The Albuquerque Journal is exceptionally careful in its reporting of malfeasance in office. They put two reporters on the job to check my reporting and the rebuttal offered by Lt. Governor Diane Denish. Sean Olson and Dan Boyd looked at the same invoices and time records as I. It also appears the Lt. Governor’s office gave them documents not made available to me in response to my public records request. I’ll get to that. I apologize to Sean Olson for not being able to provide a comment in time to meet his deadline.

The Journal’s story appeared at the top of the first page of the Metro Section under the title, “Report: Denish Spent Federal Bucks on PR.”

Olson and Boyd looked into my reporting that time entries on a contractor’s invoice show work on Christmas cards. What I didn’t know, and they uncovered, was that those Christmas cards were sent out of the Lt. Governor’s campaign committee, not her public office. Frequently public officials think we need official Christmas cards. But these came from the Lt. Governor’s campaign committee. It would seem that no taxpayer dollars at all should then have been spent on those Christmas cards since they were being sent out by a political committee, not a public official.

I reported that Laura Cowdrey, who acted as Denish’s driver, PR rep and gofer, submitted invoices for hours spent taking Christmas pictures and working on Christmas cards in November 2004. The Journal’s Olson and Boyd reviewed those same time sheets and concluded: “the records do not appear to contradict Scarantino’s finding that a Lieutenant Governor’s Office employee was paid with federal money for part of 8 hours of work on the cards.”

They didn’t mention that two days before Cowdrey was paid for taking Christmas pictures.

I reported that Denish also paid Brian Sanderoff’s New Mexico Research and Polling to conduct opinion polling. I was provided with invoices showing a $20,000 payment for an opinion survey of a sample of 600 people. Olson and Boyd confirmed Denish paid for polling, but go on to describe a large polling report in detail. Denish’s office did not provide me with the polling results or the large report, just the bill for the opinion surveying services.

Lastly, the Journal’s reporters and I agree that Denish also used federal funds to pay for public relations services, such as writing speeches, arranging interviews and arranging events. Olson and Boyd state that the majority of the $225,000 in federal funds spent by Denish were spent on PR work.

I note the Journal’s reporters did not comment on my findings that Denish used federal funds to hire someone to pick her up at airports, drive her to meetings and get things from her house. Denish has not denied spending federal stimulus money on paying for a driver. Perhaps that is why the Journal did not raise that point.

I hear Diane Denish will say in an upcoming KNME-TV interview that it is a “patent” lie that she used federal stimulus funds to print and mail Christmas cards. We never reported that. We reported that federal stimulus funds were used to pay a contractor to work on the Christmas cards, a fact the Journal has confirmed in its own review of the invoices and time sheets. In addition, the Journal has learned that those Christmas cards on which the contractor was working while being paid out of federal stimulus dollars were for Denish’s political campaign committee.