Lujan’s billboard snafu is the latest situation to prove the need for creation of an independent ethics commission
Here’s the latest example of a smelly situation involving public officials that probably won’t get the proper investigation it deserves because New Mexico doesn’t have an independent state ethics commission:
Did House Speaker Ben Lujan get special treatment when top officials with the state Department of Transportation searched for ways to let him keep an illegal billboard up or at least retroactively legalize it so he could be compensated for its removal?
We don’t know. And there’s a good chance we won’t know.
That’s because there’s not really an agency in place to investigate such fishy situations, except the attorney general, whose focus is on criminal activity. While lots of unethical behavior is criminal, plenty is not.
And while the Legislature does have an ethics committee and procedures in place for dealing with ethical complaints against members, the committee doesn’t do a thing. Not a thing.
Lujan, as The Santa Fe New Mexican first reported earlier this month, has been maintaining an illegal billboard along U.S. 84/285 near Pojoaque for years and was ordered by DOT to take it down in advance of an upcoming highway project.
Here’s what Lujan told the New Mexican:
“Nobody had ever notified me that there’s even a permit required in all these years that it’s been there,” he said, adding that he will talk to his lawyer and respond to the department’s letter.
Something fishy
There is a lot more to this story, and it was a weekend Albuquerque Journal article that revealed that DOT officials looked for ways to ensure Lujan could keep up the billboard or be compensated for its removal. Considering he’s the speaker of the House, that’s clue No. 1 that something could be fishy. Think anyone else got such treatment?
The Journal learned about the attempts to help Lujan from internal DOT documents it obtained from unnamed sources — records that were left out when the DOT provided a bunch of documents in response to a Journal public records request. Why did DOT omit them? “Executive privilege,” of course.
Right… That’s clue No. 2 that there’s a stench in the air.
Lujan refused to comment to the Journal. Clue No. 3.
Clue No. 4: Lujan makes thousands of dollars every year from selling advertising on the billboard. And, according to the Journal, he “introduced legislation this year that would have made the DOT’s six district engineers political appointees of the governor,” which is something many power-hungry executives would want. The bill died.
Given our state’s pay-to-play culture and Lujan’s ethically challenged past, this really stinks. Maybe there was nothing improper. Maybe there was. It’s a good thing the media is investigating, because lawmakers have refused for years to implement the tool that would help ensure shenanigans stop and the air is cleared when appearances of impropriety don’t equal actual misdeeds.
We should have an independent state ethics commission in place right now to investigate whether Lujan or any DOT official crossed an ethical line.