to Lucero.
“There was something the mayor said at one time, something like ‘Gus would be involved,’ and I remember some of us feeling like we didn’t want Gus involved,” Lucero said. “He’d just left and we didn’t think he’d be objective.”
The one person who collaborated on the deal was the mayor, Cordova’s last remaining ally on the Council. Maestas said he doesn’t see any conflicts in Cordova’s new position, and he stands by the decision to hire the Group. Hiring a firm helped the city do background checks on the candidates, Maestas said. He said his administration was criticized by the SUN for failing to do a background check on its first managerial hire, Chris Rainwater.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake twice,” Maestas said.
Maestas said Cordova approached the Mercer Group and recommended their services to the city.
“He said they were highly recommended, he said the price he negotiated was lower than the typical price and we needed to expedite,” Maestas said.
In its proposal, the Group wrote that it was reducing its normal fee, which would typically be $16,500 with up to $8,000 authorized for additional expenses.
“We will conduct this partial search process for the City of Espanola, with the assistance of Gus Cordova, for a total cost of $10,000,” the proposal states.
Maestas said he checked with the Municipal League and was told the Mercer Group had a solid reputation.
Fulginiti said when municipalities are interested in a nationwide search, his organization does recommend looking at firms like Mercer. There are a few such firms in his file, and Mercer has the largest presence in New Mexico of any national firm, Fulginiti said.
But Fulginiti said the League will first ask what kind of search a city is interested in — perhaps they want to set up an in-house search, he said.
Duran said whether the candidates were local or national, the city could have saved $10,000 by relying on the Council’s own resources and contacts.
“I think it would have been more effective this time around if we had talked about what kind of manager we wanted and said, ‘Okay, we’re all in charge of going out and finding at least one candidate,’” Duran said. “That has problems as well, but it doesn’t have the same issues of spending $10,000 on a company that frankly knows as much as we do.”
Lucero said she wasn’t pleased with the candidates produced by the Group, and she believes that might have been different had the job been advertised locally.
“I don’t think we need to hire a company to do our advertising,” Lucero said. “It seemed like they were being very selective.”
Maestas said he wanted to hire from the Group’s pool of candidates, but the Council simply couldn’t come to an agreement.
During his 18-month tenure as city manager, Cordova earned $90,000 per year. He announced his resignation effective May 30, but then hashed out an interim agreement with the mayor which provided him $865 per week along with partial retirement benefits and full health benefits through the end of June. In return, he agreed to work two days a week on outstanding issues.
At the time, Cordova told the SUN he was not actively seeking employment but if he did find a job, the interim agreement would come to an end.