Gov. Bill Richardson

As 2009 staggers into the history books, exhausted and a bit lighter in the pockets than when it first appeared on the scene, let’s acknowledge this: the year gave us plenty to write about.

Accusations of pay-to-play, former elected officials getting indicted, electoral surprises and an occasional David toppling a Goliath — 2009 produced it all, giving the year a healthy luster of newsworthiness despite its threadbare look.

The year showed incredible stamina, in fact, with a steady drumbeat of scoops, gotchas and revelations, exhausting many a political junkie and news professional. And 2009 didn’t take long to demonstrate its capacity to shock.

On the fourth day of 2009, an announcement in Washington landed in New Mexico with all the percussive power of a bombshell: Gov. Bill Richardson was withdrawing as President Obama’s commerce secretary, citing a federal corruption investigation into how his administration conducted business.

And the news kept coming.

Some 360 later, the year is ending the way it began — scrutiny, including from federal prosecutors, on how the state invested its money over the past half decade.

In between those two bookends, the state of New Mexico also came to the disturbing realization that it was broke, Albuquerque’s longtime mayor fell short of winning a third four-year term — knocked off by a long-shot two-term GOP state lawmaker — and two former elected officials found themselves on the business end of a criminal indictment.

It’s unclear whether what transpired this year will change the political dynamic here in New Mexico, or lead to more government transparency. But before The New Mexico Independent gets back into the daily grind, let’s take a deep breath and reflect on the busy year that was.

Click here to begin with: Scandals

Bode’s firm, Bode Aero Services, provides services at the city’s Double Eagle II airport on the West side. Bode is alleging that the city is holding his firm’s lease hostage because he said no to free or reduced air flights.

The mayor and city officials say Bode’s allegations are false.

But now Bode’s allegations are making waves in the mayor’s race with less than two weeks to go, and in a very public way.

In his 391-page deposition, Bode told an attorney deposing him earlier this year that he had videotaped two city representatives who told him that the city staff was OK with the company’s leases but that “it was the mayor who held up these leases.”

That exchange appears on the video up on St. Cyr’s blog.

Bode secretly videotaped the two men when they visited him at Double Eagle II in 2007. Bode said he has offered the videotapes to the city before the start of a state court hearing last year.

Bode says in the deposition that there is a sign in the room where the men were videotaped that a surveillance camera is in use.

But as the mayor aspires to win a third consecutive term as the city’s chief executive in October’s municipal election, the mayor and city staff find themselves arguing with a city contractor over whether the mayor violated his rule against no-bid, long-term contracts with a firm at the city-owned Double Eagle II Airport.

The contractor, John H. Bode of Bode Aero Services, which operates Double Eagle II, in a deposition taken earlier this year suggested that the city violated the mayor’s absolutism with a no-bid, long-term contract with Tri-Motor LLC.

Documents show that in May 2007 Tri-Motor LLC, secured a 30-year contract to lease land at city-owned Double Eagle II Airport to build a hangar. Click here to see the lease agreement.

Over the next year, the city amended the contract three times, giving Tri Motor LLC the option to renew the lease an additional 20 years, to 50 years, and the option of leasing more land from the city to construct two additional hangars. Tri-Motor also was able to defer for one year the rent and fee payments it was required to pay the city and to extend a period of time a charter school could operate on the land leased by the firm thanks to the changes, documents show. Click on 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd amendments.

John Casburn, Tri-Motor’s managing member, signed each of the documents.

Bode testified in a deposition that the city’s treatment of Tri-Motor LLC stands in direct contrast to the way Chavez and the city has treated his firm, and that Tri-Motor’s presence has hurt his business.

Bode has sued the mayor and the city in state and federal courts, accusing the mayor of purposely scuttling a 20-year extension of his firm’s term as the airport’s operator as retaliation for Bode’s refusal to provide Chavez and his staff with reduced or free air travel. Bode also attributes his lease troubles to concerns he and others raised about safety at Double Eagle II and how federal money was spent there, as well as to related complaints he and others filed with the Federal Aviation Administration.

