ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Documents show a northern New Mexico county commissioner approved taxpayer-supported reimbursements for food and alcohol that have since come under scrutiny and that a former official now says should have never happened.
Emails from Santa Fe County Commissioner Henry Roybal released last week with an independent investigation into the Regional Coalition of Los Alamos National Lab Communities showed Roybal approved reimbursements involving baseball tickets, expensive alcohol and fancy restaurant outings.
The emails show Roybal, as treasurer of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities, rarely questioned the request for reimbursements that the New Mexico state auditor says were improper.
The coalition is an agency comprised of nine northern New Mexico cities, counties and pueblos surrounding the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. The group promotes the economy in connection with the lab.
Roybal approved expenses for coalition members to attend a Washington Nationals baseball game and an expensive Italian dinner in Washington, D.C., the emails showed. He also gave his blessing to a dinner at the Bull Ring restaurant in Santa Fe for former Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzalez and former Española Mayor Alice Lucero, where half of the nearly $300 bill was martinis, wine and vodka, according to emails.
"It is...my understanding that the cost of the Dinner at the Bull Ring for 4 people is also an acceptable amount by the governing rules of the coalition," Roybal wrote. "If this is correct I approve the reimbursement."
The coalition's travel policies prohibit alcohol as an allowable expense.
Roybal didn't immediately return emails from The Associated Press.
Andrea Romero, former Regional Coalition of LANL Communities executive director, told The Associated Press on Tuesday she was never told the reimbursements were improper until she was notified early this year. By that time, she had been reimbursed a number of times for dinners and alcohol for coalition members.
"I absolutely demonstrated terrible judgment in suggesting reimbursement for any improper expenditure," Romero said. "I should have known better than to ask for anything that was alcohol-related or tickets-related."
Romero, who is running for a seat in New Mexico's House of Representatives, says she has since paid back around $2,000 in improper reimbursements.
New Mexico Auditor Wayne Johnson's office said in a report last week a state audit found the agency approved improper reimbursements and officials found a lack of adequate documentation to support many expenditures "in violation of the published travel policy and state law."
In addition, an independent investigation of the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities found that Los Alamos County tried to revise existing documents in a possible attempt to conceal thousands of dollars in unlawful reimbursements for meals, liquor and other spending.
The report by an Albuquerque-based law firm found that the county, which acted as the taxpayer-funded agency's fiscal agent, "attempted to correct deficiencies arising from the ill-defined practices regarding RCLC's governance, policies, and activities" after the county was alerted to the possible misconduct.