Should legislators be allowed to have public buildings named after them while they are still serving in office?

It’s a question that was posed to me by a reader who sent me this photograph:

And anybody driving down Highway 502 near Nambé can see the Ben Lujan Gymnasium at the local high school:

Ben Lujan Gym, Pojoaque Valley High School

The gym was dedicated in 1993 in honor the current Speaker of the House, Ben Lujan (D-Santa Fe), who has served in the House of Representatives since 1975.

I want to emphasize that there is no evidence that anything unethical transpired that led to the naming of these buildings but for some, it does raise questions about the propriety of naming a public building after a person who is A) a public servant and B) serves in a body that control the state’s purse strings.

Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton

I e-mailed Rep. Williams Stapleton inquiring about the details behind the naming of the building but have not received a response. Don Jordan, the program director of the African American Performing Arts Center, referred me to Hennington who, after saying he did not know the specifics behind the building’s rededication, referred me back to Jordan. I left a voicemail message for Jordan but have not heard back.

Speaker Lujan’s office told me that the Pojoaque Valley School Board of Education made the decision to name the gym after Lujan and that the speaker had nothing to do with it. Two voicemail messages to the school board’s president have gone unreturned. 

Interestingly enough, this issue would never have come up a number of years ago. While investigating this story, I learned that when Bruce King was governor, there was a written policy declaring that no buildings under the purview of the state General Services Department could be named for a living human being:

“Criteria for name consideration are that the individual is deceased and that he/she has made important contributions to their community or to the agency housed in the building.”

Whether that policy changed during the gubernatorial administration of Gary Johnson or Bill Richardson administration is unclear.  A call to one of Gov. Richardson’s media relations officers has gone unreturned. 

Gov. Bill Richardson and wife Barbara

Speaking of Richardson, visitors to the UNM Children’s Hospital may notice that there is a pavilion at the medical center named after  Richardson and his wife, Barbara. The decision was unanimously made in 2004 by the UNM Board of Regents, which is composed of seven members who are appointed by the governor for staggered terms of six years (except for the student regent who is appointed for a two-year term). The pavilion was dedicated in 2007, during Richardson’s second term.

The naming of public buildings after sitting legislators has been growing in states across the country in recent years. The late Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) had no less than 28 buildings, highways, scholarships, streets, community centers — and even a telescope – named after him. Three years ago, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) caught flak for funnelling $2 million in taxpayers’ funds to a building at the City College of New York and having the building named after himself. In Mississippi, former Republican Senator Trent Lott has a middle school, an airport, a center for economic development at one state university and a Trent Lott Center for Geo Spatial Data and Research at another named after him. 

Around Washington, critics call such legislative indulgences “Monuments to Me” and last year a congressman from Texas called for a ban on lawmakers using congressional earmarks for projects named for themselves.

Fortunately, there does not seem to be an excessive outbreak of similar behavior in New Mexico — at least not yet.

I collected a list of all the public and charter schools across the state and painstakingly cross-referenced as many of the names as possible and while I found schools named after former astronauts (Sidney Gutierrez and Harrison Schmitt), postmasters (E.J. Martinez), track stars (John Baker), artists (Edward Gonzales), Navajo chiefs (Chee Dodge), old West trading post owners (Tobe Turpen) and a former district judge (Luis E. Armijo), I couldn’t find any named after sitting legislators.

That’s all well and good but at least one political observer thinks it might be wise for the state’s executives and legislative members to revisit the idea of reserving the names of public buildings only for those who made their lasting marks on this earth and have since retired from public life — or even shook free of this mortal coil entirely.

Garrey Carruthers, NM Governor 1987-1991

“I don’t have any hard and fast rule about that sort of thing,” former New Mexico Governor Garrey Carruthers says. “but my preference would be to wait until a person’s service is over. Then there is no misconception and no perception that there may be some sort of reciprocation for someone’s service.”

NM House Speaker Ben Lujan

One final, bizarre note: Last month — during the primary elections — the Ben Lujan Gymnasium in Pojoaque Valley acted as polling place. That meant that for some voters in the area, if they wanted to vote for Lujan’s opponent, Carl Trujillo, they had to go to the Ben Lujan Gym to cast their ballot.