Not even Española city officials know the exact size of the city’s budget after discovering that former finance director Andrew Perkins not only delayed the budget’s approval, but may have falsified several numbers throughout the approval process, Acting City Manager Veronica Albin said.
When Perkins was fired last month, he left the city as one of the only municipalities in the state whose budget is still unapproved by the state Department of Finance and Administration, said Brenda Suazo-Giles, the Department analyst who handles the city’s budget. When Albin met with Suazo-Giles Sept. 22, it became clear that the city was in fact at least a month away from that approval. It turns out the budget Perkins gave the Department was not the one approved by the City Council in July, Albin said.
“I don’t know what’s true, I don’t know what’s approved,” Albin said. “I’m basically where I was in May (when the preliminary budget was approved).”
The budget would ordinarily have been approved in early-to-mid-August, Suazo-Giles said. However, Perkins did not submit the budget to the Department until Aug. 26, almost a month after the Council approved it, Department spokeswoman Nicole Gillespie said.
The problems began with step one of the entire budget process, Albin said. That step is the city’s fourth quarter report, which verifies the exact amount in the city’s cash balances at the end of the previous fiscal year, which ended June 30.
“(Perkins) brought me a quarterly report that didn’t make sense,” she said. “I asked him to revise it and he said he did that. Come to find the report he submitted to (the Department) was that same one that didn’t make sense.”
Though Albin reviewed the document several times, she said she is still uncertain where Perkins came up with a large portion of the numbers he used in the quarterly report. In fact, she said, Perkins may have falsified a large portion of the report.
“I don’t want to say he made it up,” she said. “But these numbers really don’t seem to have come from anywhere I can find.”
Albin is certain only that the final budget Perkins gave the state was not the same one the Council approved. Perkins appears to have changed numbers from one draft to another without input from city staff, or reference to reality, Albin said. Officials don’t even know which draft, if any, matches the city’s actual available funds.
In light of that, Albin said the city will more or less start the process over, beginning by resubmitting an accurate quarterly report by the end of this week. In the meantime, city department heads have been instructed to use the most conservative existing version of their budgets and spend as little as possible, she said. That version is the one approved by the Council, which department heads have been using all along.
“Our actual budget should be in better shape than the one the Council approved,” she said. “I don’t think anyone will be gasping about cuts they didn’t expect or anything like that.”
The budget currently in use involves about $10.3 million in revenues and $10.9 million in expenditures, with cash balances plugging the difference. These numbers included around $500,000 in cuts from the preliminary budget made at Perkins’ behest.
Councilors said they know little about the situation. Staff did not report on the debacle at the Sept. 29 Council meeting, and only District 2 Councilor Alfred Herrera was aware of the specifics.
“It’s kind of disheartening that it even took place,” he said. “(Submitting a budget) is not a complicated thing to do. It’s an easy process.”
Herrera said he was involved in the first round of interviews to hire Perkins, and he never suspected Perkins would “act in such a manner.”
“I thought with that caliber of person in terms of credentials he would do well for the city,” he said.
Mayor Pro Tem and Finance Committee Chair Alice Lucero said she had heard only that things weren’t going smoothly.
“I’m of course very disappointed,” she said. “I’m going to be calling a Finance Committee meeting as soon as possible to find out what’s going on.”
Lucero also said she is concerned that Albin is in charge of fixing the budget even though she does not have a college degree or any official background in finance. The last time Albin had final authority over the finance department, before Perkins was hired, finance staff allegedly embezzled more than $100,000 from the city.
The only person currently working on the budget who does have a college degree is finance employee Rodrigo Ballon, who has a master’s degree in accounting. He will be working with Albin on aspects of the budget involving the finance software program Caselle, which the city also uses for payroll. The other person involved is Grants Administrator Lupita DeHerrera, Albin said.
Currently the budget is set for approval sometime in late October, Albin said. That will be four months since it was initially approved by the Council.
While city officials have never said why Perkins was fired, he revealed the city’s reasons under oath Sept. 25 at a termination appeal hearing for former police officer Vince Crespin, Perkins said he was fired for incompetence and complaints lodged by fellow employees. The city has refused to turn over documents related to those complaints.
Perkins did not return a call for comment.