Time to look at Trujillo and his nonprofits
Recently, The Santa Fe New Mexican wrote several articles related to the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities, an organization uniting communities in advocacy and action around environmental cleanup of nuclear waste and leveraging opportunities to improve our economy, and its former executive director, Andrea Romero.
These articles were prompted by allegations made by Northern New Mexicans Protecting Land, Water and Rights, or NNMP, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The articles featured comments from Northern New Mexicans Protecting Land, Water and Rights and state Rep. Carl Trujillo, whom Romero is challenging for state House District 46 in the June primary.
Since we are in the political season, it is worth asking a few questions about what is really going on here.
One newspaper article stated (More heat for regional coalition, over money for leader’s ostrich farm,” Albuquerque Journal, March 2), “Trujillo said he has no ties with the citizens group, but he and NNMP have been on the same side on roads and water disputes in northern Santa Fe County.”
But opined, “NNMP has close ties to Trujillo.” In fact, Trujillo’s sisterin-law serves as an officer of NNMP, and NNMP has aligned with Trujillo to play what I see as a divisive role in water and land issues in the area.
Dave Neal, vice president of NNMP, stated in The New Mexican article, “NNMProtects believes in accountability for all elected officials and nonprofits that are entrusted with public money and have learned our members often times expect accountability before perfection of the people representing them.” Rep. Trujillo added, “Standing up against corruption is my top priority, and it’s the reason I ran for office in the first place, so it’s not surprising that many people in my district share that priority and also no surprise that they would speak up against a candidate who represents the very corruption that I stand against.”
But where was Northern New Mexico Protects last year, when Trujillo accepted baseball tickets from a CenturyLink lobbyist and failed to disclose this gift, as required by state law? NNMP was silent, and Trujillo refused to take responsibility. (The tickets showed up on the lobbyist’s report.) Trujillo has repeatedly taken industry campaign contributions and voted in their direct interest, particularly from CenturyLink — he even sponsored critical legislation for the telecom giant this year.
There’s yet another connection between Northern New Mexico Protects and Rep. Trujillo. NNMP’s lawyer is staunch conservative politician Blair Dunn. Dunn also is close to Trujillo — Dunn recently was forced to pay back the state of New Mexico for a frivolous lawsuit, with a federal judge stating, “Sanctions are appropriate to deter plaintiffs’ counsel [Dunn] from filing unsupportable lawsuits for political purposes.” Carl Trujillo was one of the plaintiffs called out by the judge for this politically motivated lawsuit.
The New Mexican’s editorial (“Drinking on the public dime,” Our View, March 1), stated that Northern New Mexico Protects’ allegations were politically motivated, designed to advance Trujillo. Shouldn’t we take these allegations with a grain of salt? And should we expect more allegations from nonprofits that do Trujillo’s political dirty work for him? This sort of politics is unfortunately, the norm now. It is ugly and detracts from the very real issues facing our community, something I believe the Regional Coalition of LANL Communities was trying to address. Readers should be aware that there’s more to this story. We want to know more about why this group is attacking Andrea Romero — and what they are trying to hide.