{"id":70425,"date":"2015-08-03T18:21:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T00:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=70425"},"modified":"2015-08-04T13:50:21","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T19:50:21","slug":"hey-tax-and-rev-since-youre-ignoring-my-questions-ill-write-about-your-silence-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2015\/08\/hey-tax-and-rev-since-youre-ignoring-my-questions-ill-write-about-your-silence-instead\/","title":{"rendered":"Hey, Tax and Rev: Since you’re ignoring my questions, I’ll write about your silence instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state’s Taxation and Revenue Department provided\u00a0me\u00a0an email last week that might\u00a0back up its claim\u00a0that the cabinet secretary didn’t pressure\u00a0employees<\/a> to give special treatment to a taxpayer she used to work for.<\/p>\n

\"Heath<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The answer depends on facts the department isn’t currently making available to the public.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, department spokesman Ben Cloutier provided NMPolitics.net with a copy of the\u00a0Oct. 15, 2014 email<\/a>\u00a0that references\u00a0the taxpayer. Kevin Sourisseau, then the department\u2019s Audit & Compliance Division deputy director, wrote in the email that an audit of the taxpayer \u201chas not received any special consideration from the audit staff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you for your support with this difficult and uncomfortable issue,\u201d he wrote to\u00a0Lizzy Vedamanikam, director of the department\u2019s Administrative Services Division.<\/p>\n

The email\u00a0refers to a discussion about\u00a0the audit with Padilla the day before\u00a0and states that \u201cNo changes have been made to the audit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0have recused herself from involvement in an audit of a former client?<\/p>\n

If she didn’t, that\u00a0might be scandalous.<\/p>\n

But maybe she did recuse herself. Maybe Padilla met\u00a0with 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\u00a0situation.<\/p>\n

That might make the email evidence that Padilla and staff at least attempted to act\u00a0with integrity.<\/p>\n

So, among my questions: “What was Secretary Padilla’s involvement in this audit and the meeting the email references?”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That’s right. Crickets.<\/p>\n

Maybe they don’t want to respond\u00a0because the answers would be scandalous.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0valid and explained to me. I’d include that context in anything I wrote.<\/p>\n

But it’s my job to be skeptical. Word to the wise: When my questions are ignored, my eyebrows raise.<\/p>\n

And sometimes I write about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An email the state’s Taxation and Revenue Department gave me last week raises questions about the cabinet secretary’s involvement in an audit. Those questions need to be answered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[107,706],"class_list":["post-70425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-roundhouse","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70425","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70425\/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=70425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}