Monday, July 16, 2012

Governor to be Subpoenaed?

A version of this will be published in The Santa Fe New Mexican 
July 17 2012

The lawyer representing a former state parole official in a wrongful termination case said Monday that he will subpoena Gov. Susana Martinez to testify after receiving a copy of an email he said shows Martinez had a role in firing the classified state employee.

Gov. Martinez
But when asked about the possible subpoena Monday, Martinez denied having anything to do with the decision to fire probation and parole supervisor Larry Flynn and said she’d never received the email obtained Sunday by Flynn’s lawyer, Sam Bregman.

“I know nothing about the Flynn case except that he was fired … [for] shooting rattlesnakes under dog houses,” Martinez said. “As far as the decision being made by me, absolutely not. It was not made by me for him to be fired.”

Flynn was fired in December, about three months after an incident in which he allegedly fired a gun outside of the home on state penitentiary grounds that he shared with former Corrections Secretary Lupe Martinez.

Last week, a judge ruled that Martinez’s chief of staff, Keith Gardner, will have to answer questions about Flynn’s firing. The Governor’s Office had tried to quash that subpoena.

Martinez on Monday didn't directly answer the question of whether she also would fight a subpoena. “I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to say,” she said.

The email in question is from Deputy Chief of Staff Ryan Cangiolosi, sent from his Yahoo account to Martinez, at her susana2010.com address and copied to Gardner at his Gmail account.

The email is dated Sept. 5 — two days after Lupe Martinez abruptly resigned from her $106,000-a-year job and less than two months before Flynn was charged by state police with two misdemeanors related to the shooting incident. Both charges later were dropped.

“Governor, Please see the attached document brief on Larry Flynn,”  wrote Cangiolosi. Attached was a memo from Rosa Manning of the State Police Criminal Investigations Division to Police Chief Robert Shilling, stating, “Per your request, investigative research was conducted on Larry E. Flynn, [listed Flynn’s date of birth].”

The report lists other personal information on Flynn, including court cases involving Flynn, vehicle registrations and Internet links to news stories about Flynn.

More in tomorrow's New Mexican