But Ed Adams, the city of Albuquerque’s chief administrative officer, said Bode is mixing apples and oranges when he describes the Tri-Motor agreement as a no-bid contract. It was a simple land lease, which doesn’t require the city to go out for competitive bids, Adams said. A multiple-service agreement, such as the contract Bode has as Double Eagle’s Fixed Base Operator, involves sending out a request for bids, analyzing the bids received and negotiating an agreement with the winner, Adams said.

Also Tri-Motor LLC approached the city, not the other way around, about building a hangar at Double Eagle, a version Casburn confirmed during an interview.

Bode should welcome more airport development, Casburn added.

“In my opinion, it makes no sense why you don’t want as many people out there as you can get,” Casburn said. “One hangar brings in more business, it brings in more gas. I don’t understand it.”

Bode would like “to make the comparison” between the Tri-Motor land lease and a no-bid contract, but it’s wrong, Adams said. “This is not a service contract. This company is not providing a service to the city. They are not entering into a service contract,” he said.

Adams added, “Just because you read it in a deposition does not mean it is true.”

The competing interpretations of what the Tri-Motor contract means — evidence of the city cozying up to a developer at the expense of another or a case of a simple land lease — offer a window into a pitched battle between Bode and the city that currently is in federal and state courts, with Bode alleging that he was shaken down by staff in the Chavez administration while city representatives rebut the attacks by calling Bode mistaken or worse.

The Independent reported July 24 that Bode had alleged that the state’s economic development secretary, Fred Mondragon, repeatedly pressured Bode to provide free or reduced-price air travel for  Chavez. Bode said in his deposition that Mondragon did that when he worked as the city’s economic development director, a post he had before going to work for Gov. Bill Richardson.

Mondragon has denied the allegations.

Bode also has testified in his deposition that he captured two city officials on videotape telling him that the mayor was responsible for holding up the leases.

City officials have hit back hard, with Chavez calling the lawsuit “absolute garbage” and adding that “For $150 and a lawyer, you can say anything you want. That’s all that has happened here.”

The mayor also has accused Bode of wanting a no-bid, long-term contract to keep the Fixed Based Operator contract at Double Eagle II. The mayor has indicated that he wants to open up the contract and take bids on it, an action currently on hold as Bode’s lawsuits make their way through the courts.

In that context it is possible to view Bode Aero Services as wary of Tri-Motor as eventual competition for future fixed base operator contract, who sells fuels and maintains aircrafts at the city-owned airport, among other services.

Tri-Motor isn’t trying to edge out Bode Aero Services, Casburn said, although he added that there are people he knows who might be interested in running a general aviation airport like Double Eagle II.

“They’re some people I am involved with in other things who are interested,” Casburn said. “Bode has expressed an interest through a pipeline of possibly selling their FBO. There are people I know who might be interested in possibly buying.”

The city’s treatment of Bode and his firm have led one high-profile observer to pointedly criticize the city’s actions, particularly the city’s demand that Bode sign two non-negotiable items months after he thought negotiations on a contract extension were complete — provisions he felt would fatally damage his business.

“I am appalled that the City would have so little regard for the people that they do business with, that they entrust the public funds to that they would not evenly include them in any kind of after-the-fact discussions that amount to behind the scenes, ‘Let’s see if we undo this contract that is otherwise a good contract,’ ” State District Judge Geraldine Rivera is quoted as saying during a Aug. 19, 2008, court hearing.

Bode had asked the judge to require the city to recognize the firm’s lease extension with the city.

“There is an elephant in the room, folks,” Rivera is quoted as saying. “Nobody’s bringing it up, but we all have an idea of what it is. The day that government exists just for politics and how it can benefit the principals of our municipalities is the day we’re all in trouble. And thank God we have three branches of government.”

Rivera ruled for Bode last year and required the city to recognize the agreement extending Bode Aero Service as airport operator, a ruling that is stayed while the city appeals it.

