In light of Metro Court scandal, feds should look into architect’s contract to design Doña Ana County facility

Marc Schiff’s attorney says the only time his client used his architect firm to steal money from the state was when he inflated and falsified invoices for construction of the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court.

But suspicious circumstances surrounding the firm’s selection to design Doña Ana County’s new building make me skeptical.

In the Bernalillo County case, Schiff and two others have pleaded guilty to conspiracy and mail fraud in what prosecutors call a complex scheme to bilk taxpayers out of $4.2 million. Four others, including former Senate President Manny Aragon, are charged in the case.

Schiff isn’t accused of keeping any money for himself, but admits to taking hundreds of thousands of dollars and passing it on to others. His attorney says he feared losing the contract if he didn’t.

At the time of his crimes, Schiff was president of Design Collaborative Southwest. The firm has since severed its ties with him and renamed itself Studio Southwest.

It was still DCSW when it bid in early 2003 on the contract to design the $20-million Doña Ana County Government Center. As is standard, a committee ranked the bidders in April 2003 based on criteria listed in the request for proposals. DCSW scored last among the four.

When commissioners met a month later to select an architect, they decided to disregard the committee’s work and ignore the criteria bidders had been told would be considered.

Instead of a voice vote, commissioners voted on paper ballots. After collecting them, the county manager said at the public meeting that three of five picked DCSW, but didn’t say how each commissioner voted.

Then the paper ballots vanished.

Special audit found procurement code violation

It was one of a number of suspicious situations in county government that caught the attention of the state auditor in 2004. A special audit found widespread problems, including three findings referred to prosecutors – one of them a violation of the procurement code in the selection DCSW.

The audit states that commissioners “may have intentionally violated the procurement code” because of the suspicious nature of DCSW’s selection. In addition, the paper-ballot vote violated the Open Meetings Act.

At the helm of county government at the time was former Commissioner Gilbert Apodaca, who was accused of bribery twice during his tenure. An FBI investigation never resulted in criminal charges.

The 2003 vote wasn’t the first time the Doña Ana County commission selected DCSW for a project under unusual circumstances. In 1998, the commission voted 3-2 to hire DCSW to design a renovation to the county jail. Before the vote, two commissioners questioned whether politics had unduly influenced the process because then-County Manager Fernando Macias, a former state senator and now a district judge, took the unusual step of putting himself on the committee that ranked bidders.

Apodaca was the only commissioner involved in both decisions. He was chairman in 1998.

Apodaca has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and Macias has defended his membership on the 1998 committee by saying it made sense because he was involved in the push to expand the jail.

Schiff’s attorney, Joseph Riggs, told me federal investigators examined a number of DCSW projects, including, he believes, the Doña Ana County Government Center, and found “no proof of any misconduct” in instances other than the metro court situation because “there was none.”

Spokesmen for the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office refused to comment, but the prosecutor on the metro court case has said the investigation is ongoing.

Building is complete, but questions remain

Apodaca left the commission at the end of 2004, and the county responded to the audit by becoming a much more ethical organization. Still, questions remain about the selection of the firm that designed the striking new building on Motel Boulevard.

If they haven’t already, federal investigators should look into the Doña Ana County situation. The 2004 special audit was passed around like a hot potato by prosecutors and sat, mostly untouched, on a number of desks for a year and a half before the Santa Fe district attorney announced in 2006 that no charges would be filed. His office found only misdemeanors, and the statute of limitations had expired.

But state investigators only considered whether there was a procurement code violation, not why commissioners might have intentionally violated the code. In light of the situation in Bernalillo County, it’s time the feds did just that.

A shorter version of this article was published today in the Albuquerque Tribune. I write a column for the newspaper that runs on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month.