King investigates PNM lobbyist loan to Richardson

Attorney General Gary King is investigating whether it was legal for a state utility company to lend a lobbyist to Gov. Bill Richardson’s office for several months around this year’s legislative session, the Albuquerque Journal is reporting.

Regardless, the move creates an appearance that Richardson is too close to the utility company and gave the corporation too much access to government.

The lobbyist, Art Hull, who works for Public Service Company of New Mexico, was loaned to the governor from mid-November to April, the Journal reported. During that time, PNM continued to pay his salary.

The group Break The Grip, which aims to end corporate influence in state government, alleged in a letter to King that the governor’s office had “made an illegal donation of state facilities to PNM” by letting Hull work there, the newspaper reported.

The group was started by Ben Luce, an advocate of alternative energy who, until recently, supported many of Gov. Bill Richardson’s moves related to clean energy and the environment.

The governor’s office and PNM told the newspaper the agreement was legal. Richardson spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said Hull did not have his own office at the capitol, but didn’t know whether Hull used the office’s computer or phones.

He did, however, say Hull could have used them if he needed them, and said Luce is “making the assumption that PNM got something out of this.”

Of course PNM got something out of it. Why else would the company loan its lobbyist to the governor during the legislative session? Even if the benefit wasn’t financial, PNM gained immensely by building an even friendlier relationship with the governor and learning, first-hand, about the inner workings of the governor’s office.

King told the Journal his office will consider whether it’s legal to lend a corporate executive to a government office; if so, what duties that executive can perform; and whether the arrangement violated the state constitution’s anti-donation clause, which prohibits government from giving donations to private entities.

Such arrangements aren’t unheard of, but are rare, the Journal reported. PNM last loaned an employee to the governor’s office in the 1980s.

Of course PNM gains from the loan

Gallegos defended the action in part by pointing out that Richardson has two on-loan staffers from Los Alamos National Laboratories and one from Sandia Labs. Both are policy advisers.

Not the same. Not at all. The fact that Gallegos even made the comparison is quite revealing.

Governments loan each other employees all the time. The state auditor’s office has a fraud examiner on loan from LANL for two years. The employee gets to learn about state government and bring back new ideas about how to improve systems at the federal lab, and the state auditor’s office gets to benefit from his expertise.

Such loans take place because both sides benefit. Inherent in the comparison is the fact that Richardson’s office benefited from the PNM loan, but so did PNM. That’s where the anti-donation clause comes into play.

Also keep in mind that lawmakers passed a number of Richardson bills this year that the governor cites on the campaign trail in calling New Mexico the “clean energy state,” including one that created the Renewable Energy Transmission Authority. It will help promote production of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, by financing the construction of transmission lines.

Guess who stands to gain the most from that state-funded infrastructure in the future? There’s a good chance that the answer is PNM.

Gallegos said Hull acted as a liaison between Richardson’s office and Republican legislators on a number of issues and attended some strategy sessions on ethics reform and minimum wage – but was not involved in energy issues.

There was an exception. He could pass messages between lawmakers and the governor on the transmission authority bill, Gallegos told the Journal. But he couldn’t lobby for the bill.

Let me get this straight. The guy gets to pass private messages about the transmission authority bill between the governor and lawmakers – including many who were skeptics of the proposal – and, though his company and the governor’s office both want the legislation approved and he’s a professional lobbyist, he’s not going to lobby?

Here’s another one that stinks. The appearance of impropriety seems to have an almost constant presence at the Roundhouse.