Ex-speaker details exchange with Griego
Moment after meeting was when Martinez realized senator had role in sale of state-owned property
Former New Mexico House Speaker Ken Martinez said Wednesday that then-Sen. Phil Griego seemed anxious when a legislative committee delayed action on the sale of state property to a downtown Santa Fe hotel in April 2014.
According to the former speaker’s account, Griego bursting into Martinez’s office after the meeting and demanded, “Why’d you mess up my deal, Mr. Speaker?”
Martinez said that Griego told him, “I need to close on that today. Can you bring [the committee] back in? I can answer any questions you have.”
Martinez, testifying in Griego’s ongoing corruption trial in state District Court, said that’s when he realized Griego had some role in the transaction, assuming — correctly — that Griego was representing the buyer of a historic state-owned building on De Vargas Street.
Martinez testified that it was important to “proceed as transparently as possible” and that any questions about the sale should only be answered in an open meeting because “a member of the Legislature was involved in it.”
But, Martinez said, that transparency did not include mentioning anything about Griego’s stake in the deal during the June 2014 meeting of the state Capitol Buildings Planning Commission — which was the final legislative step in the sale of the old state Parks Division headquarters to the Inn of the Five Graces.
Martinez’s testimony provided a backstage glimpse into how lawmakers talk to one another about legislation in the Roundhouse. But it also showed how reluctant lawmakers are to deal with possible ethical breaches — or possible criminal violations — by their own, especially in public.
Prosecutors with the state Attorney General’s Office called Martinez to the witness stand in an
apparent attempt to show how aggressively Griego was pushing the property sale. Meanwhile, Griego’s lawyer, Tom Clark, is trying use the former speaker’s account to show that Griego wasn’t trying to hide his involvement.
The Seret family, which owns the upscale inn, paid Griego a $50,000 broker’s commission.
Martinez testified that he had expressed his concerns about Griego to Senate President Pro Tem Mary Kay Papen, D-Las Cruces, as well as to Raul Burciaga, who heads the Legislative Council Service. He also said that, immediately before the meeting, he had heard other members of the buildings commission talk about Griego being involved. But, the former speaker said, it would have been a breach of legislative protocol to have brought up Griego’s connection at the meeting.
“In my role as speaker, it wouldn’t have been appropriate,” Martinez said, adding that the appropriate action was notifying the leader of the Senate, which he did when he talked to Papen.
Martinez said he made no effort to determine Griego’s involvement with the sale. He referred to a provision in the state constitution that says each House shall judge the qualifications of its members. This, Martinez said, means a House member is not allowed to cite possible misdeeds of a senator.
Bringing up Griego’s involvement at the commission meeting would amount to “blindsiding” a legislator, Martinez said. “We didn’t know if it was an appropriate or inappropriate relationship.” He said to accuse a legislator of inappropriate dealings in public would be unfair.
He compared the process of investigating ethical complaints by legislators to the grand jury system, where, by law, proceedings are conducted in strict secrecy.
“If there was a question about it being inappropriate, then it should go through the regular process,” Martinez said.
Eventually, that’s what happened with Griego. After receiving a formal complaint about Griego, a Senate ethics committee investigated the property sale, leading Griego in 2015 to sign a statement in which he admitted to violating the state constitution by profiting from the deal. Shortly after signing that document, Griego resigned from the Senate.
The agreement signed by Griego was not made public until Griego released it himself. Neither Martinez nor others who knew about Griego’s role ever spoke publicly about it until a preliminary hearing in the criminal case last year.
The former speaker, who now works as the Bernalillo County attorney, said that on the day Griego came into his office after the commission delayed action on the sale, Griego pulled out paperwork from a briefcase or folder and said he could draw up a sales agreement with the hotel on the spot. This, Martinez said, was highly unusual.
Griego also called two officials and asked them to come to Martinez’s office. These were Burciaga and Brett Woods — then the deputy secretary of the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, which owned the building.
Martinez said that at some point he decided it would be impractical and probably a violation of the Open Meetings Act to reconvene the commission. So he left the three others in his office and drove back to Grants. He said he thinks that is when he might have called Papen to tell her about Griego.
When the commission met again in June, Martinez was the only one who voted in favor of the sale. According to the minutes of the meeting, Martinez listed several concerns, including the fact that the buyer had hired the appraiser for the sale and that the building was close to the Capitol, where there was a shortage of office space.
But Martinez didn’t mention anything about a state senator being involved in the transaction.
Griego faces eight criminal counts including bribery and fraud. The prosecution in the case is expected to rest Thursday.