This week's guest on REPORT FROM SANTA FE is Tim Keller, New Mexico State Auditor, discussing the financial hot topics that have propelled his office into the news.

Auditor Keller describes the $4.5 Billion in unused state funds the Auditor's Government Accountability Office has identified in their "Money on the Sidelines" report, and explores the immediate questions of whether that money can be “clawed back,” and by whom.

Keller's Auditor's office is also analyzing the effectiveness of all the tax incentives and loopholes that make our tax policy look like “swiss cheese,” from the oil and gas industry subsidies to the popular film incentives and hundreds more - which of our many exemptions actually benefit the state? What is the real return on investment? The cost of these loopholes is about one Billion dollars.

“When you do the math basically it means there is about a billion dollars that we don’t collect,” said Keller. “So we choose to not collect those dollars through loopholes and carve outs... Now theoretically that means that taxes for everyone else is 20 percent higher.”

The Auditor's office discovered that the state's checkbook is unbalanced and revealed over $100 Million in discrepancies. New Mexico is behind in completing the required federal audit and the Auditor's office is working to rectify the state's imbalances. CAFR, a Combined Annual Financial Report, is our state audit and it “is late by a year and it is disclaimed, which means it is so bad no one will even give an opinion on it.”

Keller's office fights fraud, waste, and abuse in local governments also, and Keller reveals that his office will be investigating the $30 Million in missing funds from the City of Santa Fe's Parks' Bond Fund. There are also investigations ongoing into the misuse of public funds in the McKinley Country Sheriff's office and a forensic audit of Hatch which found fees funneled into a Christmas party fund and questionable land development investments.

These are not abstract numbers floating in some budget-in-the-sky! All of these issues have an immediate financial impact on every New Mexican, and it is very much to our advantage to pay attention. For example, the $4.5 Billion found in “Money on the Sidelines” could mean as much as a $5,000 tax advantage per voter, once it has been determined what can be used, when, and by whom. And the 20% of our tax monies given away to special industry exemptions and tax incentives add up to a billion dollars – closing those loopholes might decrease citizens' taxes by 20%.