UNM, Eric Olen agree on new five-year contract - Geoff Grammer, Albuquerque Journal
The University of New Mexico and men’s basketball coach Eric Olen have agreed to a new contract, one that will pay him $7.25 million over the next five years and includes measures intended to entice the coach to stick around.
Olen led the Lobos to a 26-win season and the NIT semifinals in his first year as head coach.
“This past year has been an amazing experience for me and my family,” Olen said. “It’s an honor to lead this program and walking down the ramp on game day is something I will never take for granted. The support from this community and passion of our fan base make the University of New Mexico a truly special place. I appreciate everyone that helped make year one so memorable and I’m excited to build on that foundation.”
The new deal, not an extension of the old contract, runs through the 2030-31 season.
Olen’s base pay will not increase under this contract, but the new deal does include a $100,000 retention bonus. Also, as part of the agreement, UNM increased the assistant coaching salary pool by $175,000.
The new deal also comes with what’s essentially a $1 million buyout increase. Universities, to protect their investments in head coaches, often include buyout clauses that require a coach to repay the university if the coach leaves for a more lucrative deal at another school.
After a first year in which his team outperformed expectations, Olen drew interest from power-conference programs and would likely receive renewed attention if the Lobos repeated their success.
Olen must repay the university 50% of the entire contract if he leaves after Year 1 or Year 2. Because this is a new contract, he would be on the hook for $2,950,000 if he left after the 2026-27 season. Had UNM and Olen not reworked the contract, he would have owed $2,025,000 had he left after this next season.
Olen’s new deal is not unlike the new contract UNM football coach Jason Eck received after his successful first season.
In both cases, power-conference programs were swooping in to try to lure the coaches away, and in both cases, UNM chose to invest unprecedented sums to retain the coaches (and their assistant coaching staffs).
The moves come after former football head coach Bronco Mendenhall and former men’s basketball head coach Richard Pitino left for more money at Utah State and Xavier, respectively, in the 2024-25 seasons.
Asked about the decision on that investment in Eck and Olen, new Vice President for Athletics Ryan Berryman, who has been in contract talks with Olen and his agent since Berryman became interim AD in January, said it was time to double down on the program’s two most high-profile programs to lift the department as a whole.
“It has been a transformational couple of years for college athletics both nationally and locally here at UNM,” Berryman told the Journal. “Our program is riding a wave of incredible momentum on the heels of immense success, which has influenced how people perceive our University and athletic department.
“A rising tide lifts all boats — and we are confident in the leaders we have in place and their ability to develop student-athletes and represent our state and our university with great pride.”
UNM is set to pay Olen $7.25 million over five years, with his annual compensation increasing each year. That averages out to an annual compensation of $1.45 million.
Notably, no UNM men’s basketball coach in at least 45 years has completed the terms of their contract — though that isn’t unusual in the current landscape of college athletics
Olen was set to make $1.25 million this season.
“What Eric accomplished this season — building a 26-win program from the ground up, with no returning players, no returning staff — is a reflection of exceptional leadership and culture-building,” said UNM President Garnett Stokes. “Lobo Basketball is one of the most visible expressions of who we are as a university, and I’m grateful that Eric and his family are committed to this community for years to come.”
What’s the deal?
The Journal has obtained Olen’s new contract and compared it to his first.
Like his old contract, the new deal for Olen features a base salary of $400,000 per year. This year (the contract year runs through March 31, 2027), he will also be paid $425,000 for media obligations with UNM’s media rights partners (this is for pre- and post-game shows and weekly coaches shows on radio and TV through the university), and $425,000 for “program promotion,” which essentially is payment for saying the right things, attending booster and donor functions and being available for various events the athletic department or university might ask him to take part in.
His salary for the first seasons technically doesn’t change from what it would have been for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 seasons, but a $100,000 retention bonus for both seasons means there was a raise for each of the next two years.
All bonuses or incentive payment details appear to have stayed the same as the first contract, which include such things as $50,000 bonus per NCAA Tournament win, a $25,000 bonus for making the NCAA Tournament and bonuses for the team finishing within the top 50 or top 25 of the final KenPom computer rankings ($25,000 or $50,000 bumps, respectively).
Union: CYFD retaliated against anonymous workers who spoke in news stories – Esteban Candelaria, Searchlight New Mexico
Change often begins with someone deciding to speak up and identify a problem.
But at the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, workers who do are just being punished more harshly, the union representing them says.
Leaders at CYFD have said they abhor what its workforce describes as an ongoing problem of supervisors and managers retaliating against employees over disagreements about case management, office politics, disciplinary issues and other conflicts.
But employees suspected of speaking to The New Mexican in its reporting about workplace culture problems within the troubled child welfare agency’s county offices have become the targets of investigations and further harassment, according to union leaders.
“They were very, very heavy-handed,” said Connie Derr, executive director of the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “… They wanted to know who is talking to the media, who’s leaking information.”
