Financial forms tripping up legislators

Latest to submit amended disclosure: Lawmaker running for state auditor who failed to report home rental income

State Rep. Bill McCamley did not claim much on the annual financial disclosure form he filed in January.

Though he loaned his campaign for state auditor $45,000, the Democrat from Las Cruces did not report any income over $5,000 during the last year, any real estate besides his residence or any business interests in the state.

And McCamley maintains that is all mostly accurate. Mostly. After several days of badgering by a conservative blog, however, McCamley said on Monday that he had erred in failing to report income earned from renting part of his house.

McCamley is just the latest legislator journalists and political adversaries have caught in recent weeks bungling the financial disclosure form lawmakers are required to file with the Secretary of State’s Office each year.

Late last week, state Rep. Yvette Herrell filed an updated financial disclosure

form after the Associated Press reported she had not listed a family business that leases office space to the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department.

A review by The New Mexican has found that another lawmaker, state Rep. Gail Armstrong, has not reported that the business run by her husband has done more than $150,000 in work for state agencies during the last year.

The revelations have been fodder for election season attacks. But such episodes also point to how little oversight and understanding there really is of a process meant to bring transparency to the Legislature.

New Mexico Political Journal, a website run by former Republican state Sen. Rod Adair, pointed out last week that McCamley had not reported any significant income on his financial disclosure forms but had loaned his campaign tens of thousands of dollars.

McCamley initially dismissed the questions about his campaign finances as a political attack. In a post on Facebook, McCamley wrote he was using savings and part of an inheritance to finance his campaign.

The lawmaker has said that he decided a few years ago to devote himself full-time to the unsalaried job of legislator and therefore lived modestly.

As an example, the Democrat wrote on Facebook that he lives in a studio apartment. But that only raised more questions because the address McCamley has listed on financial disclosures is a ranch-style house.

On Monday, McCamley told The New Mexican he lives in a studio apartment adjoining the house but rents out the three-bedroom residence.

The price: $800 a month, or $9,600 a year.

State law requires public officials such as legislators report any sources of income over $5,000.

McCamley said Monday he would file an updated disclosure form with the Secretary of State’s Office.

“I was given some inaccurate information,” McCamley said, adding he believed it was not necessary to disclose the rental income because it was not a commercial property. “… Everybody makes mistakes. But I think we should be reporting this information so constituents know where you’re getting your funds from.”

The Legislature decides exactly what information lawmakers and other public officials are required to disclose.

Officials are required, for example, to list their employer, their spouse and spouse’s employer, as well as any source of income over $5,000. If the official or their spouse has a license for a particular line of work, such as practicing medicine or selling real estate, they must disclose that. If their spouse is a lobbyist, owns real estate besides their residence or has business interests in New Mexico over $10,000, it all ostensibly goes on the three-page form.

Unlike members of Congress or legislators in some other states, however, officials are not required to specify exactly how much they earned from particular sources of income.

State law also calls for public officials to disclose any business contracts they have with state agencies — that includes contracts between a family business or a business they co-own and a government department.

One section of the financial disclosure form is for officials to list any “state agencies to which the reporting individual or their spouse provided goods or services to in excess of $5,000 during the prior calendar year.” That is the section Herrell left blank. Responding to a call by The Albuquerque Journal’s editorial board for an investigation of the matter, Herrell wrote in a letter to the newspaper that she had asked the Secretary of State’s Office about the leases in 2013. The lawmaker from Alamogordo said she was told the contracts did not have to be disclosed on her form because she did not receive any lease payments directly and the leases are not between her and the state government.

“The issue is the interpretation of extremely vague questions written on government forms,” she wrote.

The New Mexican matched companies listed in legislators’ financial disclosure forms against government contracts compiled in the state’s Sunshine Portal website.

The newspaper found Armstrong, a Republican from Magdalena, did not disclose that the plumbing business TLC Company — where her husband Dale is president — got more than $150,000 of work from state government in 2017.

Similar to Herrell, the legislator and her husband said they believed the form only called for disclosing services an individual provided directly to the state, not through a company.

Armstrong said Monday she would contact the Secretary of State’s Office about amending her financial disclosure form.

While the Secretary of State’s Office has posted the disclosures online dating back to 2013 and staff review each one for discrepancies between different sections of the form, it does not audit the reports.

The nonprofit group New Mexico Ethics Watch has recommended more thorough reviews of financial disclosure reports and changing the forms to require officials specify at least ranges of income. And it has suggested creating an online filing system rather than having lawmakers complete the forms by hand.

Without lawmakers passing a bill to change the existing reporting requirements, however, the Secretary of State’s Office may not be able to ask for more information or more specific details.

Still, unsalaried, part-time legislators may be reluctant to require their colleagues to disclose more information and subject that information to yet more scrutiny. Some have suggested it would only deter potential candidates from running for office.

“I don’t buy that,” said Kathleen Sabo, executive director of New Mexico Ethics Watch. “… When you are in that position as a public officer, there is a responsibility to be transparent and for people to know you’re working on their behalf.”