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.
Photo courtesy Arizona Cardinals
A Town of Bernalillo contract engineer provided Arizona Cardinals playoff tickets to then-Town Manager Stephen Jerge and a water department official last January, he has admitted — and the contractor’s wife hired Jerge to work at her firm after he resigned as town manager in the midst of a financial scandal last April.
State Auditor Hector Balderas calls the playoffs trip “troubling.”
“We have been heavily involved in the Town of Bernalillo this past year,” Balderas told The Independent. “There have been improvements but we’re aware of the allegations about the tickets. That’s currently under review by my office. We take conflict of interest allegations very seriously.”
Last month, Balderas referred to the district attorney’s office other “certain matters” regarding the Town of Bernalillo, he said. But he declined to discuss those matters.
Contract engineer Ramesh Narasimhan acknowledged he invited Jerge and former water system operator Jan Boone to join him at the playoffs in Phoenix, but insisted he was paid back and the stadium seats did not constitute a gift to town officials.
“We were very careful,”Narasimhan said. “I was paid cash for the tickets and they [Jerge and Boone] paid for their own airlines. I didn’t even pay for a meal.”
Asked whether Jerge and Boone stayed at a hotel during the trip, Narasimhan said he did not know.
“I have no idea,” he said. “They absolutely didn’t stay with me.”
Jerge resigned last April after reporters discovered he had charged $45,000 to a town credit card for dining, hotels and cash advances between 2007 and 2009. A town task force concluded in June 2009 that Jerge had falsified expense reports justifying those charges. State Police raided town offices in July, seizing a laptop and expense reports, according to Town Clerk Ida Fierro and other town officials.
Interim Town Manager Santiago Chavez relieved Boone of his duties as water operator in August and Boone subsequently resigned from Town employment altogether, Chavez said.
Narasimhan would not discuss Jerge’s credit card habits or his resignation as town manager. But Narasimhan confirmed that his wife Dale Ann, with whom he runs Narasimhan Consulting Services (NCS), hired Jerge at Electrical Development Group (EDG), a Phoenix-based firm where she is CEO.
EDG’s Web site lists Jerge as the firm’s “New Mexico Client Services Manager.”
Jerge and Dale Ann Narasimhan could not be reached for comment.
Ramesh Narasimhan would not say what exactly Jerge is doing for EDG, but insisted his wife’s hiring Jerge had nothing to do with Jerge’s having helped the couple’s firm win a lucrative project engineering contract with the Town.
“Absolutely not,” Narasimhan said. “It had absolutely nothing to do with that. You’d have to talk to my wife about why she hired him.”
After Dale Ann Narasimhan could not be reached for comment, Ramesh Narasimhan said he had spoken with his wife and she was “not interested” in commenting.
Jerge had hired NCS as project engineer for the town’s water treatment system. NCS wrote a new engineering report on the town’s arsenic treatment options, replacing one originally prepared by the town’s engineering firm of record, HDR, to recommend an experimental system produced by Bernalillo-based ARS-USA. HDR had not recommended the town purchase ARS equipment. NCS also helped Jerge secure state approval for the town’s no-bid contract to purchase the new water system, which the town has been paying NCS to help operate and calibrate.
“Others have asked me about backroom — some kind of back-room deals and stuff like that and you know, that just doesn’t happen,” Narasimhan said. “And I don’t appreciate being asked that kind of question.”
