RIO RANCHO — The state of New Mexico is on the hook to the federal government for $6 million for improperly billing voter-education-related expenses from 2004 through 2006, a federal elections agency says.

And several state agencies are scrambling to find the money by Friday, the latest in a series of deadlines, officials said.

The $6 million debt comes at a time of increasing economic hardship for the state, as evidenced by Gov. Bill Richardson’s announcement recently to trim spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. That move came after budget forecasts showed revenue down by $340 million from previous estimates for the year that ends June 30. State lawmakers, meanwhile, learned recently that New Mexico is in for a period of belt tightening that likely will extend well past mid-2009.

The debt figure to the federal government comes from a federal audit and an executive decision rendered by the Election Assistance Commission earlier this year. The audit, released in May, questioned spending of federal funds by the secretary of state’s office under Rebecca Vigil-Giron from 2004 through 2006.

The EAC established the Nov. 14 deadline in a Sept. 24 letter addressed to New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera.

Three options are under discussion to satisfy the federal government’s demand, Deputy Secretary of State Don Francisco Trujillo said.

One is to try to recover the money from the parties involved. Nearly all the $6 million that the EAC found to be improperly billed to the federal government from 2004 through 2006 related to a voter-education contract Vigil-Giron signed with A. Gutierrez & Associates in 2004.

Another option is to ask the Legislature to appropriate $6 million to pay off the debt.

The third option, and most popular, Trujillo said, is what turns out to be, in effect, a complicated accounting procedure.

One part of the plan would require asking the Legislature in January to retroactively expand the purpose of a 2006 law that set aside $11 million to pay for voting tabulators and other equipment purchased when the state converted to a single, statewide paper ballot system. Expanding the purpose of the law would allow the state to pay for the $6 million in election-related services improperly billed to the federal government. At the same time the state would attempt to get the federal government to qualify the already-purchased voting equipment as coverable under the Help America Vote Act of 2002. In effect, the state would use federal funds to pay for the voting equipment, thereby satisfying the federal government’s debt, Trujillo said.

While Trujillo said he favored this option, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance and Administration said, “We are still exploring all three options.”

The Legislative Finance Committee is the third state agency involved in the discussions.

Friday is the latest deadline for the state to respond to the EAC’s demand that New Mexico settle the $6 million debt. The state requested and the EAC granted a 30-day extension last month, giving the state more time to respond to the federal agency’s demand.

The audit findings were released in May in which the Inspector General of the Federal Election Assistance Commision found that the state Attorney General’s office did not review an Aug. 26, 2004, letter in which Vigil-Giron agreed to pay the contractor, Armando Gutierrez of A. Gutierrez & Associates Inc., a 17 percent administrative fee. Ultimately, Gutierrez was paid more than $6 million for voter education work. Part of that payment included a $1 million administrative fee.

Gutierrez & Associates produced TV and radio advertisements featuring Vigil-Giron that ran by the thousands in English, Spanish and Navajo leading up to the 2004 general and 2006 primary and general elections.

That work netted Gutierrez & Associates more than $6 million in payments, or roughly a third of all federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) money sent to New Mexico to assist in planning and running the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, according to the audit.

In addition, the audit found that the Gutierrez & Associates could account for only $2.6 million in spending for 44,500 spots of the roughly $4.8 million budgeted for production and voter education, according to state documents and the summary of the audit findings.

Since 2007, the EAC has sought a New Mexico attorney general’s opinion on how many millions of dollars may have been misspent in the voter education campaign, but that opinion has not been rendered and it is unclear when it will be forthcoming.

Vigil-Giron, whose term as secretary of state ended Dec. 31, 2006, has said no wrongdoing occurred, despite the audit’s findings.

After an unsuccessful bid to win the Democratic nomination for the 1st Congressional District, Vigil-Giron is again working for the state, having been recently hired at the Department of Workforce Solutions.