Bode made clear in his deposition that the favorable terms the city gave Tri-Motor aren’t just a future worry, but may eat into his current business.

In one case, Tri Motor’s 50-year lease hurt negotiations Bode was having with a company wanting to put up a cell tower at Double Eagle II, Bode is quoted as saying in his 391-page deposition.

“It was a lease that we were working with Crown Castle until we — until the other developer on the airport was given additional years, and — and we can’t match that,” Bode testified.

Instead of agreeing to a 20-year extension Bode thought he had negotiated with the city aviation department, the city has demanded that Bode agree to a 18-year lease extension, calling it non-negotiable. It is a timeline that Bode has contended in a federal lawsuit would impair his company’s ability to borrow money.

Bode also testified that the city’s contract with Tri-Motor appeared to be an attempt to piecemeal some of the services that Bode Aero Services is resonsible for.

“I think they have now with the — with the  Tri-Motor hanger that’s built,” Bode is quoted as saying. “The hangering is — the real estate development is — is one side of our business.”

Casburn doesn’t go out of his way to criticize Bode Aero Services, but he made no attempt during an interview with NMI to hide the tension that he says exists between Tri-Motor and Bode Aero Services.

“They don’t even talk to me,” he said. “They’re very difficult to deal with. They kind of control it more than an FBO should.”

Casburn said he had hoped to house a charter school in the hangar but that Bode Aero Services had opposed it, making it all but impossible to put out there.

“The school said forget it, there are too many hassles,” Casburn said.

He added that because of the economy Tri-Motor had yet to land a leasee for its hangar and it had not optioned more land at Double Eagle II to build additional hangars

Rivera, the state court judge, however, took time to note the discrepancy in how Tri-Motor and Bode Aero Services were treated by the city, especially the length of agreements before she ruled in Bode’s favor.

“To shorten it by two years, I don’t understand what they’re thinking,” Rivera is quoted as saying in the court transcript from last year, referring to the 18 years, instead of 20, that the city wanted for the Bode extension. “This is almost silly that we have had to be here to do this, and I’m embarrassed for the City for this. The fact that the Casburn Lease, which is on airport property, is 30 years with two ten-year renewal options, 50 years, and you know darn well that if they’re making money they’re going to exercise their options, unless the City goes in to renegotiate and gives them something else to make it worth their while.”

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez

With less than three months to go before Albuquerque’s municipal election, Mayor Martin Chavez is facing a politically charged federal lawsuit.

In sworn testimony the plaintiff in that case — a city contractor —  is making detailed allegations against the mayor and some city staff involving pressure for favors.

According to a 391-page deposition taken of John H. Bode under oath, the state’s economic development secretary, Fred Mondragon, repeatedly pressured Bode, the operator at the city-owned Double Eagle II Airport, to provide free or reduced-price air travel for Chavez.

Bode accuses the mayor in the lawsuit of refusing to renew Bode’s airport contract in retaliation for Bode declining to provide free or discounted air travel to Mexico and New Mexico destinations on several occasions. At one point Bode is quoted as saying in his deposition that he knows Chavez is holding up the renewal of the contract in question. He says he has two city officials on videotape telling him as much in 2007 — that the mayor was responsible for holding up the leases.

Chavez, now a candidate for reelection, has called Bode’s lawsuit “absolute garbage” and accused Bode of trying to win a no-bid, long-term contract.

“You don’t get long-term no-bid contracts in my administration,” Chavez said late last week.

Bode, whose company, Bode Aero Services, is the fixed base operator at the city’s far Westside airport, says that Mondragon repeatedly asked for special deals on air travel. At the time of the alleged requests Mondragon was Albuquerque’s economic development director, a political appointee of the mayor. He is now Gov. Bill Richardson‘s secretary of economic development.

In one instance, Bode is quoted as saying, “Mr. Mondragon specifically asked for us to set up a vacation for the mayor before or after one of the business trips to Mexico, and he said that he would prefer Acapulco or Puerto Vallarte (sic), and that if we could just arrange something at one of the resorts, it would be, you know, fun for everybody to go do.”

