SANTA FE, N.M. — State Rep. Andrea Romero is facing new ethics questions over whether a public relations firm hired with state funds to represent New Mexico’s Jeffrey Epstein truth commission was used to help her respond to controversy surrounding her separate employment with a district attorney’s office.
Documents related to the dispute show Dini Von Mueffling Consulting, a firm under contract to handle communications for the Survivor Truth Commission chaired by Romero, distributed a Sept. 1 statement on Romero’s behalf addressing her resignation from a part-time job with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
The episode has prompted allegations that Romero, a Santa Fe Democrat, improperly used a publicly funded commission resource for her personal benefit. The available documents, however, do not establish whether the firm billed the state for work related to Romero’s statement.
The Legislative Council Service signed a contract Aug. 11 on behalf of the commission allowing up to $60,000 in payments to Dini Von Mueffling Consulting through the end of the year, according to documents cited in the dispute. The firm is paid $75 an hour to provide media relations services, including preparing news releases and responding to media inquiries.
An email included in the documents alleges Romero did not seek approval from the commission’s other members before the firm distributed her statement, despite an agreement that commission communications would be approved by all four members.
The email also alleges Romero did not discuss her use of the firm with commission members until 8:45 p.m., several hours after the statement was sent to reporters at 2:49 p.m. The author argued that Romero’s employment dispute was separate from the commission’s work and that the firm had been retained to serve the commission rather than individual members.
Senate Minority Leader Bill Sharer, R-Farmington, subsequently filed an ethics complaint accusing Romero of using public resources for a personal purpose. Sharer also called on Romero to resign as commission chair and from the Legislature.
“Now the evidence suggests she used taxpayer dollars appropriated for a Truth Commission investigating one of the most notorious predators in modern history to instead pay a contractor to clean up her own political mess,” Sharer said in a statement.
Romero’s Sept. 1 statement, distributed by the firm, identified her as chair of the commission and linked her employment dispute to its work.
Romero said Attorney General Raúl Torrez and the New Mexico Department of Justice had changed their position on whether she could hold a paid state job while serving as an unpaid legislator. She said she had previously sought and received approval before accepting the district attorney’s office position.
“I believe this is an attempt to disrupt the work of our Survivor Truth Commission,” Romero said in the statement.
Torrez has disputed Romero’s characterization, maintaining his office did not tell her that holding the state job while serving in the Legislature was lawful.
Romero resigned from the district attorney’s office this week. Her employment has also resulted in separate ethics complaints and a complaint to the New Mexico Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Board.
At the center of the latest dispute is whether work performed by the commission’s PR contractor crossed the line from official commission business into assistance for Romero’s individual political or employment concerns. The documents provided do not show what, if anything, the firm charged the state for preparing or distributing the statement.
