It's Time for Las Cruces to Re-Start its Oversight Committee

In 2018 alleged misconduct led the City to enact the Accountability in Government Ordinance to protect against “fraud, waste, and abuse.”

The ordinance (Municipal Code Section 2-179) created an Inspector-General and an Oversight Committee to keep a close eye on city spending. Both make sense: Las Cruces’s annual budget exceeds half a billion dollars. It spends this public money on a variety of salaries, contracts, supplies, and costs. With 1600 employees, that’s a lot for anyone to keep track of.

This ordinance was mandatory. Provisions read, “The committee shall consist of [three city resident members, one each from accounting, law enforcement, and professional management/business] . . . The mayor and one councilor . . . shall be nonvoting ex officio members. . . . As vacancies on the committee occur, the council shall appoint new members. . . . The committee shall meet at least four times per year,”

“Shall” means what your father meant when he raised his arm in a ready-to-spank position as he told you to do something. Legally, it doesn’t mean “if you feel like it” or “if the wind is blowing just right, could you please . . . ?”

The city hasn’t done it. Management’s years-long delay in hiring the required inspector-general was widely reported. After a search, the City hired a really topnotch gent, who’d been a GS-14 at the DEA, but perhaps Pili didn’t exactly welcome him. He resigned while “on probation.” Pili then hired Charles Tucker, sans search, off the Oversight Committee.

The committee functioned, but last met in September 2023. Chair Jack Eakman is its only current member. In a meeting last August, city councilors acknowledged what others had alleged, that Ifo Pili didn’t much like oversight.

Has the City really tried? It shouldn’t be hard to find an accountant or a lawyer or ex-cop. Have they even called the Southern New Mexico Bar Association? The City tells me that it made efforts, but “It was determined that the ordinance needs some revisions, and it would be better to make those revisions before appointing new members.” Revisions will go “to City Council at a future work session in the coming months.” Translation: “Later, kid!”

This wasn’t a do-nothing committee. Eakman declined to discuss specifics or name names, calling that confidential (although I understand Ifo was meant to publish committee reports). I asked whether the committee had uncovered “mismanagement and misappropriation of funds.” He replied, “Absolutely. And fraud, waste, and abuse.” Whether that saved us $1 a year or $1 million, that’s money not being recovered currently, and problems not being identified, because of management sluggishness.

Basically: some city folks screwed up, or worse; investigators found the city wasn’t keeping track of its money (our money) well enough and suggested an oversight committee; city council created one; but management has put the committee to sleep for now.

That’s a problem. This committee is an important tool to spot and prevent carelessness and corruption. I hope councilors feel some urgency about it. One guessed “revisions” might include loosening the requirements, to facilitate appointing committee-members; but “some future time in months” doesn’t sound urgent. Maybe a citizen or group will take some legal action to force Las Cruces to follow a Las Cruces City Ordinance calling for good-government.

I hope Mayor Enriquez will light a fire under someone to get the Oversight Committee two more members soon. Drafting “revisions” shouldn’t take six months.

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[The above column appeared Sunday, 7April, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/).]

[The city needs to do this. Further delay to June or July isn’t necessary. It can’t take that long, at this point, to get the subject into shape for a meaningful discussion, with a draft ordinance on the table to focus that discussion. It’s already been six months! The further delay means probably we’ll have spent a full year in violation of our own ordinance before (perhaps) coming back into compliance. I’m just not seeing a good excuse for such an extensive delay.]

[I’m guessing here, and not stating a fact or advocating anything, but the delay to date and the need to amend the ordinance may be related. One councilor told me she’s been asking acquaintances who are lawyers, ex-cops, or accountants to consider it, and that’s yielded no applications so far. So maybe they’re considering easing the requirements. Might be necessary, although I’m still guessing management hasn’t made serious efforts to fix this. (Maybe Ikani will.) And how to loosen up the requirements while still making sure to have savvy folks on the committee will take some thought. One idea would be to loosen the residency requirement so that a member need only reside within a few miles of the city limits. I know several great candidates who live in, say, Talavera.]

[On another topic I’ve written about a little, the city was finally going to have a work session [Monday, 8 April] on evidence that Memorial Medical Center is not performing satisfactorily under its contract with city and county. I even declined the Monday afternoon bridge game to attend. But now, I’m told, MMC has asked for more time to prepare. Time they might not need if answers that would be both true and acceptable to the city and the public were easy to form. Anyway, if you were planning on attending, do something fun instead.]

Main Street 1885