Two exempt employees at the state Department of Cultural Affairs are moving into permanent classified positions, despite the hiring freeze declared late last year by the Richardson administration.

Secretary Stuart Ashman said Thursday that Lorraine Rotunno, executive assistant to the director of the New Mexico Museum of Art, has been hired as special projects manager.

Eliza Wells Smith, advertising sales manager for El Palacio, is the only applicant for a position as art director at the magazine.

The jobs were posted on bulletin boards within the department and on a state Web site accessible by DCA employees last month. In one case the posting was effectively on view for only three days.

The apparent special treatment for exempt employees, who serve at the pleasure of Gov. Bill Richardson, continues to gall classified workers.

The New Mexico History Museum has been forced to close the Palace of the Governors on a few occasions recently because of a shortage of security guards and receptionists.

Currently, three of the four museums in Santa Fe do not have a registrar, and at Museum of New Mexico Exhibitions, only three of four designer positions are filled, Paul Singdahlsen, a preparator and a union representative, pointed out.

"One down is a big deal," he said. "They're shorting our budgets right and left."

The state might have a "so-called hiring freeze," Singdahlsen added, but if you are "a friend of Bill's or Stuart's you can get a job."

Ashman said Thursday that DCA had to obtain a waiver to fill the two positions.

One selling point, he said, is that they will have a positive fiscal impact because both employees will be taking pay cuts as a result of the change and each one generates revenue for the department.

The special projects manager position is described as a liaison between the director of the Museum of Art and "all ongoing councils, programs and special projects including capital projects for the museum."

Department spokesman Doug Svetnicka said that since the Museum of Art director's position is currently vacant (Marsha Bol moved to the Museum of International Folk Art), the special projects job is deemed critical. But the museum has an acting director and might be close to choosing a new, permanent director, Singdahlsen said.

In his appeal to the State Personnel Office, Ashman argued that "If these responsibilities are not carried out, then it will have an adverse impact on the operations of the department."

The posted job description required applicants to have a bachelor's degree in business administration and nine years of management experience in business budgeting, maintaining projects and managing overall projects for a business, but authorized equivalent experience can be accepted.

As an exempt employee, Rotunno was the museum's representative for capital projects and assisted in all special events including greeting people in the lobby, according to her résumé.

From 2003 to January 2007, she was director of the Governor's Mansion, where she maintained a contingency fund, coordinated maintenance — including electrical, security, grounds maintenance, landscaping, painting and architecture, was responsible for all events and kept an inventory of gifts, among other duties.

Prior to that, she managed the Ronald N. Dubin estate, which included three residences on 8.5 acres in Santa Fe. Her job was to care for the art collection, manage vendors, maintain budgets and supervise staff. From 1995 to 2003 she owned a business that designed and produced local events.

Rotunno graduated from Carrollton High School in Michigan in 1974. Her résumé shows she has no college degree but attended wine appreciation courses in New Mexico and in Napa County, Calif.

The only other candidate was Isabel L. Durán, a capital outlay analyst and audit coordinator for the department.

Durán has a bachelor's degree in business administration from the Anderson Schools of Management at The University of New Mexico. Since 2005 she has worked for the department as a capital outlay specialist.

Durán said that although the job was advertised as "pay band 80," indicating it was a management position, she was told at the interview that it was more of a secretarial position — with hospitality responsibilities — and one of her duties would be preparing minutes for meetings.

Durán found the job on an internal electronic posting board and it caught her attention because it was the first job on the site in a while and she easily met the requirements. According to her, the job was only posted for three days because the site was down over the weekend for payroll maintenance.

Durán said she felt the job description was misleading and might have been written for a specific person. "This happens all the time and nobody says a thing," she said. "It's downright wrong."

As an exempt hire under the governor — sometimes referred to as a "gov ex" — Rotunno earned over $80,000, at one time more than the museum director. The pay range for the new position is between $43,056 and $76,544, according to Svetnicka.

The art director job involves marketing, promoting and assisting in editing the quarterly magazine El Palacio and editing marketing supplements. A bachelor's degree in graphic design, fine arts, communications, marketing or a related area is required along with five years experience with InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, HTML and/or Javascript, PowerPoint and Web site content management systems. Authorized equivalencies may be accepted in place of the required education or experience.

The pay range is $30,534 to $54,308.

Wells Smith, a gov ex hired in 2003 as a special projects officer for Department of Cultural Affairs, was the only applicant. As an advertising sales manager for El Palacio, she reportedly increased ad sales from $7,000 per issue in the fall of 2005 to $37,000 and was a photographer, picture editor and writer. Her current salary is nearly $65,000.

According to her 12-page résumé, Wells Smith graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986 with a bachelor of fine arts in photography. The résumé says she was an assistant to author Kurt Vonnegut and his wife, Jill Krementz, worked for various magazines in New York, including Fortune and Vanity Fair, was founding director of Nuart Gallery in Santa Fe, and in 1994, 2002 and 2007 her photographs were published in The New York Times. In 2004 she wrote El Palacio's cover story on Russian photography and its impact on the collection at the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Ashman confirmed Thursday that Janice Spence, the chairman of the New Mexico Arts Commission and owner of a large car dealership in Hobbs, will be starting as a special assistant in the department later this month. Spence will be taking an authorized exempt position with a salary of about $75,000. Her responsibilities are not yet "fully defined" he said, but she will be involved in general office management. Former Deputy Secretary Troy Fernandez is not being replaced.

Like many gov exes, Spence contributed $2,300 to the Bill Richardson for President campaign in 2008 and a similar amount the previous year. Richardson, who can't seek a third consecutive term, will leave office at the end of next year.

Ashman said he is also hoping to change the status of a capital projects manager position from unauthorized exempt to authorized exempt by next year and more immediately to hire three new security guards and two new cashiers for the History Museum.

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.