By Deborah Baker
Albuquerque Journal
SANTA FE, N.M. — Gregg Marcantel says he’s at his best when life throws him a curveball.
So when the opportunity arose for the career cop to run New Mexico’s historically troubled prison system — even though he’s never worked in a prison — he took it.
According to the burly, 51-year old former Marine, it’s time to “pay forward the blessings that I’ve had in public service.”
Besides, he points out, Gov. Susana Martinez asked him to do it.
“That’s not something a guy like me can look at as an option,” he said.
Marcantel, whom the governor appointed corrections secretary Nov. 4, is tasked with turning around a department with a backstory of rioting and violence and current challenges of budget cuts and understaffing.
Before his appointment — which must still be confirmed by the state Senate — Marcantel had spent eight weeks as the temporary deputy corrections secretary, shifted over from the Department of Public Safety when the tenure of Corrections Secretary Lupe Martinez imploded.
Lupe Martinez, a career corrections official and the first woman to serve as secretary, resigned abruptly Sept. 2. Her fiancé — a department employee already under investigation for time card falsification — had fired a gun at rattlesnakes near the house where the couple lived on prison property.
Marcantel retired from the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office in April after nearly 19 years. Gov. Martinez, the former district attorney in Doña Ana County, met him years ago when she was prosecuting a murder trial in Albuquerque and he helped out.
According to her spokesman, Martinez chose Marcantel — a fellow Republican — as corrections secretary after a nationwide search.
Marcantel says he wasn’t altogether comfortable with the appointment: He’s a planner, and this wasn’t in the plan. And he felt loyalty to the DPS job he had held just a few months.
But the new secretary says the accomplishments he feels proudest of have involved challenges that were uncomfortable.
“I’m confident” taking on the job, he said.
Cajun, Marine, cancer survivor
Marcantel was born in the wetlands of southwestern Louisiana — a “24-karat Cajun” — and raised there by his divorced mother. As a kid, he sold oysters, trapped nutria for their pelts and worked on his grandfather’s farm.
“I was never supposed to leave that end of the world,” he said.
He assumed he would be an oil field welder and trained for it, but the oil crisis of the 1970s derailed that. He took some college courses and eventually joined the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Department.
That, in turn, led to the U.S. Marine Corps, which he figured would improve his marketability as a law officer and give him more education. He served from 1986-89, then went back for Operation Desert Storm in 1992.
The Marines, he says, was a life-changer — teaching him to push past his perceived limits.
Another life-changer: cancer, which he beat years ago and which he now says he was “blessed” to have because it made him stronger.
Good reviews
Marcantel gets glowing recommendations frogues at the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office, where he headed homicide and other divisions.m some former colleagues.
“He is good at what he does. He’s a good leader and a good people person,” said Darren White, Albuquerque’s former public safety chief and Marcantel’s former boss at BCSO.
Marcantel, who eventually got a master’s degree, is also described as analytical and prone to lengthy discourses. He would get teased by superiors who would show up at his briefings with an hourglass and a dictionary for every desk.
Challenges ahead
Whatever Marcantel’s strengths, his lack of experience in corrections is a concern for some who say the secretary’s job is tough enough already.
“Would you put the warden in charge of the State Police or the sheriff’s department?” asked Mark Donatelli, a Santa Fe lawyer whose involvement in prison issues predates the murderous State Penitentiary riot of 1980.
Donatelli says that, in his experience, secretaries with limited corrections experience have learned the hard way.
He describes the department as “in crisis” because of dramatic budget cuts and vacancies, and says the secretary must figure out how to deal with it.
“The buck stops with him, and he has to make those hard choices about what priorities to ask for from the Legislature,” Donatelli said.
Nearly one-fourth of the positions in the state’s prison system are vacant. The agency’s $280 million budget this year is about $16 million below last year’s spending because federal funds have dried up.
Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez, D-Belen — a member of the Rules Committee, which recommends whether to confirm gubernatorial appointees — says the department has lacked direction and stability and the staffing problem is worrisome.
“Correctional officers are very concerned for their own safety, as well as the safety of others,” said Sanchez, whose district includes the state prison in Los Lunas.
Marcantel says his lack of corrections experience “allows me to come into this thing without any preconceived notions. I think that’s a healthy thing.”
Despite the shortage of resources and leadership voids, he says he has already seen remarkable capability, creativity and sense of purpose on the part of the staff.
He talks about treating the staff, inmates and the community with respect. And he says the governor wants not just safety and security, but more programs to help offenders succeed by providing them with marketable skills “so that when they get out they’ve got a fighting chance at changing.”
The new secretary says he will recruit carefully, train appropriately “and build leadership and accountability at every level.”
Copyright 2011 Albuquerque Journal