At the regularly scheduled meeting Feb. 25, the Roswell Occupancy Tax board:
Approved a lodger’s tax funding request for the New Mexico Senior Olympics State Games for up to $57,000, but requires a signed contract stating funds are on a “draw down” basis. The OTB approved $46,000 for the event in 2013.
Approved a lodger’s tax funding request for the 2014 Pecos Valley Quilt Show. Established in 1983, the PVQS was held during the annual chile cheese festival until 2010, when the event went solo. The $1,900 funding request will be used for advertising the event locally and nationally. The event will be held Sept. 18-20, and is expected to have 1,500 people in attendance, according to Chairman Carolyn Mitchell.
Approved $3,000 lodger’s tax funding request for the Jesse Andrus/Mike Hillman memorial bull riding event. The amount was a $1,000 increase from the approved amount last year, due to the need of billboard advertising. Event coordinators said a motocross event will be added this year.
Approved a $20,000 lodger’s tax funding request for the annual Hike It and Spike It four-on-four flag football tournament to offset the event’s $64,000 advertising budget. Event Coordinator Justin Ellis said the event has a $3 million direct impact on Roswell through lodging and restaurant revenue. Ellis said the event expects to request more money in 2015, since it will be it’s 20th anniversary.
All requests are sent to the Roswell Finance Committee for approval or denial. The next regular scheduled finance committee meeting is Feb. 26 at 8:00 a.m.
ROSWELL- A Roswell man is in jail today after police say a man ran into a pole after robbing a teenage boy Sunday night.
Twenty-three-year-old James A. Ortega was arrested Sunday and charged with kidnapping, robbery, intimidation of a witness, and vehicle burglary.
Officers responded to a commercial alarm on the 200 block of North Main Street where they discovered a glass door broken by rocks.
Upon searching the area, an officer found two male subjects standing in a parking lot next to a building on the 300 block of North Virginia.
According to police, Ortega was holding onto the back of a a fifteen-year-old male’s neck. Ortega failed to comply with the officer’s commands to stop and was detained.
The teen told Roswell police Ortega approached him and demanded his wallet, telling the teen he had a gun. After robbing the teenager, it’s reported that Ortega attempted to flee but ran into a pole, causing him to fall to the ground. Shortly after Ortega’s fall, police spotted the two in conflict.
Police say items found on Ortega’s person link him to three vehicle burglaries that occurred in the very same parking lot.
Investigators also say Ortega is a person of interest in a criminal damage case where a business on the 200 block of N. Main Street sustained approximately $700.00 – $1,000.00 in damages.
After his arrest, Ortega was transported to the Chaves County Detention Center on a $100,000.00 cash or surety bond.
ALAMOGORDO- The audit the state used to justify suspending Medicaid payments to an Alamogordo health center last year appears to have included mistakenly flagged claims, according to the state Attorney General’s Office.
That raises questions about the process the Human Services Department (HSD) used to ensure the audit was accurate before deciding to suspend Medicaid dollars to the Alamogordo organization.
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Without that funding, The Counseling Center closed its doors last fall. While the AG’s office has completed its investigation into the organization’s spending of Medicaid money without filing charges, other investigations – sparked in part by the audit that led to the payment freeze – are ongoing.
Using a statistical formula, the contractor that performed the audit, Public Consulting Group Inc. (PCG) of Massachusetts, estimated there had been $612,000 in potential Medicaid overpayments to The Counseling Center over several years based on $1,873 in questionable costs.
But the AG’s office, during its investigation, flagged only $375 in questionable costs, said Jody Curran, the head of Attorney General Gary King’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
If PCG had been working from $375 instead of $1,873, its estimate of Medicaid overbilling likely would have been less than the $612,000 the audit claimed.
What explains the difference? The AG’s report on The Counseling Center indicates that its investigators were able to resolve some of the issues the PCG audit flagged by reviewing records and interviewing staff. By contrast, PCG and HSD never gave James Kerlin, executive director of The Counseling Center, an opportunity to respond to the audit’s findings before the report was finalized and made public, Kerlin says.
In many cases, auditors present findings to staff of audited organizations to give them an opportunity to refute findings or address misunderstandings. For example, most state and local governmental agencies are audited annually in New Mexico. Staff within those agencies are afforded the chance to see and respond to audit findings within a certain amount of time before audits are made public.
HSD used the overbilling claim made in the PCG audit, in part, to find “credible allegations of fraud” against The Counseling Center in June 2013 – a finding that led to the payment freeze that put the organization out of business and sparked criminal investigations by the AG and other state and federal agencies.
The Alamogordo center is one of 15 organizations HSD accused of “credible allegations of fraud” last June. Attorney General Gary King, a Democrat who is running for governor against Republican incumbent Susana Martinez, announced last month that his office had found “insufficient evidence to support allegations of fraud” against the Counseling Center of Alamogordo.
Portions of the audit that detail specific findings against the other 14 providers remain secret, and the attorney general’s investigations into those organizations are ongoing. As it did in the case of The Counseling Center, HSD froze funding to those organizations last year. Many went out of business, replaced by organizations from Arizona.
The discrepancies
During their investigation, the Attorney General’s staff reviewed records and interviewed PCG staff and employees of HSD about billing practices and how individuals are credentialed to provide services to clients. According to the AG’s investigative report, PCG flagged several billing claims because, it claimed, it appeared that “unqualified staff” had performed services.
