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“This is an amazing honor and confirmation of the importance of our journalism,” said Haussamen, NMPolitics.net’s editor and publisher. “Devoting resources to investigative reporting is challenging\u00a0for news organizations these days, but it’s critical to keeping our society\u00a0healthy.”<\/p>\n
As a Democratic state senator,\u00a0Keller was a leading critic of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez\u2019s lease with a company to operate a racetrack and casino at the state fair grounds in Albuquerque — a deal that was undeniably controversial and smacked of conflicts<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Keller, whose Senate district included the state fair grounds, had his own potential conflict.\u00a0While a legislator,\u00a0Keller also worked for Blue Stone Strategy Group as a consultant to Native American tribes and other groups. For years he was rumored to have financial ties to Laguna Pueblo, whose development corporation was the losing bidder for the state fair lease.<\/p>\n Keller told journalists more than once\u00a0that he had no financial connection to Laguna.\u201cThey\u2019re not a client of mine, nor do any of my clients have any even remotely vested interest in the whole thing,\u201d Keller said\u00a0in November 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n Haussamen’s\u00a0reporting demonstrated otherwise. Documents he obtained\u00a0indicated that Laguna Pueblo and an entity owned by the pueblo were\u00a0clients of Blue Stone while Keller was a principal in the company.<\/p>\n Our\u00a0first report on the topic, “Docs may reveal potential Keller conflict on state fair lease,”<\/a>\u00a0came in August\u00a02015. It was well-read, praised by some, and criticized by others.<\/p>\n Haussamen\u00a0followed up a month later with a commentary<\/a>\u00a0published by NMPolitics.net and several newspapers explaining why he focused on Keller. He also urged New Mexicans to reject\u00a0conflicts in their legislative system:<\/p>\n I\u2019m singling out Keller because, as auditor, he\u2019s responsible for policing the ethics of other government officials. His past failure illustrates a cancer in our system \u2013 a pervasiveness and acceptance of conflicts.<\/p>\n We need to demand that our lawmakers avoid or at least disclose conflicts. We also need to design a better system that discourages conflicts.<\/p>\n When they\u2019re doing legislative work, we deserve to know our lawmakers are acting in the interest of their constituents, not their employers. Our current system gives us no such assurances.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n New Mexico’s state lawmakers are the only in the nation who aren’t paid for their work.\u00a0Haussamen argued that creates a structural problem: “Unless we pay a reasonable salary, we can\u2019t expect lawmakers to always avoid conflicts between their jobs and legislative duties.”<\/p>\n Keller’s folks pushed back against our journalism. The\u00a0chief of staff in the auditor\u2019s office,\u00a0Sunalei Stewart, wrote in an email that Haussamen’s\u00a0reporting was “very misleading.” The\u00a0reason? The public statements Haussamen highlighted from Keller denying Laguna Pueblo was a client came in 2011 and 2015\u00a0— but Blue Stone did work for\u00a0entities owned by Laguna Pueblo (but not the pueblo’s development corporation, which was the losing bidder for the state fair lease) in 2010 and 2013.<\/p>\n “When it comes to conflicts, the timeline matters as does the entity involved,” Stewart wrote in an email.<\/p>\n Haussamen\u00a0rejected that argument in another commentary<\/a>\u00a0published in September 2015:<\/p>\n When Keller\u00a0was asked in 2011 if Laguna Pueblo was\u00a0a client, the most transparent answer would have been that a Laguna-owned entity\u00a0had been\u00a0a client in the past but wasn\u2019t anymore. Keller should have also explained\u00a0why he didn\u2019t see that as a conflict.<\/p>\n When I asked in July of this year, the most transparent answer would have been to disclose that Laguna-owned entities had been clients in 2010 and 2013 and to explain why he didn\u2019t see that as\u00a0a conflict.<\/p>\n Instead, Keller kept quiet about\u00a0facts that would have helped the public judge his\u00a0juggling of his job and legislative duties.<\/p>\n This is how I see things: Keller said for years that Laguna Pueblo wasn\u2019t a client. No publicly available evidence contradicted\u00a0that claim.\u00a0Then I got my hands on the Blue Stone client list that indicated\u00a0otherwise and asked again, and Keller and Blue Stone refused to comment on whether the Laguna entities were clients.<\/p>\n So\u00a0I wrote an article<\/a> about a possible conflict. And then\u00a0a commentary<\/a>. Now the line is, well, Laguna-owned entities were clients \u2014 but not in the same year as that one quote that\u2019s on YouTube, so the entire argument that Keller had a conflict is flawed.<\/p>\n Nice try.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Haussamen’s reporting on the Keller situation also won a first-place award for investigative reporting earlier this year<\/a> in\u00a0the\u00a02015 New Mexico Press Women<\/a> contest — which made it eligible to compete in\u00a0the National Federation of Press Women (NFPW)\u00a0competition.<\/p>\n NMPolitics.net went up\u00a0against other first-place winners in state competitions from across the nation in the NFPW investigative reporting contest. NFPW, of which Haussamen is a member, describes itself as “a dynamic nationwide organization of professional women — and men — pursuing careers across the communications spectrum.”<\/p>\n A judge for\u00a0the New Mexico competition wrote that Haussamen’s reporting on the Keller situation\u00a0“demonstrates persistence required for investigative reporting, with a thoroughness in research and penchant for uncovering substantiating documents. His solid writing leads the reader along a clear path to his conclusion that lawmakers need to be compensated for their contributions\u00a0to New Mexico\u2019s governance.\u201d<\/p>\n Haussamen thanked NFPW for the recognition and the NMPolitics.net community for supporting our work.<\/p>\n “We couldn’t do it without you,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NMPolitics.net has won a national investigative reporting award for shining light on a possible conflict of interest current N.M. State Auditor Tim Keller had when he was a state senator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":55852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3297,630],"tags":[3296,137,1189],"class_list":["post-163287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journalism-awards","category-news-about-nmpolitics-net","tag-journalism-awards","tag-news-about-this-site","tag-tim-keller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Heath](\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Haussamen-Heath1-336x222.jpg\")