Now that the NM attorney general is involved in the probe it will be hard to kill the story quickly. The defense makes no sense at all to claim that they did not know the law and it is not a crime because no one told them about it. The documents were altered after the fact by the LA county staff employees to cover up years of illegal payments when it came to light. At least that is what the audit reports as facts, and they have the altered documents with the specific LA county employees changes, so it just makes no sense to continue on the defense of ignorance equates to innocence.
There is no real distinction between LANL and LA county in this story, since any responsible oversight would have required an audit that would have surfaced what has been claimed as widespread waste, fraud and abuse. It was LANL that provided the funds to LA county for the lobbying effort, and then never bothered to check into how the money was spent. Now that the county admits that alcohol and sports tickets were provided to DOE employees from the account, this could be a federal case and go beyond the NM attorney general.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/nonprofit-asks-for-criminal-probe-into-coalition-reimbursements/article_321d404a-6982-52b6-b836-4386c2fabb47.html
6 comments:
"There is no real distinction between LANL and LA county in this story,"
I don't buy this, LANL is sick of just giving money away to other entities with little or no value to LANL or the nation. I know you hate LANL but this has nothing to do with them. I know it may come as shock to many but New Mexican politics is somewhat corrupt. A good first to dealing with some of this is to get rid of GRT, pronto. Even if that is done I am sure there will be many shady deals to sneak out out as much money as possible.
" It was LANL that provided the funds to LA county for the lobbying effort, and then never bothered to check into how the money was spent."
LANL HAD to provide funds, they do not want to have anything to do with this effort. The LANL county lobbying has no benefit to LANL. Hopefully with the rules of the new contract this will end. I applaud your efforts to make this known and get the details out but trying to smear LANL is not the point. LANL would love to be rid of this junk. To be fair LANL as a entity would love to get rid of this but I am sure that there are plenty of family and fried deals that personally benefit. I would guess this kind of stuff grew under LANS, as this is standard practice with Bechtel, all you have to do is read some of the books such as the profiteers to get an idea how they operate. Again major first step is to get rid of the GRT.
There are abundant examples of the widespread corruption in northern NM. Politicians are sometimes caught and that makes the news, and the same is true for LANL employees. They are sometimes caught and that makes the news. Maybe Battelle can bring the culture change to more than just the lab and somehow start to shift the northern NM entitlement mentality. It is that mentality that is the root of much of the corruption, but in all cases it the US taxpayer that has to pay the bills.
It may be hard to take but I bet the only reason this is even in the news is due to the congress election coming up soon and they need to smear the Romero person. If she was not involved no would care and this wold the usual New Mexican way of doing things.
Go back to 2011 when the RCLC was formed and look into who was behind its creation. McMillan pushed the idea and arranged to provide the funding and Stover ran it through the LA county. No one paid much attention to them until LANS lost the contract and then RCLC became the DC lobby for retention of the GRT. Look at their public statements about being engaged on a pre-decisional basis with NNSA decision-making. While the money for RCLC was run through LA county, it was DOE money that was paying for the DOE lobbying to take place.
Most sadly, 12:32 PM is correct, this is the usual NM way of doing things.
August 16, 2018 at 4:20 AM
Interesting how LANS could be involved.
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