Audit reveals incompetence so egregious as to be corrupt.

When your tax dollars are spent buying concrete, the contract for the sale and service is managed on your behalf by public servants who work in the City's, Department of Municipal Development. Their job is to protect you from getting screwed by contractors with the city.

There has been an audit of the management of one of those contracts, done by the City of Albuquerque, Office of Internal Investigations, link,

The audit reveals the mismanagement of the contract, that is so egregious that it points to corruption. The fact that the beneficiary of the mismanagement is the nephew of one of Mayor Marty Chavez' cronies points there as well. That and the fact that a nondescript landscaping company rose to economic prominence on a whole bunch of contracts with the City. link.

What we have here is a barrel of apples, and one of them has turned up really, really rotten. It stands to reason that there are other rotten apples as well.

You cannot cause a search for those apples. The system is set
up so that if you want any other apple checked for rot, you have
to first point to the rot. In effect, if they can keep corruption
out of the newspaper, your Office of Internal Investigations
will not go looking for any other rotten apples.

That's really too bad because there is stink coming from the
Balloon Museum apple, and from the federal grant money
spent at the Double Eagle Airport apple, and from, I would
suppose any apple you cared to sniff.

The buck (millions and millions of bucks actually) stops on
Marty Chavez' desk.

Even if we cannot tie him personally to any of the corruption,
it happened on his watch. His Municipal Development Division enabled gross fraud. His subordinates showed up on video tape, link, shaking down John Bode.

Why is he still seriously considered for re-election?

Why does he not have to answer for the corruption that he enabled?




This is the part where voters hold public servants accountable at the polls, for their incompetence and for their corruption.

If we don't, we will continue to have government that tolerates and enables public corruption and incompetence.




Photo Mark Bralley