Robert Garza, the City Manager, pulls down the highest salary we have found so far among New Mexico local governments.  He receives $163,000 a year for managing a workforce about a third smaller than that of Rob Perry, Albuquerque’s city manager, who makes $20,000 a year less.  In our survey of local government salaries, Garza now  moves past the previous top man,  Rio Rancho’s acting city manager, James Babin, who is paid $150,000.

You can find the full Las Cruces employee listing at these two links.  The first is a Google document. We also provide it in a PDF file at the request of readers who do not have Google accounts.

Nine Las Cruces city employees make six figures.  Twenty-nine make over $85,000.  Albuquerque, by comparison, pays 58 people over $100,000 and 250 employees over $81,600.  Except for its city manager, the municipal pay scale for the city of Las Cruces approximates that of the city of Santa Fe, which we published in an earlier report.

The salaries of the top 250 Albuquerque municipal employees can be found here.

Here’s Bernalillo County.  And here’s Rio Rancho.

The data for these reports was gathered by Marcos Portillo, an intern with The Rio Grande Foundation, this site’s sponsor.  Mr. Portillo is studying economics at the University of New Mexico.  He previously served as a Staff Sergeant with the 82nd Airborne Division of the United States Army.