Bode then goes into further detail about Mondragon’s alleged request.

“He asked me to cover the expenses of that for the mayor and said that this was a good way — this is the way that, you know, politics worked in New Mexico. This is a good way for me to grow my business,” Bode is quoted as saying.

Beyond accusing Mondragon, Bode also alleges that other city staff requested free or reduced-fare flights for Chavez on two occasions — to Las Cruces and Carlsbad — during the mayor’s brief run for the U.S. Senate in 2007.

On one occasion a city employee other than Mondragon called to ask Bode to set up the flight to Las Cruces for a fundraiser, Bode alleges in the deposition.

Bode quoted prices and the employee said he’d call back, according to the transcript.

“I don’t know if he called me back or if I called him back, but we ended up talking, and he said that he was going to — to have to fly Marty himself if we wouldn’t do it for free,” Bode is quoted as saying.

On Thursday afternoon Mondragon denied Bode’s statements, saying, “These allegations are completely untrue.”

Chavez punches back

Chavez, meanwhile, has offered a full-throated denunciation of Bode’s lawsuit.

“Let’s understand what is going on here,” Chavez told NMI’s David Alire Garcia late last week in an interview that will be broadcast on KNME’s New Mexico In Focus Friday night. “This is a city contractor. They are out at Double Eagle. What they want is a no-bid, long-term contract to service out there. I said, ‘No.’ They’re not going to have it. They have to bid like everyone else. If they win, then so be it. ”

“For $150 and a lawyer, you can say anything you want,” Chavez added. “That’s all that has happened here.”

A call to a Chavez spokesperson seeking a response to Bode’s allegations was not returned Thursday.

Peter Pierotti, the attorney for Albuquerque’s aviation department who deposed Bode, said Thursday that he had no comment on the airport operator’s allegations other than, “The judge in the federal lawsuit has said this case shouldn’t be tried in the media.”

Bode’s deposition

Bode aired his allegations in the deposition while under oath over several hours May 29 and June 1 at the Albuquerque International Sunport, the city’s commercial airport.

According to Bode’s deposition, Mondragon’s first overture for air travel for Chavez came during a three- or four-day trip to Guadalajara, Mexico. Bode alleges that Mondragon asked Bode to set up a flight and cover the expenses to Puerta Vallarta or Acapulco as a vacation for the mayor tacked onto a city business trip.

Mondragon asked Bode to price such a trip at a Guadalajara bar following a business meeting that morning, Bode explains in the deposition.

Bode acknowledges that the mayor, who was standing nearby at the time, may not have heard Mondragon’s overture.

“I told him I couldn’t afford it,” Bode says in the deposition. “I told him — I said I’ve never had a politician ask for — for the things that the mayor asked for and that I don’t want to get involved in anything.”

Bode’s allegations stretch from 2005 to 2007 and center on his belief that that the problems with the renewal of his lease are directly tied to his rebuffing such alleged requests. He also attributes his lease troubles to concerns he and others raised about safety at Double Eagle II and how federal money was spent there, as well as to related complaints he and others filed with the Federal Aviation Administration.

Bode’s deposition suggests that Bode eventually grew tired of the alleged requests.

“Mr. Mondragon constantly tried to get things for free,” Bode said.

In 2007, Bode says in the deposition, he fielded a call from Mondragon, who was asking Bode to set up another flight to Guadalajara for Chavez. Bode said he informed Mondragon and another city employee that neither he nor any of his pilots would do that trip.

“I was tired of being asked to do that, to provide the free services,” Bode is quoted as saying.

That incited the mayor’s anger, Bode said to his interlocutor during the marathon deposition.

As for proof that he has incited the mayor’s wrath, Bode says in the deposition that he has two city representatives on videotape telling him that the city staff was OK with the company’s leases but that “it was the mayor who held up these leases.”

