New Mexico Procurement (Out of) Control? An Investigative Series.
Sure an emergency warrants emergency action. But when does an emergency become a convenient excuse to avoid transparency or hide incompetence?
Most people consider COVID-19 to be an unprecedented crisis – at least of their lifetime.
When Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a “State of Public Health Emergency” and invoked the powers vested in her through the All Hazard Emergency Management Act and the Emergency Licensing Act, it was full speed ahead for good reason.
The leadership of the Governor was decisive, strong and provided the public with a sense of certainty as to the response of state resources and state governments commitment to wrestling back the health of the community.
The efforts of New Mexico state government’s leaders and employees to confront extraordinary challenges, especially during the early months of 2020, deserve recognition and appreciation.
But, given the swiftness by which COVID-19 took over the way the world works, there were bound to be mistakes made in the response, especially in procurement of supplies and services – and there were also those looking to game the system.
Although procurement failures in the early stages of the government’s response are understandable, the workarounds employed at the outset of the pandemic should have been temporary pathways or solutions, not replacements for sound practices.
And over the last fourteen months, some cabinet secretaries, managers, and communication officials have ignored this basic tenet: transparency is the foundation for sound governance.
Roundhouse Movidas and The Candle will be publishing a series beginning this coming weekend, providing access to the proclivities of state agency managers as they spent and continue to spend hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars over the past thirteen months.
Through Inspection of Public Records Act requests, and requests for comments from state secretaries and managers, we will demonstrate why, despite there being an emergency, there is still a need to adhere to sound procurement practices.
We start this weekend with reporting on the state’s Environmental Department (NMED) decision to enter into an emergency procured contract with a company in November of 2020 for $850,000 which had a term of four years, and then just four months later amended that contract by increasing the amount to $6,350,000, with no additions to the scope of the contract during its four year term.
Editorial Note: Although earlier version of this story announced the reporting on procurement failures would begin on Friday, we decided to wait until the weekend as we expected a response to questions presented to the NMED’s communications director early last week, who wrote that she would “pull this information together and get back to you as soon as I can, which may not be until the end of the week.”
As of Saturday morning, we are still waiting for that response.
Roundhouse Movidas will publish the story this weekend, with or without NMED’s response.