Sep. 28—Santa Fe's backlog of financial audits has had ripple effects for organizations tied to the city government.
An accountant with one of them, the Santa Fe Solid Waste Management Agency, told board members at a meeting last week she is preparing to miss the December deadline to submit its audit for fiscal year 2023 to the State Auditor's Office as she also scrambles to complete the report for 2022.
City Councilor Michael Garcia, who serves on the agency's board, says the revelation raises further concerns about whether this means the city also will fail to meet the state's deadline for what would be the fifth consecutive year. The city submitted its 2021 audit in June, more than 18 months past the due date, following monthslong delays filing audits for 2020 and 2019.
Garcia has pressed city officials to provide a clear target date for completing audits for fiscal years 2022, now more than nine months overdue, and 2023, due Dec. 15, but he has faced pushback.
Finance Director Emily Oster has declined to state a particular date for when she expects her department to have the financial reports completed. She and other officials have said they expect the city to turn in the 2022 audit on or before Dec. 4.
Garcia questioned whether that leaves enough turnaround time to meet the deadline 11 days later for the 2023 audit. "We owe it to the residents and the external stakeholders to be honest as to if we're going to meet that deadline date," he said.
City officials' lack of transparency about the audit delays, which are preventing the city from accessing state capital outlay, raised councilors' ire at a meeting Wednesday night. They questioned City Manager John Blair about his decision to withhold from them a letter from the state Department of Finance and Administration notifying the city it could not release millions of dollars in project funding until financial audit requirements were fulfilled.
Blair's answer: He wanted to prevent the letter from being released to the media and the public.
"There are reasons why people continue to say we aren't transparent and there's a lack of trust," Councilor Amanda Chavez said at the meeting.
The Solid Waste Management Agency and the Buckman Direct Diversion are both joint entities of the city and Santa Fe County and are required to complete their own audit reports as part of the city's yearly auditing process. Accounting firm Carr, Riggs & Ingram is working with both agencies as part of its contract with the city.