The New Mexican published an article March 15 detailing current and former CYFD workers’ accounts of their experiences with toxic work environments at multiple county offices throughout the state. That article, which also described the impact high caseloads have in turnover within the agency’s workforce, cited interviews with employees who asked not to be identified out of concern for retaliation from CYFD.
Three days after the story was published, acting Cabinet Secretary Valerie Sandoval sent a letter to workers in which she said she was “deeply upset by its tone, content and message.”
She added that CYFD “does not condone any personal attacks, mistreatment, or retaliation aimed at CYFD team members.”
“I won’t tolerate any of that ever,” she said, before encouraging employees to call, email or text her if they are experiencing those issues.
In the same letter, Sandoval also appeared to discourage workers from speaking with the media, writing that everyone at the agency is entitled to their privacy and that since CYFD leadership would never share personal information about its staff with the public, all the department’s employees should also refrain from doing so.
In the wake of the article’s publication, Derr said leadership at CYFD’s Los Lunas office quickly started pressing workers in an effort to find out who spoke with The New Mexican and launched investigations into workers suspected of doing so.
Spokesperson Jake Thompson highlighted in an email several efforts to address workplace culture problems and improve morale, leading to the vacancy rate among frontline workers being nearly cut in half. He also flatly denied that any of the agency’s workers were investigated following the article’s publication, writing that the union’s account of CYFD investigating its workers was “inaccurate.”
“No investigations have been launched – or are currently underway — into workers who may have spoken to the New Mexican,” he wrote. “The Human Services Director and a senior CYFD leader attend the department’s weekly Employee Relations Bureau meetings and would be immediately aware of any such investigations. None exist.”
Thompson also rebuked the union’s criticisms that CYFD was sending conflicting messages about the issue of retaliation, writing that agency leaders do “not tolerate any retribution or retaliation against employees, period.”
Derr, however, maintained that workers were investigated both formally and informally following the article.
“They’re not being honest when they say that,” she said of Thompson’s email.
Employment threats
Some employees have described feeling forced to leave their county offices, or CYFD in general, following retaliation after articles were published.
In Los Lunas, workers suspected of speaking out have also been threatened with losing their jobs, Derr said.
One former employee, who asked not to be identified out of concern for his reputation, said his managers worked to derail his upcoming promotion, called his job competency into question and placed him on leave — all part of alleged harassment he said escalated after a report was published examining workplace issues in his office that he was suspected of collaborating on.
The worker said the alleged harassment ultimately drove him to quit his job and leave the state. He now works in child protective services outside New Mexico. He added one of his colleagues also left the county office they both worked at for years amid alleged harassment and now commutes up to four hours every day to work at another CYFD office in a different county.
“They will do whatever they can to retaliate,” the worker said.
CYFD has made significant progress in addressing the problems facing its workforce in recent months, Thompson wrote in the email,
He cited a 16.6% vacancy rate among the agency’s critical, frontline Protective Services workers, a number that is nearly half of what it was in September, when there was a 30.9% vacancy rate among those employees.
Across CYFD, the vacancy rate is 23%, down from 28% in September, Thompson wrote.
Efforts to improve CYFD’s workforce include bringing on 72 case aides to help frontline workers manage their workloads, closing thousands of completed cases, and developing a “buddy” system that pairs new employees with experienced ones to help them acclimate, he wrote.
Leaders have also become more available to workers, with Sandoval visiting a dozen offices in April and making plans to visit the rest this month. The agency has also worked to improve communication and morale by publishing monthly videos that provide updates about the department, organizing quarterly all-staff meetings drawing hundreds of employees statewide, and creating a newsletter, Thompson wrote.
“Over the last seven months, CYFD has launched an unprecedented drive to improve the department’s culture and staff morale,” he wrote. “Secretary Sandoval is personally invested in this work and engaged with staff every day.”
Generally, CYFD workers are not supposed to speak with members of the media about the goings-on within their county offices.
Derr said the union never condones the leaking of specific case information of vulnerable children being looked after by CYFD. However, she argued there is little trust that workers can have fruitful or safe conversations with leaders at the agency and said they should be able to voice their concerns.
“I think they do have a right to have that conversation,” she said.
City quietly dropped plans for highly touted “Gateway for seniors” at Juniper Flats - Jesse Jones, City Desk ABQ
For Burqueños hoping for relief from the affordable housing crisis, the finish line just moved further away when a promised solution to turn a former hotel into long-term affordable apartments for seniors touted by the mayor during his election quietly fell through.
During the April 6 City Council meeting, Gilbert Ramirez, director of health, housing and homelessness said the city has officially walked away from purchasing the former Ramada Inn at 25 Hotel Circle to create Juniper Flats, a 204-unit affordable complex for seniors earning less than 60% of the area median income.
