The state auditor will look into a contract to build a $12 million student services center at Highlands University in Las Vegas following a weekend Albuquerque Journal article.
The contract is an important part of the dispute between the school’s regents and President Manny Aragon, the former state Senate leader the regents are trying to fire.
In the Journal’s Sunday article, the chairman of the regents alleged that the board was kept in the dark about the awarding of that and other contracts. Longtime architecture firm Custer Basarich of Albuquerque was notified it would be awarded the $700,000 contract to design the student center, the Journal reported, though the regents had not yet voted to do that or been informed it was going to happen.
The school later cut down the scope of work to a $182,542 price tag, but in doing so, changed it so much from the original request for proposals that the school’s purchasing director refused to sign off on it.
In addition a second firm, Public Private Projects, worked on the project for at least five months without a signed contract, the Journal reported, and earned $50,000 for its work.
Now, State Auditor Domingo Martinez says his office will look into the situation.
“That’s our standard procedure, to ask for information when we learn about these things, as we did in this case through the media,”
Both firms also worked on the government building projects in
The Journal did a stellar job of investigative reporting this weekend in finding potential links involving
While we’re on the topic of finding potential links, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note an interesting connection between the construction of the
The county’s $20 million building was designed by Design Collaborative Southwest, the
The ballots later vanished, and the state auditor said that all added up to a potentially intentional violation.
County officials say the violation wasn’t intentional and that they didn’t know about the committee rankings when they made their decision. A state police investigation led to no charges being filed.
Regardless, Design Collaborative Southwest also designed the
That, coupled with the procurement code violation down here, might raise eyebrows about
Is this all coincidence? Is this state just too small?
I’ll let you decide.