The faculty's request for a state audit of UNM's finances may be ignored.
Howard Snell, Faculty Senate president, said President David Schmidly's Monday morning message suggested an administrative decision not to seek a state audit.
Schmidly said Moss Adams LLP - an accounting firm and consultant group - published an audit of the University's finances for the 2007-08 fiscal year on Jan. 23, and independent audits of UNM for the three preceding years can be accessed online.
Snell said the more than 150-page 2007-08 audit does not satisfy the faculty's questions about how instruction and general funds are being handled.
"I can't find that explicitly stated in the audit, and I think there might be a difference of opinion about what information is actually available in the audit and what's not," he said.
UNM spokeswoman Susan McKinsey said in an e-mail to the Daily Lobo that the president wants to work with faculty members without incurring extra expenses for the University.
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"Both the president and the regents have said they will be happy to work with the faculty and to answer their specific questions, but they believe the answers can be found in the existing audit which was approved by the state auditor and which cost approximately $980,000," McKinsey said.ˇ"So, it would seem prudent to use the existing independent state auditor-approved audit first."
Hector Balderas, state auditor for New Mexico, said an additional audit might not be expensive. He said the cost would depend on the scope of the financial questions the audit sought to answer.
Balderas said the annual audit UNM receives is called the standard financial audit and that its content is predetermined by the General Accountability Office, he said.
"What it seems like people are requesting is potentially an audit that addresses additional questions," he said.
Wayne Brown, managing partner for Moss Adams, said he wasn't at liberty to analyze the contents of the last audit or speculate about an additional one.
Snell said that because none of the faculty's resolutions are binding, the administration isn't obligated to answer them. This means Schmidly is not required to begin a new audit.
Balderas said people should contact his office if they are concerned that a government entity isn't being fiscally responsible to the citizens of New Mexico.
"We have a fraud hotline that people can call in anonymously, or they can talk to me formally, and I'd be glad to sit down with them and work with them on trying to understand whether or not any government agency is truly being fiscally accountable to the tax payers of New Mexico," he said.
Balderas said he may visit UNM on Thursday to further investigate the issue.
"I think what I'm interested in doing is maybe meeting with the Faculty Senate president and then the University president and meeting with some student leaders just to kind of get an idea of what the issues are, because . they've already completed a financial audit and I'm trying to get a sense of where the areas of concern are," he said.
Snell said the faculty is concerned about the financial state of the University but that the Senate will not attempt to override Schmidly's authority.
"We've not approached the auditor, and I'm pretty sure the Senate would probably wait until they've spoken more with the administration," he said. "We'd like this to be a collaborative thing. We're not at all trying to be confrontational, but we do need information."