When Councilor Renée Grout asked why the deal collapsed, Ramirez explained the property wasn’t the turnkey facility the city expected, one that is move-in ready and requires no major repairs. “Upon doing additional investigation… we did identify there were additional improvements needed,” Ramirez said. Because the building required significant work to meet safety and housing standards, the city’s lowered purchase offer was rejected by the property owner. The project has a history of friction; last year, the City Council blocked an administration attempt to rebrand Juniper Flats as “Gateway Seniors.”
With the Juniper Flats deal dead, the city currently has no active hotel-to-housing conversions in the pipeline and is racing to identify a replacement property before state funding expires. State funding of $5 million was to help cover the $22.8 million purchase, with city bonds financing the rest. Ramirez said the administration did not have enough time before the June 30 deadline to complete due diligence and issue a Gross Receipts Tax bond for another property currently on the market.
No viable hotel conversion projects remain for this fiscal year, Ramirez said, though the city will continue working with the state to explore future funding opportunities. The funds remain at risk unless officials quickly screen a new property.
NMDOJ touts statewide progress with new ‘crime gun’ data tracking initiative - Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez on Friday announced that his state Department of Justice’s nascent effort to trace firearms used in multiple crimes across the state is already paying off.
Torrez first announced the Crime Gun Intelligence Center in December and said it would help law enforcement agencies across the state to quickly and accurately scan evidence such as spent shell casings and recovered guns and check a national database of guns linked to crimes for potential matches.
Officials at the time said giving law enforcement agencies around New Mexico machines that can access the federal database would be an important step in tracking weapon trafficking and repeat offenders. Since launching the initiative, law enforcement agencies around New Mexico have uploaded more than 700 shell casings into the database and linked 31 recovered guns to 74 shootings. Nearly half of the guns analyzed were used in crimes in multiple jurisdictions.
“New Mexico didn’t wait to act, we built a first-in-the-nation model that is already delivering results,” Torrez said in a statement. “By centralizing this work within our office and partnering with agencies across the state, we are giving investigators the tools they need to connect the dots, solve cases faster, and prevent future violence.”
Nationally, gunfire is the leading cause of death for children and teenagers, and New Mexico’s firearm mortality rate of 26.6 per 100,000 residents is among the highest in the nation, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
Before the New Mexico Department of Justice brought this technology to rural police departments and sheriff’s offices — including those in Gallup, Roswell and San Juan County — officers typically would have to travel several hours to access the database through a machine located in the Albuquerque Police Department.
The initiative has since grown, according to an NMDOJ announcement. The Ohkay Owingeh Police Department joined the program in April.
“Every casing entered, every firearm traced and every lead generated represents a step toward safer communities,” Torrez said in a statement.
Feds officially cancel conservation rule for public lands – Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico The United States Bureau of Land Management on Monday formally cancelled the so-called “Public Land Rule,” which required the agency to consider conservation and development equally in land-use decisions for millions of acres across the West.
The BLM, which manages 13.5 million acres of land in New Mexico, published a notice Monday in the Federal Register finalizing its elimination of the 2024 rule, officially known as the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule. The agency first announced it was considering eliminating the rule in September.
The Biden-era rule provided guidance for ensuring conservation received due consideration along with mining, timber, grazing, recreation or other uses on public lands. It also allowed the BLM to issue leases specifically for conservation, though the agency never issued any.
The BLM’s notice Monday said officials had received and responded to nearly 140,000 public comments in response to the proposal. Ultimately, officials said eliminating the 2024 rule was necessary because it “threatened to restrict productive use of the public lands and introduced uncertainty and unnecessary burdens in planning and permitting.” The rule’s elimination comes alongside executive orders and other actions by the Trump administration to expand drilling, mineral production and other commercial uses of public lands.
Michael Carroll, a campaign director for environmentalist group The Wilderness Society, told Source NM on Monday that the rule’s rescission, which officially goes into effect in 30 days, will leave millions of acres across the West newly vulnerable to oil and gas extraction and mining.
“They’re effectively saying, ‘We’re just going to prioritize extraction across BLM lands,’ Carroll said. “They’re going to be prioritizing industrial-scale development on those public lands. I think we’ll see that right away.”
He also noted that the BLM determined it did not need to consult with Indigenous tribes in its decision to rescind the rule, which he called “shocking in terms of its disrespect to tribal nations,” many of which sit adjacent to federal lands.
The Wilderness Society was among many environmental groups that denounced the end of the “Public Lands Rule” on Wednesday. Several public statements from the groups mentioned the pending U.S. Senate confirmation of Steve Pearce, a former New Mexico Republican congressman, as BLM director.
If the Senate confirms him, Pearce, who has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, will oversee an agency that is no longer required to consider conservation as an acceptable use of public land, Carroll said.
“Today is a bad day for those people who care about public lands and care about the Bureau of Land Management,” he said. “But we’ll keep fighting and keep pushing back.”