Heath Haussamen
As I’ve been digging into the records of both gubernatorial candidates in the past few months, a common theme has emerged: a stunning lack of understanding by both candidates of the importance of avoiding situations that could create an appearance of impropriety.
We’ve seen it in four situations involving Republican Susana Martinez:
- Martinez’s office bought more than $60,000 in supplies and equipment from a business owned by Janetta Hicks, who at the time was one of the top employees in the office.
- Her office also bought supplies and equipment from a business owned by Hicks’ niece.
- Martinez’s office designated Hicks as the person to whom bids should be sent for an IT contract; Hicks’ brother-in-law signed the bid letter on behalf of the company that the state’s district attorneys ended up selecting for the contract.
- Martinez’s office paid companies owned by an employee’s husband to mentor juveniles in an after-school martial arts program.
We’ve also seen it in three situations involving Democrat Diane Denish:
- Denish reported to the Secretary of State’s Office for years that her husband was lobbing the Department of Transportation on behalf of developers. She now says her husband wasn’t lobbying DOT, and that she reported it only to “exercise an abundance of caution” because he was attending DOT meetings.
- Denish voted, as chair of the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority Board of Directors, to give a no-bid contract worth $130,000 to a company owned by the wife of an employee.
- While Denish has chaired the MFA board, an insurance company controlled by her family has made money by helping the agency obtain various types of insurance.
Sometimes transparency isn’t enough
In each of these situations, there was transparency. Public records revealed the details, and Martinez and Denish both disclosed the situations to auditors and the secretary of state.
Both candidates seem to have had the attitude that anything that is legal and transparent is OK. And that’s where they’ve both been wrong.
The public’s trust has been so abused by rogue government officials – at the local, state and federal levels – that the public has every reason to be suspicious of any situation that has the appearance of being an insider deal.
Government is supposed to serve the citizens it represents; taxpayer dollars are supposed to be spent for the benefit of the society in which those taxpayers live. Unfortunately, there are endless examples of Democrats and Republicans at all levels of government abusing that trust.
There have been countless situations in recent years of a friend of Gov. Bill Richardson giving a massive campaign contribution and receiving a lucrative government contract or an influential appointment to a state board.
The public doesn’t believe Richardson’s assertion that campaign contributions don’t affect his decisions. That’s one of the main reasons his approval rating is dismal at the end of his tenure.
Coming off the Richardson years, the public has reason to at least suspect that Herb Denish was using the fact that his wife was lieutenant governor to help win hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from state government for a private development.
And the public has little reason to believe that every time public dollars went out of Martinez’s office and into the hands of Hicks or someone tied to Hicks that it was because that person or company offered the best deal Martinez’s office could receive.
It doesn’t matter that these situations involving both candidates appear to have been legal. It doesn’t matter that those involved may have had no other motives than improving New Mexico and spending taxpayer dollars wisely.
Government officials who have abused the public trust have given the public every reason in the world to believe otherwise.
Hopefully the next governor has learned
Martinez and Denish have both done a lot of good in their tenures as elected officials. Perhaps most notably, both have been tireless advocates for children.
But I remain surprised by the fact that Denish found her way into situations that the very ethics commission she proposes to create would be asked to investigate. She doesn’t seem to understand that reality, which is disappointing.
Denish has repeatedly said she went beyond what was required by disclosing these situations, as if disclosure always makes things right.
Some of the deals Martinez entered into years ago are now illegal because the very Legislature and governor she says are ethically challenged decided such deals weren’t appropriate in 2007. It’s concerning that Martinez pledges to clean up Santa Fe, but in this instance, Santa Fe had to put a stop to the types of deals Martinez thought were appropriate.
Martinez has continued to defend most of the deals listed above as legal instead of answering questions about whether they were proper. Once, in an interview with The Santa Fe New Mexican, Martinez said she wouldn’t buy office supplies from Hicks’ company if the situation arose today because of the appearance the situation created – but even after that, she has defended other deals as legal, as if that’s the only consideration.
One of these women is going to replace a governor who made “pay to play” a household term by creating an overwhelming appearance of impropriety throughout state government.
I hope the next governor, whoever she is, has learned from the last few months of media scrutiny and will avoid situations in the future that carry an appearance of impropriety. That’s the only way government can begin to earn back the trust of those it has betrayed.