State auditor to look into Highlands’ architect contract as FBI probe continues

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,” Martinez told me Monday.

Both firms also worked on the government building projects in Albuquerque being scrutinized by the FBI for possible kickbacks and padded contracts.

Aragon is one of the targets of that FBI investigation.

The Journal did a stellar job of investigative reporting this weekend in finding potential links involving Aragon.

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 Doña Ana County Government Center and the buildings in Albuquerque under investigation by the FBI.

The county’s $20 million building was designed by Design Collaborative Southwest, the Albuquerque firm that was picked through what the state auditor called a potentially intentional violation of the state procurement code in the 2004 special audit of the county. Basically, the firm was ranked the last out of four that applied by a committee. The commission then said it would do its own rankings, and voted on secret ballots to pick the firm.

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 Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque and partnered with Custer Basarich to design the state District Courthouse in Albuquerque, two of three buildings that are part of the ongoing FBI probe.

That, coupled with the procurement code violation down here, might raise eyebrows about Doña Ana County’s building. I should note that then-County Commissioner Gilbert Apodaca, the notorious politico who essentially controlled county government during the time in question, was once accused of bribery (which led to an FBI probe, from which charges were never filed) by Art Trujillo, the notorious Northern New Mexico Politico. Trujillo was, at the time of the county’s architect selection in 2003, a vice president for Custer Basarich.

Is this all coincidence? Is this state just too small?

I’ll let you decide.