I have received a reply from the NM General Services Department.

I had written to their PIO, Alex Cuellar, to follow up on the
claims of Lt Governor Diane Denish regarding the sacrifices
she made in passing the legislation creating the database of
state government spending, and in creating the database itself.

Sir,

I would appreciate some background information on the
contract database that was put up on the internet recently.

I assume the information already existed in some other
form or place. Can you enlighten me on the on various
steps required to put the information on line.

Approximately how many "man hours" were spent on the
conversion?

I would also like to know what part Lt Governor Denish
played in the process (the Alb Journal reported that she
"collaborated" on the project) Can you tell me exactly
what she did?

I am grateful for your time and attention

Mr. Cuellar responded; (I have added breaks, bullet points, and emphasis)

Mr. MacQuigg,
First of all, my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I had forwarded your questions after you had encountered some technical difficulties with the Contracts Database website on its first day operation but I failed to follow-up to make sure you received a response. I assumed it had been handled but you know what happens when one assumes. There was a window when there was the technical glitch you described which was remedied following the holiday weekend. Also, on Monday the morning the 4th, there was a period when the site was down for maintenance. For your edification, there is a procedure now in place that will afford people with questions a phone number to call if the site doesn't work for them after three tries.

As to your original technical questions, all the information in this database is for FY 2009 and is taken from the state's SHARE accounting system. The steps involved in arriving at the final product included:

• analysis of the criteria for the database contained in HB546;
• the decision to cull the information from SHARE;
• the highly labor intensive process of extracting the data from the SHARE database and importing it to the Contracts database.
• Once that was done, the information had to be organized in groups according to the same vendor and contract number and the amounts had to be tallied and verified to be greater than $20,000.00.
• The information was then organized into categories according to search parameters, such as purchase order number, contract number, vendor name, date, etc.
• All this took approximately 875 man hours for analysis, development, design of the website and testing. It should be noted that all of this was done on time (HB546 mandated that the site be up and running on January 1, 2010) with no additional funding and no additional personnel, save for a relative handful of people from GSD and three other agencies tasked with making this a reality.

As for your questions about Lt. Governor Diane Denish's involvement in the project, there is no question that she played a major role in the passage of HB546. There was a coordinated effort among the four agencies and her office to create this website notwithstanding the lack of funding resources. GSD Secretary Arturo L. Jaramillo and our legislative team reviewed the bill several times and worked with the Lt. Governor's office to get the bill through committee and onto the floor of both houses. Secretary Jaramillo was personally involved in the reviews and the hearings. But the Lt. Governor was the driving force behind the legislation.

Concerning your statement that, "There was no evidence that there was any fight at all, much less a 'hard fight'", and that "the bill passed unanimously in every venue in which it was voted upon", the very fact that the votes were there was due, in very large part, to the Lt. Governor's efforts at every step of the process for which we at the collaborative agencies are very grateful. As far as we are concerned, her help was invaluable.

I hope this answers your concerns. Feel free to contact me should you have any more questions for me.

Noteworthy, Cuellar's comments regarding my points about the apparent lack of evidence of a "hard fight" were not broached in my letter to him, but were offered up on a blog post.

I am not satisfied with his answer on that question. I still see no evidence of the "hard fight" Denish claims to have fought. No one to date, has offered up the name of a single legislator who opposed this legislation; a bill which is described as the weakest of a half dozen bills on the same subject.

I maintain still, unanimous support in every venue is an
indication of no real opposition, and not likely an indication of
having "fought hard" in overcoming strong opposition.

If there was indeed a fight, someone should be able to tell us
the name of even one legislator who fought strongly against
the online "database". In the absence of that name, it is
difficult to believe any claims of a "hard fight"taking place.

It still reads as puffery on the part of Diane Denish.