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.
New Mexico State Auditor Hector Balderas
What was billed as a debate about public school education Thursday night morphed into a slugfest about ill-advised jet flights and alleged inappropriate spending.
Democrat Diane Denish knocked Republican Susana Martinez, Dona Ana County’s District Attorney, for what she called out-of-control spending. Martinez denounced Denish for her cavalier use of the state jet as the state’s lieutenant governor.
Keeping track of who won the most political points — often scored with the aid of rehearsed one-liners and rehash from old campaign press releases — proved tricky during the first gubernatorial debate Thursday night.
In fact, the biggest winner might have been someone not even in the room: state auditor Hector Balderas.
In a rare meeting of the minds Thursday night, both Denish and Martinez acknowledged that more auditing of public schools was necessary given the high-profile scandal at Jemez Mountain School District, a small northern New Mexico school district rocked by scandal last year. A former business manager of the district pleaded guilty earlier this year to embezzling just under $4 million in public money over several years. The woman, Kathy Borrego, took her life two days before she was to be sentenced in May.
That scandal provided one more example of high-profile corruption cases that have buffeted New Mexico over the past five years, resulting in the imprisonment of several former public officials.
“There are schools now in New Mexico that haven’t been audited,” Martinez said of the requirement that districts complete audits every year. “It is reckless. We have to provide the best education and implement the best accounting practices.”
Added Denish: “We agree that every school has to be audited.”
More oversight to come?
The two candidates seeing eye-to-eye on more oversight lifted Balderas’ spirits Thursday night, planting a seed of hope that better days are ahead for his agency financially.
“I feel like I’ve been at the back of the room waving my arms,” Balderas told The Independent in a phone interview after the debate. The State Auditor’s Office is charged with an oversight role in how taxpayer money is spent, but has not always gotten the money necessary to dig up all the fraud and waste Balderas believes may be out there.
The operating budget for the agency is about $3 million and Balderas’ staff numbers under 30 people. Of those 17 or 18 are auditors, he said.
His employees review the hundreds of audits the agency contracts out each year to be performed by private firms on local governments, school districts and state agencies around the state. In addition to reviewing those outside studies, many of them complex, the internal auditors perform three or four public audits themselves. The fees generated by those help pay for the agency’s operations, Balderas said.
“Everybody publicly supports the concept of auditing,” Balderas said, noting that his agency has been cut more severely than the rest of state government. The cost-saving measures come at a time when his office has attempted to strengthen the oversight his office provides.
“We’ve been aggressive about informing the public, the media and the government of the great risks that are posed by not having more robust, aggressive oversight,” Balderas said.
Waste and fraud costs state
He quotes a common estimate that a government can lose 3 percent to 6 percent to waste and fraud without strong oversight in place. In New Mexico, that could run into the tens of millions of dollars.
In fact, less than a month after Jemez Mountain School District embezzler Borrego’s suicide in Abiquiu, a former Lovington School District employee was arraigned for embezzlement on the other end of the state.
Lovington was one of five New Mexico school districts Balderas designated as “at risk” of fraud because they had failed to complete state-mandated audits.
And it isn’t just school districts. Balderas announced earlier this year that more than 40 state agencies remain unaudited, in violation of state law that requires every governmental agency to perform annual audits. Currently there is no penalty for noncompliance by most state agencies and local governments, the exception being the Public Education Department, he said.
Balderas had lobbied state lawmakers to pass a state law requiring the withholding of funds from agencies that do not complete their annual audits. He also pushed another bill that would have made it a crime to obstruct the auditing process. Neither passed the Legislature.
“There’s been a massive disappointment that we’ve struggled to bring about greater legal consequences,” he said.
But Balderas is hopeful that times are changing, and state officials see the need for more oversight — whoever the next governor happens to be.
“Both candidates, from what I can tell, have expressed the opinion that the auditing process needs to be improved,” Balderas said.
