NM Governor Gave $11,500 to $32,900 Raises to 15 Members of Her Inner Circle

While Denying 2,300 State Employees and More Than 5,000 DD Waiver Caregivers a Living Wage, Governor Treats Her Team to Big Pay Raises.

Apparently, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s Chief of Staff Daniel Schlegel and her Deputy Chief of Staff Diego Arencon were having a hard time making ends meet on their annual salaries of $201,983 and $191,065, respectively.

To give them a hand up, all told, Lujan Grisham gave Schlegel another $32,017, and Arencon an additional $16,935, to weather the new fiscal year.

And they weren’t the only members of the Governor’s staff to receive special compensation treatment (see chart near end of this story).

The Candle did a detailed analysis of the Governor’s payroll after noticing that although most of her staff received a pay raise of 4% over their June 2025 pay, many of them were actually making considerably more than a 4% increase over the pay they received earlier in the fiscal year.

To get around the 4% limit on pay raises for all state employees for the new fiscal year year, the Governor quietly boosted the pay of about a score of her inner circle of employees months ahead of July 1, 2025.

By doing so, her favored crew saw their annual pay increase before adding the 4% they would get with other state employees.

The pay boost for twenty-two in the Governor’s office ranged from 7% to 26%.

As many as 15, received annual pay increases of between $11,576 to $32,900.

Only four of the Governor’s staff appear to have gotten the same real 4% that the rest of the state employees received.

The Governor and the crew who received the big raises, are the same people who govern a state employee system that continues to pay over two thousand state workers less than a living wage.

They are also the same team which refuses to provide a living wage for the more than 6,000 direct care professionals (DSPs) that provide personal care and guidance to the state’s developmentally disabled community.

Before his pay raise of $32,000, Schlegel’s salary was just north of $200,000 a year.

Many DSPs assisting clients of the state’s developmental disability waiver earn under $32,000 a year, which at $15/hour is about $12,000 less than what is considered an living wage for New Mexico.

The workers who assist some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens are being paid wages that compare to those at fast food restaurants, with many of them making less in a year than Schlegel’s pay raise alone.

Here are two examples of how the Governor favored her personal crew by boosting their pay before July 1, 2025:

Daniel Schlegel – $32,017 Pay Raise.

Daniel Schlegel has worked for Governor Lujan Grisham for a considerable amount of time.

He has been her Chief of Staff since about January 2023. In February of that year his pay was $88.94/hour, or $184,995 annualized.

In January of 2024, his hourly rate was $94.27, or about $196,081 annualized.

When the Governor and legislature passed the budget in March, they limited pay raises to 4% beginning in July 2025 for state employees.

It seems it was between March and May that the Governor’s office hatched the plan to boost salaries in her office beyond that which was going to be the rule for almost all other state employees.

Schlegel, sometime between May 1, 2025, and June 2, 2025, got an early booster raise, from $97.10/hour ($201,968/year) to $108.17 ($224,993/year) a raise of about 11%. That equates to $11.07/hour … an increase annually of $23,025.

Then he was able to pile on another 4% to increase his hourly wage to $112.50/hour ($234,000/year), when the new fiscal year kicked in and the 4% raise for all state employees took effect.

That provided him an annual additional take of $9,006 – and when added to his May/June raise of $23,025, his pay raise reaches $32,017.

Stella Sandel – $19,844 Pay Raise(s) – Just in the Governor’s Office.

Sometime in the Fall of 2023, Stella Sandel, started working at the state’s Early Childhood Education & Care Department (ECECD), earning $27 hour – or $56,160 annually.

She worked as a Social and Community Service Coordinator in the administrative offices.

After a relatively short stint with ECECD, she started working as the Governor’s Executive Assistant sometime in the summer of 2024.

By September of 2024, Stella Sandel, had received a pay increase of $11.46, boosting her pay to $38.46/hour.

Then, sometime before January 2, 2025, she was given another raise to $43.26/hour.

And then again sometime between May 1, 2025, and June 2, 2025, she got another raise boosting her hourly wage to $46.15.

Finally, on July 1, 2025, as the Governor made sure Sandel got the 4% raise that the 23,000 other not so favored state employees were to receive, she saw her hourly pay increase to $48.00/hour, or $99,840/year.

Sandel saw her pay increase just from her time in the Governor’s office by $19,844 (25%).

But the real increase in her pay over less than two years, starting in the Fall of 2023, with ECECD at $27/hour, through July of 2025 at the Governor’s office and now making $48/hour, is more like an increase of 78% – a whopping increase of $43,680 a year above the salary for which she was paid when she started working for the state.

(Stella Sandel is related to Jerry Sandel, an owner of a business that provides supplies and services to the oil and gas industry in New Mexico and Texas. Among other roles, he is a close ally and a frequent traveling companion of the Governor and her team on hydrogen development trips around the globe.)

List of Governor’s Staff With Pay Raises of 7% to 26%

Previous Example of Governor Taking Care of Her Own While Having Others Do With Less.

The Candle reported on an earlier gifting by the Governor to her favored staff, writing in January 2021, that ” … a little over a month after issuing her first emergency order regarding COVID-19, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced at a weekly press conference the state would need to make reductions in spending because of the economic impact of the coronavirus and the faltering oil prices on state revenue.

“She also issued a hiring freeze for state government and, according to a report in the Albuquerque Journal, “suggested the hiring freeze would be one of several cost-cutting moves to be implemented, though she did not provide additional details.”

“Besides neglecting to provide details about the pending cuts, the governor failed to mention she was giving several of her highly paid staff generous (five-figure) pay raises for the second time in under eighteen months in office.”