If you were to look at Ray Sandoval’s bookkeeping and the way he does business at Center Market, you would find some checks and balances in place that keep people from stealing at any point from when money goes in the register to the time he gives it to the bank. Kelly Armstrong at Cook’s has something similar. And those are family businesses with family members handling money.
If you have a large business like Big Rock Casino, many more checks must be in place with cameras and people never counting money alone, two signatures on checks. Banks do that too.
So why is it when it comes to taxpayer money officials seem so lax? We’ve recently suffered the city of Española being robbed by employees (allegedly), a sheriff’s department employee stealing money (allegedly) and now (again, allegedly) a business manager in Jemez Mountains School District? These are public bodies that have to follow generally accepted accounting principals and have systems in place so that employees are checking each other.
In the city’s case the person handling the money allegedly got someone to look the other way for a cut of the action. The county employee was allegedly forging our sheriff’s signature. Speaking of which, where was Joe Mascareñas? Jemez’ business manager must have had some help or her own system to cover her tracks.
The question is where was the supervision? Why were there no checks in place and after hearing of the first embezzlement case, shouldn’t we all have looked a little closer at our accounting systems? Are they full-proof?
The fact the state was handing over emergency money in excess of what it cost to run an elementary school now closed should have been a red flag. Public officials all need to have a sit down with their comptrollers or financial managers and ask the hard questions. They’re paid to spend our money responsibly. Part of that duty is making sure the money is actually there to spend and that it hasn’t ended up in a slot machine somewhere.