Jemez Mountain Schools had a "clean" audit.

In the Journal this morning, link, we read that three months
before it was revealed that millions of dollars had been
embezzled from the Jemez Mountain School District, an
independent auditor had given the school district a clean audit;
no findings of any irregularities.

The embezzlement averaged $500K a year, approximately
one dollar of every eight, of the district's annual budget.

According to the Journal report, a partner in the firm that
did the audit said;

"...embezzlement would not typically be discovered in the
course of an independent annual audit."

I have an idea; the next time taxpayers pay for an independent audit, lets add embezzlement to the list of the things that auditors look for!

In the Journal article we find;

"Balderas said he's not surprised the independent audit
failed to detect alleged embezzlement.

"In the short two years that I've been state auditor,
I've concluded that the financial auditing system we
have in place is really inadequate to provide the type of
protections and assurances that citizens deserve," he said.

Balderas said hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds
are at risk because the state auditing function is
massively underfunded. He said while his office is
responsible for overseeing 600 to 700 state and local
government entities, it has only about a dozen in-house
auditors."

At the risk of endlessly repeating myself, State Auditor Balderas says he can find all of the embezzlement that independent auditors apparently cannot find, if only given the necessary resources.

Fund the Balderas Plan to forensically audit the culture of corruption out of existence.
It seems like another no brainer.


Sheriff Greg Solano, a candidate for Lt Governor, is still the only candidate who has promised to fund the Auditor and Attorney Generals Offices at the level they need to make it impossibly difficult to hide corruption and escape accountability.




photos Mark Bralley