I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The Rio Grande Sun, Española’s hard-hitting newspaper, called out the Jemez Mountain School District board in an editorial over the weekend, demanding that board members resign en masse.
The paper’s editorial comes after revelations in mid August that the district’s longtime business manager, Kathy Borrego, is alleged to have embezzled $3.3 million from the tiny school district over several years.
The size and sophistication of the scheme has surprised state officials and led the New Mexico Public Education Department to take over the district’s finances.
Borrego stole more than 530 checks, forged signatures and cleared them through the Valley National Bank in Española over seven years, according to an executive summary of a special report published by the Office of the State Auditor.
The length and breadth of the alleged scheme is what fueled the paper’s demand to demand the board’s resignation.
Here’s an excerpt from the editorial:
We can write-off a few months of skimming as someone who just didn’t care and knew they’d get caught. If it went on for a year, one must question how it went on without someone’s knowledge. Again most readers are screaming “checks and balances.”
However, when a business manager can allegedly shift $3.3 million out of the District’s bank accounts by writing many checks to many different people (as yet unnamed), you’ve got to look up and see who was over her. There had to be some knowledge somewhere up the chain, possibly down also.
The editorial writer, R. Braiden Trapp, goes on to write, “The best thing for Jemez Mountain School District at this time is for the entire board to resign and have a new board appointed by the state education department in accordance with NMSA 22-5-9.”
If the board doesn’t step down, Trapp writes that “a group of five intelligent, honest, possibly business minded individuals, (perhaps a parent or two) need to get together and execute the proper paperwork and petitions for a recall election in accordance with NMSA 22-7-13.”
No one that I know of has yet accused individual board members of knowing about the embezzlement.
But the ambition and arrogance of the alleged scheme is startling if it went down as authorities say it did.
Five hundred and thirty five of the checks were cashed or deposited into various personal accounts, while three checks were “provided to other subjects who cashed or deposited the amounts into their accounts,” reads the executive summary from a special report put out by the State Auditor’s office.
It is unclear who those other individuals are.
It was clear that Borrego was controlling the money going in and out of the school district, State Auditor Hector Balderas told me two-and-a-half weeks ago after his special report came out. “She was shifting balances and even altering [bank] statements,” he said.
The executive summary of the auditor’s special report showed that while checks were drawn on 10 separate school district accounts, Borrego allegedly used the payroll account and an account called “SB-9″ more than the others to pull off the scheme. A total of 104 checks totaling $621,000 were drawn on the payroll account while 210 checks worth more than $1.34 million were drawn on the “SB-9″ account, according to the summary.
The district also didn’t use good fiscal practices, say like divvying up duties, say putting one person in charge of purchasing, another of bank statements and still another watching the internal ledger, Balderas told me at the time. “All this was consolidated under her,” he said.
Stay tuned to this story. We’ll see if the Jemez Mountain School District board pays heed to the Sun’s demand.
Also there’ll likely be more developments as police investigators continue to sift through Borrego’s and the school district’s records.
