Though I took a week’s vacation with family over the Thanksgiving holiday, my Watchdog counterparts in other states kept busy.

Just north in Colorado, Todd Shepherd has discovered that a $30,000 check written to Gov. Bill Ritter’s inaugural fund was not deposited, but instead converted into a cashier’s check by his deputy chief of staff, Stephanie Villafuerte. She has been nominated by President Obama to be Colorado’s next U.S. Attorney. Though Ritter’s people say the money was deposited, they have refused to release bank records confirming this. Why would someone convert a regular check to a cashier’s check except to create a cash trail that cannot be traced? There is a potential in this story to derail a Presidential appointment to the position of Colorado’s top federal law enforcement officer.

Bill McMorris of Watchdog.org has discovered that 1/2 of the jobs claimed by the Obama Administration to have been created by the stimulus bill already existed.

Andrew Griffin at Oklahoma Watchdog got his hands on a leaked audit showing public funds being used to pave private roads and curious billings and payments on cell phone usage by public officials. These types of abuses of public funds are certainly not unknown in New Mexico. Any citizen journalist looking for gold to mine through a public records request should look at these sorts of expenditures.