News Tip; APS spending record unavailable to voters

In less than two months, voters will have an opportunity to elect four board members and spend $368M.  96% of them will not.

The few that do, have a need to know how their power and resources are being spent currently, by the folks asking them for hundreds of millions more.  They need to know because, the record of APS' past and current spending is the single best indicator of how they intend to spend the $368M they're asking for in February.

The people who are asking to be re-elected as the stewards of our power and resources are asking to be trusted with hundreds of millions of dollars.  At the same time, they will not produce useful record of their current spending, it is unavailable to voters.

The APS communications department, nearly a million a year, argues APS is transparent because their budgets are posted on line.

I argue, they are not transparent at all.  They don't post all their audit findings on line.  They don't post the finding of investigations of administrative and executive corruption and incompetence.  Though they are public records and enjoy no exception to the requirements of the NM IPRA, citizens who wanted to see those findings will have to sue to sell them.  The records should be online and are not; no where to be found on APS' "award winning" website.

They are not transparent because voters being asked for the better part of 400 million dollars, cannot look up the cost overruns in their spending of the last few hundred million they were trusted with.  Voters have no idea who to hold accountable for the substantial overruns in the construction of the Atrisco Heritage High School.  We cannot look up their spending at their apartments in the sky.

Did we really pay $800 dollars apiece for board member chairs?

Transparency isn't about what they post online, it's about what they won't tell you.  They won't tell taxpayers how APS spends their money, but they would really like it so much, thank you, if we would give them another $368M to spend.

APS Chief Operating Officer Brad Winter was asked to produce a candid, forthright and honest accounting of his spending in the twin towers; the yet to be justified board room, and the millions and millions of dollars he spent remodeling, link.  He never did.

Did you stumble at candid, forthright and honest?

So does Brad Winter.

The words come verbatim from the standards of conduct established and enforced upon students; the Pillars of Character Counts!.

In the event that one is asked a legitimate question, the obligation of a person of character, of a role model of those standards, of an administration of character, and of politicians and public servants in the leadership of the APS, is to respond candidly, forthrightly and honestly.

The board and supt, by and through Brad Winter do not want to produce a candid, forthright and honest accounting of their spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd, at Atrisco Heritage, or anywhere else their incompetence or corruption have cost taxpayers unnecessarily.

Even while asking for $368M, they continue to hide the record of their spending and their competence as stewards of way more than a billion tax dollars a year.  They steadfastly refuse to tell the truth.   They steadfastly refuse to answer any inconvenient questions at all.

Voters will go to the polls, or not go to the polls, based on what they hear and read from whatever press they follow.  If the Journal and the rest of the establishment media KRQE, KOAT, KOB, and KKOB, refuse to investigate and report upon APS' unwillingness to share the truth about their spending record before the elections, they will not have done due diligence on behalf of voters counting on them for just that.

They will do what they have done since the day after February 11, 2007, link, the day the establishment's media's interest in covering corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS, came to a screeching halt.




photos Mark Bralley