The state’s Taxation and Revenue Department provided me an email last week that might back up its claim that the cabinet secretary didn’t pressure employees to give special treatment to a taxpayer she used to work for.
Heath Haussamen
Then again, maybe the email doesn’t help clear Secretary Demesia Padilla, who has already been hammered by the state auditor and is now under investigation by the attorney general.
The answer depends on facts the department isn’t currently making available to the public.
On Wednesday, department spokesman Ben Cloutier provided NMPolitics.net with a copy of the Oct. 15, 2014 email that references the taxpayer. Kevin Sourisseau, then the department’s Audit & Compliance Division deputy director, wrote in the email that an audit of the taxpayer “has not received any special consideration from the audit staff.”
“Thank you for your support with this difficult and uncomfortable issue,” he wrote to Lizzy Vedamanikam, director of the department’s Administrative Services Division.
The email refers to a discussion about the audit with Padilla the day before and states that “No changes have been made to the audit.”
After reading the email, I had questions. Because, I was thinking, maybe Padilla met with her staff in her capacity as cabinet secretary. And if that was the case, I wanted to know why. Shouldn’t she have recused herself from involvement in an audit of a former client?
If she didn’t, that might be scandalous.
But maybe she did recuse herself. Maybe Padilla met with department staff in her former capacity as the CPA for the taxpayer being audited. If that was the case, I’d want to know more about how Padilla and staff handled such a tricky situation.
That might make the email evidence that Padilla and staff at least attempted to act with integrity.
So, among my questions: “What was Secretary Padilla’s involvement in this audit and the meeting the email references?”
My emails asking questions of Cloutier – with the final email also sent to a spokesman in the Governor’s Office – have gone unanswered for days.
That’s right. Crickets.
Maybe they don’t want to respond because the answers would be scandalous.
Then again, there are complicated legal issues at play. Maybe they feel like they can’t answer my questions. I don’t want to assume either way.
But if they can’t comment, they should tell me that and explain why. I’m generally receptive to limits on an agency’s ability to comment — when those reasons are valid and explained to me. I’d include that context in anything I wrote.
But it’s my job to be skeptical. Word to the wise: When my questions are ignored, my eyebrows raise.
And sometimes I write about it.