By Sergio Arellano-Oros
On Monday Rio Nuevo Board member Alberto Moore and Frank Antenori joined local radio host James T. Harris to discuss recent controversies stemming from the hiring of Jonathan Paton as a lobbyist for Rio Nuevo. The three talked about the claims by Rio Nuevo Chair Fletcher McCusker that every penny could be accounted for and why Rio Nuevo would need to pay a lobbyist $15,000.
On a Sunday radio show paid for by Rio Nuevo, Antenori confronted McCusker about the fact that the board had put the Fox debt in reserve, so it is still on the books but uncollectable in the 2012 audit and why McCusker, who has close ties to the Fox voted for the audit. Antenori questioned why they “pushed the Fox debt away.” Antenori said that it looked as if Rio Nuevo was returning to “business as usual.”
McCusker wrote off Antenori’s questions telling the radio audience that he was a conspiracy theorist.
On Monday, Moore joined Antenori and told Harris that McCusker didn’t do anything illegal, but they wondered if what was happening was ethical. Moore said he had the same questions, but added that he was more disturbed by the board spending money on a lobbyist when a contract was never approved by the board.
Documents found on Harris’s blog, show that Paton submitted an invoice to Rio Nuevo on April 16, even though there was no legislation pending up at the Capitol. The documents show that the board had a discussion about hiring a lobbyist, but didn’t have a name of a lobbyist or a contract attached.
Moore told Harris that the board had talked about hiring a lobbyist because “we wanted to have some new legislation brought up because over the last years we found as a board that there were a few things that had to be established for the board to be more effective. We were basically getting no support from the Legislature, from the Attorney General to conduct these investigations. It was always coming out of our pocket.”
“When January came around I wanted a lobbyist to come up and draft up a new document so we could really operate properly. Part of that was making a report to the Legislature once a year, so that they know who we are and what we were doing.”
Moore said that Paton would have been hired “for a very specific purpose, not just to be a fly on the wall and see what’s going on and then nothing happened. So then it just happened last week,” meaning the hiring of Paton. Moore said he asked both the lawyer and the CFO at the last meeting on April 15, what happened with hiring Paton and Moore said they told him that nothing had happened and that they said the matter “had gone dead.”
Moore said he was surprised by a “back dated agreement” with Paton that showed up on April 19. Moore said that “they gave him a check for $15,000” on the morning of April 19. Moore said he asked “why isn’t there some kind of report for what he has done for three months?”
“The problem is that this agreement was never brought before the board,” said Moore.
Paton, who is planning his wedding to be held at former senate president Steve Pierce’s ranch soon, started his own lobbying firm after losing a congressional race last November against democrat Anne Kirkpatrick.
A meeting to address the issues is scheduled for 9 a.m. today.
To listen to the interview, click here.