New Mexico state auditor Hector Balderas says fraud is so severe in the border town of Sunland Park that the state should take over and run things for now and New Mexico’s secretary for the Department of Finance and Administration has suspended two Sunland Park employees, charging them with mismanagement of public funds.
Late Monday afternoon [...]

Add another weird chapter in the long, strange political trip in Sunland Park.
On Friday (May 4), the city council of the troubled border town in southern New Mexico was supposed to appoint a new mayor after the state Attorney General’s Office had ruled last week that a previous council meeting that appointed 24-year-old Javier Perea [...]

Some 10 days after being selected as the mayor of Sunland Park, 24-year-old Javier Perea stepped down — for now — from the position on Friday (April 27) after the office of Attorney General Gary King declared that the border town’s city council violated the state’s Open Meetings Act when it selected Perea.
Back on April [...]

Sunland Park’s new, 24-year-old mayor took the oath of office today (April 23).
But this is Sunland Park so nothing goes smoothly.
It turns out that the city council may have violated the state’s Open Meetings Act when it selected young Mr. Javier Perea to take over the mayoral duties in the troubled border town.
From the Albuquerque [...]

On Wednesday afternoon, Javier Perea was a 24-year-old graduate of New Mexico State with a major in business administration who used to sell diamonds in a mall.
On Wednesday evening (April 18), Perea squeezed into a packed meeting at the senior center in Sunland Park and made a pitch to members of the city council: Hire [...]