A Taos Pet Peeve: Petty Power Trips and Pilfering
Cuates, Primos, & What Trickle Down?
“I’m incompetent, but I’m not a crook,” a tearful Gallegos proclaimed to a throng of supporters after hearing.— Jeremy Palowski, Journal Staff Writer. (See: http://steveterrell.blogspot.com/2005/11/through-years-with-fran-gallegos.html.
The former judge, though censored and driven from office after a decade of “incompetence,” was never punished. Indeed Fran Gallegos became a slogan for “business as usual” in northern New Mexico. Recently, at a county commission meeting, a recent arriviste and do-gooder, made the same point about the troubled administration of the Ancianos program here in Taos, saying that neither the previous board nor administrators nor their supervisors understood that “business as usual” was unacceptable. “They didn’t know.”
The speaker didn’t mention “co-mingling funds” but said past administrators for years had been borrowing from the checking account for advances or private loans to employees for buying automobiles, or traveling to far away places on the program’s buck or pilfering from funds raised by seniors for specific activities. Though she didn’t say such activity was illegal, unethical, or unlawful, she implied it and Commissioner Joe Mike Duran giggled knowingly. The board for nonprofit Ancianos, Inc. has trouble getting a quorum due to resignations lest board members become personally liable for the mismanaged program, a program mired in petty pilfering for the last decade at least.
The County is willing, in other words, to step up to the plate to take over the state-run operation in Taos, Questa, Amalia, and Chamisal but not before an audit is completed and the former operators, the board, state administrators, and the Triple A federal fund funnel, take responsibility for employee payroll perks and other potential liabilities i.e. fraud perpetrated by previous management.
In other words the County has learned its lesson from the TCHA scandal. Commissioners impetuously assumed responsibility for the Taos County Housing Authority (TCHA) before financial due diligence was completed and suffered ignominious findings in their own audit–due to the embezzlers and poor oversight by previous commissioners and appointed boards. Commissioners will meet with state officials during a work study session in early May to try and iron out the Ancianos transfer.
At TCHA a combination of conspiracy, incompetence, and nepotism, hiring primos and cuates turned into a pilfering operation at the expense of both the feds and local residents due to a lack of federal, state, and county oversight of the HUD operation. This is the third or fourth time that TCHA etc. has been subject to scandal in my memory. At least the ringleader bandidos went to prison for allegedly embezzling some $750,000, according to news reports.
TCHA and Ancianos, Inc. are two highly successful programs on the ground. Both residents and landlords have cooperated in the Section 8 program while poor people have found some sense of stability at TCHA’s site-built homes. Yet, petty thievery, hiring los primos and cuates, has led to instability.
Similarly, Ancianos, Inc. due to town, county, state, and federal funds has built centers and/or operated in Taos and the outlying areas social programs, providing inexpensive meals, transportation and bookkeeping services and/or medical and fitness programs designed for and praised by seniors. But the higher up the food chain you go, the more the programs suffer from lack of oversight and bureaucrats or politically active but do-nothing do-gooders or politicians who have historically neglected their fiscal and management responsibilities.
Similarly, Holy Cross Hospital, as has been well-documented by Robert Silver, suffers from incompetent oversight or self-selecting board members who refuse to acknowledge charges of “conflict of interest.” Now the hospital wants more subsidies from the taxpayers for the county-owned facility, operated by an out-of-state management team, more interested in profit or giving out social favors than providing good jobs or care for patients.
Yesterday, on Taos Friction (Tenacious Taosenos: the Perils and Paradox of Paradise) the editor posted a general and brief history, regarding federal largesse in greater Taos. Given the rather handsome sum(s), regarding outright grants of, say, $235 million but not counting public works projects paid for by local taxpayers at the Town, County, and Municipal Schools during the last decade, an estimate in excess of $300 million in taxpayer transfers to government has either occurred during the last decade or will be completed in the next.
According to economic reports, about 30% of Taosenos receive federal, state, and local income and welfare subsidies on an annual basis. Meanwhile, a myriad of outright state and federal grants, whether CDBG, Anti-Aging, arts, planning, or dough from private foundations for various governmental and private-public projects augment taxpayer revenue.
In other words the economic pyramid in Taos looks like it is upside down: a tiny private sector at the bottom provides the income for massive public-private government at the top. Most folks are on the dole, one way or the other, but the ones at the top benefit from more perks and the aphrodisiac associated with political power, power to profit, power to hire primos, power to give contracts to cuates, and the sheer enjoyment of power for its own sake.
In a book called, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto (sic), argues that the practice of custom instead of law in so-called third world countries, reduces opportunities for the majority to use assets and accrued equity to improve their status. When the rule of law fails, investment potential is squandered, especially due to bureaucratic or political corruption, as the wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in the upper classes and in the hands of the elite, who control the state and the distribution of public and private assets and income streams.