Bode secretly videotaped the two men when they visited him at Double Eagle II in 2007. Bode said he has offered the videotapes to the city.

The city, meanwhile, is denying that Bode and his company were ever asked to provide free air service to Chavez, according to a response to Bode’s lawsuit that was filed in federal court.

The response also contends that Bode never exercised his option to renew the lease, which Bode refutes.

In the deposition, Bode states that his company filed a notice to renew its lease in 2003-’04 and that the proof of its efficacy was the increased rent his company started paying that was associated with the new lease.

The city contends in court documents that Bode’s firm “voluntarily began to pay the increased rents and abide by other provisions of the proposed lease amendments.” The city accepted the increased payments and performance pending the outcome of an appeal of a state district court order requiring the city to enforce the lease amendments, the court documents say.

Bode apparently did offer deep discounts on at least one occasion to the mayor and city staff, according to his own retelling.

For the Guadalajara trip where Mondragon is said to have made the first overture, Bode tells the attorney deposing him that he offered a 40 percent to 50 percent discount, a much steeper discount than the 10 to 20 percent discount his firm usually offers long-time clients.

Bode goes on to say that the mayor was the only politician his company has flown who sought such deep discounts or free air travel. Other politicians who have flown with Bode’s company are Gov. Bill Richardson, U.S. Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, and former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici.

Bode also says the city still has an outstanding bill for a flight his company arranged shortly after the trip to Guadalajara in which a pilot flew from Chihuahua to Las Noches to pick up the mayor and city staff traveling with him.

Mondragon had arranged for a train ride for the mayor and certain city staff through Copper Canyon in Chihuahua state, Bode is quoted as saying. The mayor requested that a plane be sent to pick them up in Las Noches, the train’s terminus.

“We never got paid for the part to go over to Las Noches and pick everybody up — or Las Noches back to Chihuahua, which was one of the change itineraries,” Bode charges in the deposition.

Bode’s firm collected for the flight to Chihuahua from New Mexico after a year or so, and it was his recollection that those who were on the flight, including the mayor, wrote personal checks, he says. Mondragon, Deborah James, the mayor’s spokeswoman, and Jay Evans, the city’s Parks and Recreation Department director, were on that trip, Bode is quoted as saying.

During the time his company was trying to collect payment on that portion of the trip, he recalled a conversation with the city’s then-Aviation Department Director Mike Rice.

“He was trying to work with Fred (Mondragon) to decide if it was going to come out of the aviation budget or if it was going to come out of the Parks and Rec’s budget, and I said, Well, isn’t this supposed to be determined beforehand when you request a flight and agree to — that we’re going to provide these services, and I remember asking him, you know, do I need to start sending out — or getting a credit card from the city, or you know, an authorization number beforehand, and you know, he said something to the effect of, you know, it just depends what the mayor wants.”

NMI’s David Alire Garcia contributed to this story.

That’s the money quote in an article published in the Albuquerque Journal this morning. The article details allegations that Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chávez retaliated against a city airport operator because the company refused to provide free or discounted air service for travel to Mexico and during Chávez’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2007, and also because the company raised questions about how public money was being spent.

The quote came from District Judge Geraldine Rivera, who in August ordered the city to sign lease agreements it had negotiated with Bode Aero Services Inc., an operator at Double Eagle II airport on the city’s west side. She made her comment at that hearing, which was held when Bode sued in the dispute over contract negotiations.

There’s also a separate, federal lawsuit in which the allegation of retaliation is made.

The FBI is now investigating, the Journal reported, citing City Councilor Michael Cadigan, a critic of the mayor who said he has been interviewed by the agency.

The city says Bode is slinging mud in an attempt to win a better lease deal without competitive bidding, the Journal reported. It’s also worth noting that the state Court of Appeals has indicated that it will overturn the judge’s ruling ordering the city to sign the agreement with Bode.

Let’s also keep in mind that it’s an election year in the City of Albuquerque, folks. I’m not opining on how that plays into all of this… Just saying.