Executive orders can be bypassed with a little help from your friends.
That was the message the state sent to Española after Gov. Susana Martinez approved two Rio Arriba County capital outlay requests for projects in city limits.
While many other County projects were vetoed, a $50,000 appropriation to the Española Valley Softball Field and a $290,000 appropriation to the Hunter building food hub survived Martinez’s pen, according to a list of approved capital outlay requests.
The appropriation is at odds with an executive order from Martinez that prohibits government entities from receiving capital outlay funds until they are current with their audits. The city’s most current audit is from fiscal year 2010.
State Department of Finance and Administration Local Government Division Director Wayne Sowell told city officials at a Jan. 2 meeting that the city would not be able to use the County as a fiscal agent until it was up-to-date on its audits.
It’s not clear what happened between Jan. 2 and March 11, when Martinez signed the legislature’s capital outlay bill, as Sowell declined to comment on the issue, but Administration officials are not calling the state funding going toward Española projects a “loophole.”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” Administration spokesman Tim Korte said.
Korte said the appropriations are allowable under the executive order as long as the County demonstrates its leading the project.
Española Mayor Alice Lucero insisted that was the case during an interview after the capital outlay approval.
Lucero said city and County officials are currently discussing how those appropriations will be used. After the money’s use is determined, the County will initiate the bidding process while taking a cut of the funding in their role as a fiscal agent. County Manager Tomas Campos said the exact percentage has yet to be negotiatied, though he estimated it would be between 1 and 5 percent.
What remains unclear is whether the County can claim both projects as its own after heavy city investment, a question Korte never clearly answered.
The city has already committed more than the $595,000 earmarked for the project and Councilor Pedro Valdez said the project will cost more than $1 million by the time it’s through.
The food hub has also seen heavy city involvement, with the city leasing the Hunter building in exchange for a cut of the rent anchor tenant and community development organization Siete del Norte will charge its sublesees.
Korte said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the County’s appropriation because he didn’t know enough details about the situation.
Whether the project is acceptable under Martinez’s executive order is unimportant to Moving Arts Española Director Roger Montoya, whose organization will be one of the occupants of the finished building.
“This is shot in the arm the project needed,” he said.