Meanwhile the lower or working classes get saddled with increasing tax burdens and diminishing access to services. While De Soto’s 2003 publication compares third world lawlessness to the more successful first world capitalism of countries like America or in Europe, today’s 2014 US of A oligarchs have turned the clock backwards. Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, the best congress money can buy as Mark Twain termed it, and a variety of CEOs, banksters, and other capitalist gangsters, the elite are transferring wealth from the 99.9% to the upper one-tenth of one percent, according to the latest studies illustrating “class warfare.”
As mentioned above, shoplifting or petty thievery is not restricted to Walmart shoppers. Private-public partnerships, HCH say or KCEC, have been subject to news reports, documenting questionable practices that point to unethical practices in terms of “contracts for cuates” or excessive travel or quid pro quo regarding land purchases, gerrymandered (s) election districts, and kick backs or appointments to committees for cooperation at the Coop say, or the HCH board—cooperation not necessarily in the public interest.
One must wonder, given the political-cultural environment, if the Broadband project contractors are competent at installing fiber optic light cables and whether the County and Town are benefitting from GRT, generated by the KCEC contractors. Both Town and County require public works contractors to locate offices in Taos so they pay GRT to local governments. Citizens must ask these questions.
Here’s a more interesting political-ethical conundrum. The County more obviously, according to their track record of the last decade, and the Town, as of the March 4 election, are working toward creating a culture of competence and honesty, and dare I say it, a culture of ethical government.
Commissioner Dan Barrone joined a rambunctious county culture of questionable competence and political ethics eight years ago. He and his fellow commissioners, elected officials and department heads, employees and supportive activists not only righted the ship; they built a new one at the Complex. Now Barrone is entering on a new challenge as Mayor at Town Hall. But he either needs a new staff or will have to reintroduce “ethics” to this political Peyton Place by example.
In front of me I have a twenty-page sworn affidavit, submitted by a whistle-blower to the state auditor, regarding questionable practices under the procurement code by previous elected and appointed town officials. In addition, it appears as if most folks, not everyone, but most department heads were in on the “game” at Town Hall. ( I am reminded of The Wire, y’all. “Feel me?”) A myriad of town employees, who remain in positions of authority have been trained to try and find the “gray area” in the law, according to the whistle-blower, I interviewed.
In addition, I have in my possession a number of documents (emails, RFPs, contracts, etc.) though the whistle-blower and state auditor have more. For background information, I have been reading and re-reading “Chapter 13: Public Purchases and Property, Pamphlet 29 of the NSA 1978” as well as the town’s own resolutions regarding the procurement code and CDBG regulations.
The whistle-blower himself “was advised of…termination” by Human Resources at Town Hall on March Wednesday, March 12, after the election but during the time when former Town Manager Oscar Rodriguez and Attorney Brian James were officially in charge, and prior to the appointment of Town Manager Rick Bellis and Attorney Jake Caldwell on March 17.
According to Flavio, a private contractor and custodian at Town Hall, when Bellis and Caldwell arrived on the job, the last four years of history on their computers had been wiped clean. In other words, the only metadata present on executive computers started in 2010 and went backwards. In the whistle-blower’s affidavit, he states, “Upon the town of Taos Mayor, Darren Cordova’s departure I saw a trash can filled with documents…”
Conclusion
During the last fifteen years, from time to time, accompanied by other activists or concerned and elected officials, I have joined meetings with the Attorney General, State Auditor, Secretary of State, PED representatives, or representatives of DFA/LGD. If I had only three fingers, I could count on one hand the number of times the higher-ups have intervened on behalf of citizens re: public corruption. TMS, according to Flavio, continues each year to incur “audit findings” but the board and administrators do little or nothing to correct the “findings.”
Occasionally, if the local entity is threatening to become insolvent, the state will intervene on an emergency basis as DFA did at Taos County at the turn of the century. Occasionally the accused (rarely charged or convicted) gets fired or put on administrative leave. I can think of a half dozen disgraced officials who have been rehabilitated as official or community memory fades.
Like shoplifters at the Walmart, who steal $20 or so with impunity, petty public thieves run wild and free when it comes to violating the procurement code or “pilfering” from the general fund at the town. When the DA and the town cops conspire to issue warrantless subpoenas, then drop charges, as in the KCEC Bandido case, you can’t expect much in the way of lawful behavior from other public officials.
According to the Whistle-blower’s affidavit, some of your favorite officials at Town Hall or men in blue are not above bending the code in favor of their preferred vendors and contractors. When you get a copy of the program and know who the players are, you know where to look for the bodies. Unfortunately, procurement violations cost the righteous citizens and taxpayer whether due to the need for a new roof at Youth and Family or a stagnant affordable housing complex, or a myriad of violations to the anti-donation clause that terminate in “potential clawbacks.” Sometimes it costs more to correct than to ignore the wages of sin. T’was always thus.