DOE clears its workers of taking improper gifts

Inspector general still probing coalition grant use

SANTA FE — A U.S. Department of Energy Inspector General’s report has found “no evidence” that DOE employees inappropriately accepted meals or tickets to a Major League Baseball game purchased by the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities.

However, the report concludes by saying that a separate inspection is underway over “the use of grant funds by the RCLC,” a consortium of nine northern New Mexico communities that advocates for jobs and federal environmental cleanup funding at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The State Auditor’s Office and the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office previously have raised ques

tions about whether the coalition has improperly used its federal dollars for lobbying.

The Journal reported last month that the DOE withheld $100,000 in annual grant funding to the RCLC due to an ongoing investigation into the DOE’s own handling of the grant.

Eric Vasquez, RCLC executive director, said at the time he expected the funds to become available once an investigation was completed.

He said in a phone interview Monday that the RCLC has never been formally informed about a DOE inquiry into the RCLC’s handling of the grant, that he has not been interviewed as part of a probe and that it was his understanding the investigation focused on activities that preceded his taking over as executive director a year ago.

“We’re just glad the investigation is moving forward so we can get back to the business of representing our communities,” he said.

The coalition is made up of Los Alamos, Rio Arriba, Santa Fe and Taos counties, the cities of Española and Santa Fe, the town of Taos, and the pueblos of Jemez and Ohkay Owingeh, which together provide $109,000 in funding to the RCLC.

The new report says that the Office of the Inspector General initiated an inspection after it received a hotline complaint alleging ethics violations by multiple DOE employees. The complaint alleged that the DOE employees accepted meals on three dates in 2017, including one in September of that year when an RCLC contingent was in Washington, D.C. During that same trip, the RCLC paid for 12 tickets to a Washington Nationals baseball game under then-coalition director Andrea Romero, now a state representative.

The IG’s report says that two employees with DOE’s Los Alamos site office admitted to receiving food at a luncheon with the RCLC executive director, but that the value of the meal was less than $20.

“All other Department employees we interviewed during our inspection stated that they had not accepted any gifts from the former RCLC Executive Director, and if they did attend events where meals were involved, they reimbursed the former RCLC Executive Director for the cost of the meals, in cash, at the time the event took place.”

Because these were cash transactions, there is no documentation to show the reimbursements, the report says. The DOE employees and Romero provided investigators with testimony made under oath.

The DOE’s Inspector General Office did not immediately respond to questions submitted by the Journal on Monday afternoon.