State Auditor Domingo Martinez released a long-awaited audit of Doña Ana County last week that found widespread problems. He then said many of the problems appear to have been remedied, satisfying most and infuriating a few.
Two items are outstanding. Years ago when he was a county commissioner, State Rep. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, was instrumental in creating an agreement with landowners in the Santa Teresa area: They would loan the county money to pay back bonds used to build a water and sewer system there, repayable with 3 percent interest.
The agreement violates the terms of the bonds and has all sorts of other problems, said Martinez, who referred it to prosecutors for further investigation. It’s now being examined by the New Mexico State Police and the attorney general’s office.
Cervantes told me two years ago that if problems were found, he would have to take credit. I guess it’s time.
Also outstanding is the selection of the architect Design Collaborative Southwest of Albuquerque to design the county’s new, $20 million administrative complex. The commission violated the procurement code on many levels in selecting DCSW, which had been ranked last out of four bidders by a committee. The commission ignored the rankings, ignored the criteria it told bidders would be considered, and voted on paper ballots, rather than publicly, to select DCSW.
The ballots then vanished, so no public record of the vote exists.
All that, the state auditor said, added up to a potentially intentional violation of the procurement code.
Was it intentional? And what would that mean? These are questions also being looked at by investigators.
Former County Commissioner Gilbert Apodaca, who was at the center of many of the allegations, including the DCSW vote, might have a hard time jumping back into politics, should he ever try, as future opponents will probably use the audit against him. He insists he’s done with politics, but has expressed interest in state offices in the past.
Opponents might try to use the audit against Commissioner Oscar Vasquez Butler, who is up for re-election this year. Commissioner Paul Curry, who championed the new administrative complex, is choosing to leave office at the end of the year.
And while Commissioner Kent Evans, now a Republican candidate for the Public Regulation Commission, was instrumental in bringing the allegations to light, one source pointed out that he used to be an ally of Apodaca and took part in some of the votes that the auditor found were flawed.
Evans has admitted this. He claimed he was fooled by Apodaca but later saw the truth and, when he did, tried to bring it to light.
What this and many other audits reveal is the need for a prosecutor in the state who can tackle the allegations. Investigation of this audit has been tossed around by prosecutors for 16 months. The investigation several years ago of an audit that found widespread disregard for state law in the city of Sunland Park died a quiet death without resolution.
Martinez has tried to get an audit prosecutor funded and assigned to the First Judicial District Attorney’s office in Santa Fe, where the legislature placed a tax and revenue prosecutor years ago. A bill was sponsored this year by Rep. Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, to create such a position.
The proposal got the approval of the House Judiciary Committee, but died after that.
One source put it this way: Legislators were more than willing to put resources into investigating taxpayers, but why would legislators want to pay someone to investigate them and other government officials?
Chew on that.
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I wrote last week about Doña Ana County Magistrate Judge Susana Chaparro abruptly resigning without explanation. On Monday, the Judicial Standards Commission filed a petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court seeking approval of a stipulated agreement that Chaparro would never again seek judicial office.
Apparently, she was about to be busted for the third time for improperly involving herself in family members’ court issues. She’s been disciplined before for improperly issuing an arrest warrant for a court interpreter who ignored her order. The interpreter had earlier beaten out Chaparro’s sister for the interpreter contract. Chaparro was also hit with a two-week suspension without pay for improperly involving herself in her son’s traffic case.
The latest issue apparently involved Chaparro’s harassment of a court interpreter who employed her sister, but took her sister off drunken driving cases because she was dealing with her own drunken driving case. The commission said that was one of seven outstanding cases against Chaparro.
It’s a sad end to the career of a judge who was, at times, brilliant. If the commission is to be believed, Chaparro didn’t know how to separate family issues from her judicial position.
“She knew the law pretty well,” said one court watcher. “It’s just sad that other things got in the way.”
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And so it goes. What will happen tomorrow? Only time will tell. Come back to find out.