Fired health official sues state agency

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - A lawsuit by a former manager at the New Mexico Department of Health alleges that he was fired for telling a newspaper about what he considered to be financial fraud within the agency.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that a lawsuit filed Friday by Robert F. Ortiz, the former deputy director of the agency's administrative services, contends that Ortiz's comments to the media last year were protected speech.

Health Department spokesman Chris Minnick declined to comment on the lawsuit, but the agency's dismissal letter said that Ortiz's publicized comments constituted "disingenuous or irresponsible communication with the media" that created a hostile work environment for his colleagues.

The letter also said the evidence "pointed more correctly to an incidence of accounting errors and systemic issues," not to the fraud Ortiz alleged.

Ortiz's lawsuit contends he was fired over his comments about how spending for the federally funded Women, Infants and Children supplemental nutrition program was reported in 2008 and 2009.

His lawsuit contends a partial audit he triggered ultimately resulted in numerous accounting changes within the Health Department and a recommendation for the state to repay the U.S. Department of Agriculture about $500,000.

Ortiz contends he discovered that $1.7 million in costs from the 2008 federal fiscal year for the WIC program were improperly expensed to the program's 2009 federal fiscal year, even though the WIC program doesn't permit such a transfer of expenses to be carried over.

Ortiz's lawsuit states he found the error after his then-supervisor directed him to reconcile the financial records on the WIC program in October 2008, the lawsuit alleges. Several months later, DOH management agreed, his lawsuit says, to move the $1.7 million in costs back to 2008.

But in June 2009, a different supervisor ordered him to reverse that accounting entry and place the $1.7 million of costs back into the 2009 budget.

The lawsuit alleges Ortiz did so, but began to have second thoughts and informed his supervisors that he believed the directive was improper and "possibly illegal or fraudulent."

___

Information from: Albuquerque Journal