So what?

Is mudslinging not part and parcel to New Mexico politics?
Further, I am curious if there is even one person who has called Scarantino a mudslinger in a post or a comment, who can also point to a post or a comment they made condemning Marty Chavez for the mud he slung at Richard Berry.

The motivation of the slinger does not play. If they is a glob of mud in your punchbowl you deal with it. It makes no difference who flung it there or why.

Look at each individual glop. It is either true or false on its own merits; completely independent of who threw it or why.

If it is false, point to the falsity and attaching it to the slinger as careless, or deliberately dishonest; a lie.

If is it true, explain, defend, deny, or at the very least, acknowledge it.

For the most part, on Scarantino’s report, I’m thinking so what?

As for the public opinion poll glob, I say money well spent.

As for the Christmas card creation, I’m less certain that that was the very best things our tax dollars might have bought.

After examining all the globs, come to a conclusion based on the facts.

If after examining all of the globs, find another name for Jim Scarantino.

Rather than a “mudslinger” he is right or wrong, honest or dishonest, accurate or inaccurate, whatever or whatever else.

Let’s all work real hard to make sure that our next governor is a woman of character, competence and courage.

“Please understand my role as New Mexico Watchdog,”
—————
Seems that “New Mexico Mudslinger” would be more appropriate.

The 2003 Stimulus bill was principally a tax relief bill for small businesses and families. There was one section that provided funds directly to states for temporary fiscal relief, including $62 million for New Mexico. These funds were to help states facing budget crunches because of the recession and could be used only to provide “essential government services” or “to cover the costs to the State of complying with any Federal intergovernmental mandate”.

The use of the funds was further limited by the requirement that they could only be used for “expenditures permitted under the most recently approved budget for the State.”

As Mr. Scarantino pointed out and the GAO report confirms, unlike other states, New Mexico’s legislature didn’t allocate the funds. They were put in a special account and spent solely at the discretion of the Governor. He gave some of them to the Lt Governor to spend. Under the federal law, the Governor had to certify in writing that the funds were spent for essential government services or to cover the costs of unfunded mandates.

There are a lot of things that would qualify as essential government services — school teachers, road repairs, state police overtime, head start or child protective services. The idea that paying for contract employees to do public relations work for the Lieutenant Governor is an essential government service that must be maintained during a recession is laughable.

Even more troubling is the response of the Lieutenant Governor when confronted by the facts Mr. Scarantino uncovered. She didn’t accept responsibility for the misuse of federal funds, ask for an audit and correct the problem. Quite the reverse. She defends spending money on PR and media work and paying someone to drive her to events as “essential” during a recession.

You are quite right, Heath, that the amount of taxpayer’s money Mrs. Denish used to have someone prepare her campaign Christmas Cards was small. Her defensive response — lashing out at the sunshine rather than fixing what the sunshine revealed — says something important about her leadership. We won’t be able to count on her to clean up the self-dealing and fiscal mismanagement that plagues Santa Fe because she is part of the problem. That is a very big deal.

The response by the Lieutenant Governor reinforces my initial reaction to Mr. Scarantino’s story: we need an audit to find out how these federal economic stimulus funds were used.

Unlike most other states which added funds to general revenues, New Mexico created a $62 million account that can be audited. It was entirely under the control of the Governor and the Lt. Governor. If the Lieutenant Governor thinks her $225,000 for PR, media and polling were “essential” and that using taxpayer funded help to send out her campaign Christmas cards was okay, what else did she and the Governor think was perfectly acceptable?

An audit will find out and the people who earned those tax dollars and turned them over to the government deserve to know.

Heather Wilson

It’s late, but I have one thought for now, and I may add more later. I did not, as you claimed, ignore the fact that “most of the $225,000 in federal stimulus money was spent on PR for the Lt. Governor.” Here’s what this article states:

“The governor certified in a letter to the feds in 2003 that the money would be spent according to the two requirements from the act. And, with that, he gave some of the money to Denish, who spent much of it on a poll related to children’s issues in New Mexico – one of the primary focuses of Denish’s work as lieutenant governor – and hiring contractors to do public relations and media work and shuttle her around.”

That clearly says Denish spent much of the money on the poll — about 10 percent, as you pointed out — and hiring contractors to do public relations and media work and shuttle her around.

The Journal’s reporters, though, did uncover that the Christmas cards were for the Lt. Governor’s campaign committee, meaning that federal stimulus dollars paid for labor in preparing those cards. Heath got a different story later from Denish’s chief of staff, but didn’t catch the contradiction. I am quite surprised to see you let the chief of staff off with a “it was a long time ago” excuse.

Heath has been quite selective in his review of how the Lt. Governor spent the stimulus money given to her, focusing on a poll on which he says “much” of the money given Denish was spent. If fact, that poll represented less than a tenth of the money given her. He simply ignored the majority of other expenditures. Heath says I didn’t look into what the poll was about, political polling or something else. But in my report I did in fact state the poll was related to the Children’s Cabinet. [In a paragraph close to the end, Heath]. So I would say that, even after looking into published reports for two days, Heath’s critique is far more incomplete than my report, which covered the full range of the expenditures of the $225,000.

Heath’s revelations about the Governor spending the stimulus funds without legislative approval were covered in a report I did more than a month ago. He could have at least acknowledged that. It was linked in the Denish story.

Heath has also ignored the fact that, as the Albuquerque Journal confirmed, most of the $225,000 in federal stimulus money was spent on PR for the Lt. Governor, a fact which in itself is worthy of being known by taxpayers. Is PR an essential government service, something for which stimulus funds should be used? At least the taxpayers have the right to know that’s how their money was spent.

My first report [more to follow] opened the investigation on this. The Journal has discovered, as Heath now admits, that the Lt. Governor used federal stimulus funds on Christmas cards for her campaign committee. [There are two invoices showing this, Heath, not just the one you mentioned]. Is that not also something the public should know? Of course it is.

It’s not my job to make allegations. I seek to report facts, facts which have not been disputed by Heath or Lt. Governor Denish. He may put a different spin on them, but he does not dispute the facts in the report. I think that is what matters most.

Maybe Heath and the Lt. Governor aren’t impressed by how $225,000 of public money gets spent. No big deal, maybe. The Lt. Governor’s chief of staff has attempted to marginalize the value of $225,000. We think the details on how every penny of the taxpayers’ money is spent still matters. And it doesn’t have to illegal to be newsworthy. There is still a need to report on how taxpayer money gets wasted.

We will keep digging into public records, plowing through stacks of paper, and bringing facts to light about how taxpayers’ money is being spent and misspent. And if other journalists take the investigation further from our start, we are pleased. The more the public knows about how their money gets spent, the better.

Heath, my friend, we should hold the Lt. Governor to the same high standards against which you have measured the conduct of lower level public officials in your past reporting. And, as for your closing comment about why anyone would want to involve an Attorney General, please remember, that’s who enforces the law, for everyone, be they a big or little public official.

While principles are important, and some have even argued that there is no such thing as an unimportant principle, none of this is a hill worth dying on.

One thing disturbs me; it has to do with Diane Denish calling Jim Scarantino “a liar”.

He wrote that people had “worked” on the Christmas cards, a fact she didn’t deny.
She then furnished proof that she had paid for the “printing and mailing”, and that
that proof proves Scarantino a liar. It did not. It was a red herring at best, and seems
deliberately deceitful.

Or did I miss something?