The stench hovering over Rio Arriba County is not rotting trash.
Putrid odors actually are embedded in the North Central Solid Waste Authority itself, its operations, and its management.
Hold your noses, friends, because if the grand jury does its job when it begins its probe of the authority next week, “noxious” will barely describe the assault on our senses – and on our “cents,” which add up to misspent millions of taxpayers’ dollars to support this bumbling group of incompetents.
And those in charge of the authority may be found to be far worse than incompetent.
Far worse. Can you read between the lines?
Our hopes to uncover the gross mismanagement of the Solid Waste Authority now lie with the grand jury and the district attorney’s office. County Board Chairman – and authority board member – Alex Naranjo has once again stumbled out of the starting gate with his administration.
Naranjo vowed months ago to call for a forensic financial audit of the authority, but last week he backed off and said it’s no longer needed.
That is most likely because it was well known he wanted to fire the manager of the authority, Janet Saucedo. She beat him to the punch and resigned. No loss there unless you count the lack of leadership that Naranjo continues to exhibit.
Most likely he will remain true to form and hire one of his cronies to run the authority.
Sources for the SUN have described Saucedo as “shady and suspicious,” at best, a person who allegedly manipulated her position to enhance and enrich herself personally and who governed with shameless favoritism. That’s in addition to being incompetent in her job.
Beyond that, Saucedo has staffed the authority with relatives. There’s no place where nepotism and conflicts of interest flourish as in government in Española and Rio Arriba County.
Over the last year Saucedo has run an operation that has had an employee killed on the job and also lost its contract with the City of Española for trash services. The death of the employee, run over while working on the waste authority truck he was assigned to, remains shrouded in unanswered questions.
“Totally inept and possibly worse,” one source told the SUN after dealing directly with Saucedo.
The whispers about her should become a cacophony of ear-shattering demands for a complete financial audit of the authority. The words that are used to describe her reign challenge the imagination, words and phrases such as “financial shenanigans;” “cloaking authority and purchases in secrecy;” “personal and business shady practices.”
Sources have reported that Saucedo had absolute authority, no higher authority approval needed, on expenses under $10,000 and played fast and loose with her decisions on spending below the limit.
As we have said, things just keep creeping backwards to practices that have brought shame and dark clouds over this valley for decades. Relatives are hired. Elected officials double-dip and serve in multiple roles that are conflicting.
There is an appalling lack of leadership at all levels of local government.
This is a nightmare in the making and the prosecutor who will present evidence to the grand jury, B. Douglas Wood, offers only a modicum of hope to ferret out the truth. He is charged with examining two decades of mismanagement and the possibility of crimes committed by leaders and employees of the authority but has shown no enthusiasm for issuing subpoenas, the bedrocks of a grand jury investigation.
Does he expect the authority to simply turn sensitive and possibly incriminating documents over to him and the grand jury on its own volition? He is also the same person who recently asked a judge to dismiss this case based on a technicality involving a State Supreme Court case limiting grand jury proceedings. Thank goodness he failed.
We can’t help but wonder who from Rio Arriba is twisting his arm?
This grand jury is being empaneled because a citizen, Antonio DeVargas, had the courage to petition for an investigation of the authority.
Here’s a chance to show ordinary, taxpaying citizens that justice is real and can find a place in Rio Arriba County. The prosecutor and members of the grand jury simply must not let us down.