By Jim Scarantino 

Six months ago State Auditor Hector Balderas promised a response to documents containing evidence of what appear to be false vouchers and irregularities in records from the Lt. Governor’s Office.  That evidence was hand-delivered to his office on November  16, 2009.  We obtained receipt for delivery from the State Auditor’s receptionist.  Four days later we received this e-mail from his spokeswoman, Caroline Buerkle:

Mr. Scarantino,

I wanted to let you know that your request has been received by the Office of the State Auditor.  We will review it and get back to you with an update.

Happy Thanksgiving–

Six months have come and gone, but we have not received any further response to the documents hand-delivered to State Auditor Balderas’ front desk.

Evidence of False Vouchers and Other Irregularities by Lt. Governor’s Office

What did we deliver to the State Auditor?

As we reported on November 18, 2009:

Records from Lt. Governor Diane Denish’s Office reveal glaring discrepancies that indicate false vouchers and payments for services that could not have been rendered as of the date the payments were approved. New Mexico Watchdog reviewed all the voucher packets for the contract public information officer hired by Denish in 2004. This worker, Lauran Cowdrey, was revealed in previous reports by this site and Heath Haussamen and Steve Terrell of The Santa Fe New Mexican to have performed duties for Denish’s political campaign committee and the John Kerry for President 2004 campaign. Joshua Rosen, Denish’s current chief of staff, has admitted that the expenditure of public funds for those purposes was improper. Denish’s campaign has refunded the state treasury the amounts paid to Cowdrey for work on those days.

A closer inspection of the invoices, time sheets and payment vouchers for Cowdrey’s work reveals what appears to be evidence of false vouchers, a criminal offense under New Mexico law.

Another criminal law with possible bearing on the irregularities is, as we reported, New Mexico Statute 30-23-2:

Paying or receiving public money for services not rendered consists of knowingly making or receiving payment or causing payment to be made from public funds where such payment purports to be for wages, salary or remuneration for personal services which have not in fact been rendered.

Violation of these statutes is a fourth degree felony.

What exactly was in those records that could be evidence of crimes?

The evidence was found in invoices and payment vouchers for the political worker improperly paid with federal stimulus funds

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