But the AG found that wasn’t the case. “Most” of those issues “were resolved by reviewing the credentialing files and speaking with the PCG staff,” the investigation synopsis reads. It states that PCG flagged a number of claims because it thought one therapist wasn’t credentialed to provide rehabilitation services. But the AG’s office “carefully reviewed” that employee’s credentialing file and found that he did have the necessary qualifications, it states.
AG investigators also noted that they had located “paperwork for most of the missing documentation so that there did not appear to be a pattern of billing without supporting documentation,” according to the synopsis.
That wasn’t the only discrepancy between what PCG auditors and AG investigators each found.
Reviewing another set of claims submitted by the Alamogordo counseling center, state investigators flagged about $4,880 in questionable billing compared to the $43,137 highlighted in the PCG audit, Curran said. Both reviewed the same 10 cases involving 1,529 claims worth $193,871 in government money.
Not sharing audit findings
Kerlin wasn’t the only one denied an opportunity to see PCG’s findings and respond. PCG and HSD did not share the audit’s findings with any of the 15 organizations whose Medicaid payments HSD froze. It is unclear if HSD did a systematic check itself to make sure claims flagged weren’t mistakenly identified as inappropriate.
An HSD spokesman said his state agency reviewed some of The Counseling Center’s claims before finalizing the audit.
“The final number in the audit excludes things like billing errors and, you know, simple mistakes and stuff like that,” HSD spokesman Matt Kennicott said.
PCG declined to comment for this story.
Kerlin said he can’t assess the AG’s findings or those of the audit because “I never was and still don’t know what it was that we supposedly we did wrong.”
As part of its probe, the Attorney General’s investigators did find $13,000 in questionable claims submitted by the Alamogordo counseling center unrelated to last year’s audit.
But those claims were identified after following up on allegations made by an anonymous source, Curran said.
The Alamogordo center might still be under scrutiny. While the AG found “insufficient evidence to support allegations of fraud,” other law enforcement agencies – such as the state Taxation and Revenue Department, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office – are continuing to investigate allegations, Kennicott said.
(Jared Tucker, PVON photo) Authorities said the Allsups convenience store at Hobbs and Union Streets was robbed Saturday morning. The suspect is still at large.
Jared Tucker, PVON Founder
ROSWELL- The man who strong-arm robbed a convenience store Saturday morning is still on the run.
Roswell Police Public Information Liaison Sabrina Morales said a man entered the Allsups convenience store at Hobbs and Union Streets around 12:38 a.m. and set some items on the check out counter.
When the employee opened the cash register to finish a previous transaction, the suspect lunged across the counter and grabbed an undisclosed amount of cash before fleeing on foot.
“The only description (of the suspect) is a caucasian male with a thin build,” Morales said.
No injuries were reported, Morales said.
Police are asking anyone with information on this incident to call 575-624-6770.
ROSWELL- The man accused of raping a woman in her home and leaving her for dead Jan. 4 has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
According to Assistant District Attorney Jody Mullis, Kenneth Whiteside plead not guilty to charges of attempted murder, aggravated burglary, criminal sexual penetration, kidnapping and intimidating a witness Monday morning in district court.
“But of course he is still presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Willis said.
If convicted on all charges, Willis said Whiteside faces approximately 57 years in prison for the attack that happened on the 900 block of Pecan Street.
According to the original criminal complaint, Whiteside was stopped by officers a short time after they were called for help in the 800 block of Greenwood Avenue, one block from the victim’s home.
Officers observed smeared blood on the outside of a rear door and steering wheel, and observed items in the back seat, which were identified as missing from the victim’s home, the complaint said.
Among those items found in the vehicle at the traffic stop and later after a search warrant was secured were a television, jewelry, an XBOX gaming console and the victim’s driver’s license.
A second television was found laying in the alley behind the victim’s home, and was missing its stand. That stand was also found in Whiteside’s white Buick, the complaint said.
Whiteside told police he found those items, “on Orchard Street, and it looked good so he put it in his car,” according to the complaint.
A nearby neighbor told police she saw an older white Buick sitting in front of the victim’s home, and it looked like someone left a door open because the dome light was on.
Mullis said the court will soon set a trial and other court hearings.
ROSWELL- A Roswell man said his family’s apartment has been in deplorable conditions since they moved in late last year. He claims the landlord who is supposed to keep the place in good repair has skirted his responsibilities until Monday.
Patrick Tedrow said he and his fiance, along with their two children, have been living in unacceptable conditions that pose a risk to his family’s health.
“Something’s got to be done,” Tedrow said.
His main concern is with the amount of roaches in the apartment and the sewage backing up into the bathtub.
“We’ve been waiting a while to have this all done,” Tedrow said.
Landlord Ron Russell paints a different picture of the situation.
Russell denied having prior knowledge of the problem with the bathtub. He said there was a filter in place to prevent a clog and it is now missing. Russell said he still has the receipt for the filter and that the bathtub can still be used to bathe in.
“He’s a constant complainer,” Russell said.
Russell said the roaches are due to the living conditions Tedrow has placed on himself and none of the other tenants in the same building have the problem.
Russell said he has contacted an exterminator and told Tedrow he would notify them as soon as one is available. He said the tenants asked to have only their apartment exterminated but replied that he would have to do the whole building to prevent roaches from spreading.
Russell said he has logbooks as well as many witnesses that will testify to the condition of the apartment.
“He can make all the claims he wants,” Russell said. “He can take me to court if he wants.”
Russell believes he would win in a lawsuit regarding these complaints. Russell said he has 129 other tenants all-around Roswell and doesn’t have the same problems with any of them.
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