A lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Ethics Commission accuses the mayor of Angel Fire of steering a government contract to a company run by friends of his wife.
The lawsuit names Angel Fire Mayor Barry “B.J.” Lindsey; Julie Kulhan, the village’s chief procurement officer, and Carristo Creative Consulting, an advertising contractor based in Albuquerque, according to documents filed last week in the 8th Judicial District Court’s Colfax County office.
Unnamed people made several informal complaints to the Ethics Commission in early 2024, prompting the commission to conduct an initial investigation, said spokeswoman Jane Kilpatrick.
The commission had reason to believe the village of Angel Fire awarded a $1 million contract to Carristo Creative, a company with personal and professional ties to the village’s mayor, without issuing a request for proposals or seeking competitive bids, according to a commission news release.
Lindsey owns a village business called Lindsey Land & Home LLC “which builds and sells homes and rents vacation homes,” according to the lawsuit. Annie Jo Lindsey, who is married to the mayor, is “lifelong friends with Carristo Creative’s members, Monica Christofferson and Amanda Carras,” the lawsuit says, noting the three attended high school together and “enjoy traveling together.”
The lawsuit says after Lindsey took office in January, “he took action to award a village contract to Carristo Creative in violation of the procurement code.”
Efforts to contact the mayor and officials were unsuccessful.
State code mandates public bodies use a competitive, sealed process for contracts exceeding $60,000. The Procurements Code allows an exemption for “purchases of advertising,” but the commission’s news release said the contract with Carristo Creative went far beyond advertising and included branding creation, video and photography deliverables, website upgrades, and social media management.
While many resort-style communities in Northern New Mexico, such as Taos, Sipapu and Red River, are significantly dependent upon advertising to attract tourists and other visitors, the $1 million contract to Carristo Creative to promote Angel Fire sent up a red flag for the Ethics Commission, Kilpatrick said.
“They didn’t go to a request for proposals because they did it under an advertising exception,” Kilpatrick told The Taos News. “Obviously, the commission doesn’t agree that that exception applies to everything that was in the contracts because there was a lot more than just placement and advertising in that contract. There’s like marketing, media management, XYZ.”
“The Village’s failure to comply with these requirements, coupled with the mayor’s two personal and business relationship with Carristo Creative and its principals, raises significant concerns about conflicts of interest and the proper use of public funds,” the commission’s statement reads.
“This case presents an opportunity to clarify the limits of the advertising exemption within the Procurement Code and to enforce compliance with essential procurement practices,” said Jeremy Farris, the commission’s executive director.
This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of The Santa Fe New Mexican.
