|
 E-mail Story Print Friendly
Opinion editorials Handling of Pit Appeal Calls for a Time-Out |
Front Page 
opinion editorialsThis editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by editorial page staff and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers
.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
NMDOT, Universities Must Deliver Answers
Taxpayers have been on a painfully long road trip since 2008, the destination being fiscal accountability for millions in highway research dollars. At the wheel? The New Mexico Department of Transportation and the state's two largest universities.
Stop the car, we want to get out.
Three years after a 2008 U.S. Department of Transportation-ordered audit found $2.7 million in federal highway dollars sent to the Land of Enchantment were misspent on everything from bullet-resistant window film to trips to Beijing, NMDOT has repaid the federal government in full. Yet the agency is still waiting for the University of New Mexico to kick in its share — $314,082 for what the audit deemed substandard, and in some cases recycled research work not called for under the contract. And for New Mexico State University to give back $1.06 million in research money commandeered for projects that included some that were best suited for a Tom Cruise thriller — a fire alarm system complete with "panic button," a security system designed to "defeat" eavesdropping devices and "security sweeps" of DOT buildings.
It's unclear why all that money hasn't been repaid, or if it even should be. Was the audit off base? With the number of lawyers each public entity employs, it's hard to believe one of them hasn't stepped up to negotiate a reasonable settlement or apportion responsibility.
So far, the new administration hasn't done much better resolving this — though it's had a lot less time to do it. A spokesman for Gov. Susana Martinez says "our preliminary understanding is that some of the contracts issued to NMSU and UNM by the previous administration were not well drafted or properly executed by previous DOT officials." Apparently people who work at institutions of higher learning are unfamiliar with fine print.
And while NMDOT's then-research bureau chief David Albright, who oversaw the contracts, left in 2005 for a job teaching business ethics at UNM, the now-retired prof who oversaw NMSU's secret-agent allocations is in Martinez's Rolodex. The governor recently appointed Kenneth White to the state Transportation Commission.
Three years after a federal audit put spending by NMDOT, UNM and NMSU in doubt, it's past time for each entity to give the folks ultimately footing the bill — the taxpayers — a clear route to understanding who took their money off course, why, and how to keep it from happening again.
You also can send comments via our comment form
|
|
