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.
As the CDR inquiry wound down, however, another was powering up, thanks to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo’s office was investigating pay-to-play allegations in that state’s Comptroller’s office and it didn’t take long to stumble upon New Mexico connections.
Since then, New Mexico’s former financial adviser, Saul Meyer, has pleaded guilty to security fraud charges in New York. And he has admitted recommending that New Mexico’s two investment agencies ink investment deals that were not in the state’s best fiduciary interest but that were pushed by politically connected individuals in the state.
The scandal also cost Gary Bland his $300,000 state job. Bland, the then-State Investment Officer, resigned in October, a day before the State Investment Council had scheduled a no-confidence vote. Council member and State Land Commissioner Pat Lyons has publicly said a law firm hired by the Council discovered that Bland had “pressured investment firms doing business with the state to hire certain third-party marketing or placement agents.”
No one has named the third-party marketer involved. But one name has repeatedly surfaced during New Mexico’s scandal involving third-party marketers: Marc Correra. Correra is the son of Anthony Correra, a fundraiser for and friend of Richardson’s. Both the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Mexico and the federal Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting inquiries into how the state invested taxpayer money.
But those two inquiries into the Richardson administration didn’t even get close to exhausting the scandals to hit New Mexico in 2009.
Vigil-Giron (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
In August, former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron was indicted, along with three others, on 50 criminal counts by the office of New Mexico Attorney General Gary King. Prosecutors accuse Vigil-Giron, media consultant Armando Gutierrez and Joe Kupfer and Elizabeth Kupfer of engaging in a vast money laundering and embezzlement scheme involving federal election funds.Attorneys for the defendants have blasted the indictments and called into question the thoroughness of the state’s investigation.
Meanwhile, former state lawmaker and Housing Authority executive director, Rep. Vincent “Smiley” Gallegos, had been indicted in June by King’s office for alleged misuse of bond money in the state’s affordable housing system..
And Public Regulation Commissioner Jerome Block Jr. and his father were indicted in April on election-related charges.
