Entire audit faked, Martinez to blame

The Journal reports, link, the New Mexico Finance Authority lied about audits and provided investors with fraudulent documents. It seems, State Auditor Hector Balderas will demand a special audit, the results of which will be forwarded to law enforcement.

Too little, too late. All reaction, no evidence of an effective proactive effort to prevent this from happening. The first legitimate use of power and resources is to ensure that neither the power nor the resources can be abused, by anyone, ever.

Manifestly, government oversight is an abysmal failure.

When Balderas begins his audit, he will do so at some disadvantage; his office is underfunded and understaffed. When his findings go to Attorney General Gary King for prosecution, King as well, will begin at some disadvantage; his office is underfunded and understaffed.

Every agency of government whose responsibilities include oversight, is underfunded and understaffed. Balderas has been on record for years; he could, given the resources, make it impossibly difficult to hide public corruption and incompetence.

Casinos do it. Banks do it. Companies and corporations do it. Given the resources, why couldn't a state auditor and an attorney general make it not only impossibly difficult to hide corruption, but nearly impossibly difficult to escape honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence within public service.

It isn't so much the public servant who spends their workday playing the slots or hanging out in porn shops, as it is, the public servant whose job it was to make sure public servants can't get paid their salary for sitting in front of a slot machine or video booth, instead of at their desk.

Why do they think they can get away with it, because obviously, they can. They think they can get away with it, because for the most part, they can get away with it. They can get away with it for years and years and years.

Every time corruption, incompetence, or bone-headed stupidity is exposed, the exposure never includes the person whose job it was to make sure that what ever happened, doesn't happen. That's why it continues to happen.

The Journal reports;

The Finance Authority said Thursday that its erroneous financial documents were the fault of its former financial controller, who left the agency in early June.

Finance Authority Director Richard May offered a prepared statement, here quoted in significant part;

“This matter is deeply concerning but it will have no effect ...”

It came in the form of a prepared statement, because those whose heads should roll, will not point to a time, a day, and a place where they stand up and deliver their responses to questions about the public interests and about their public service.

Reportedly, Gov. Susana Martinez is
“deeply concerned” about the fraud.

During her campaign, link, Martinez
promised intervene in the culture of
corruption and incompetence in
state government, by supporting
independent investigations of every
agency of state government;
investigations that would ferret out
corruption, incompetence, and the
practices that enable them.

Had she kept her promise, the lack of standards and accountability that enabled this kind of public corruption and incompetence, would have been exposed, before it was abused.

She didn't, it wasn't, and here we are.




photo Mark Bralley