How does a company bidding on a $38 million state road contract end up with confidential documents regarding the job? Taxpayers deserve an answer if New Mexico wants its public procurement process to have any credibility.
It is undisputed that FNF Construction, the second-lowest bidder and the company the Richardson administration tried to give the job of rebuilding 18 miles of Interstate 10 south of Las Cruces, got the internal documents. And, according to the story in Sunday’s Journal by investigative reporter Colleen Heild, they would have succeeded except that federal officials who held the purse strings balked at the switcheroo. It is apparent the documents came from an insider, and the new administration says it looks like that insider is former state Transportation Commission Chairman Johnny Cope. One set of documents is attached to what appears to be his personal fax cover sheet, and the pile includes an interoffice memo to him as well as documents to and from his e-mail account. According to an attorney for an FNF competitor — and the original low bidder — the top attorney for the New Mexico Department of Transportation under then-Gov. Bill Richardson “provided certain documents to Johnny Cope around the time of the procurement of the Las Cruces Project, and … Cope had in turn provided those documents to FNF, including documents that the NMDOT claims were privileged communications.” Cope was a major contributor to Richardson campaigns. So was FNF New Mexico Vice President Paul Wood, a friend of Cope’s, who with his family and former company gave more than $50K to Richardson campaigns and causes. The attorney for low-bidder Fisher Sand & Gravel, which is suing New Mexico and FNF in state and federal court, says an NMDOT attorney “stated that the NMDOT’s position was that Cope’s decision to provide the documents to FNF was unlawful.” It’s the latest in a troubling pattern of official behavior regarding this road project. Last year District Court Judge Sarah Singleton of Santa Fe ruled that NMDOT managers under Richardson violated procurement law by holding improper “closed door discussions” with FNF officials. Singleton found NMDOT’s actions “contrary to law and contrary to the policy of integrity and transparency in the bidding process.” “To allow such behind closed-door meetings would encourage favoritism and corruption,” the judge wrote. Now, officials for NMDOT say they are “troubled and concerned to learn that confidential, attorney-client privileged documents were apparently given to FNF Construction by former Chairman Cope during his tenure in office. If true, this would be a clear violation of a commissioner’s statutory duty to treat his position as a public trust.” A Fisher attorney puts a finer point on it: “What you have here is you’ve got insiders trying to get the benefits.” Taxpayers deserve to know if that’s the case. It will take a real investigation conducted by someone with the authority to compel testimony and the temerity to get the facts on the record. That’s where — if the state procurement code had been followed — they should have been all along. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
