A Conversation with New Mexico State Auditor Joseph Maestas

I recently sat down with New Mexico State Auditor Joseph Maestas on his back patio in Santa Fe. He is the state's financial watchdog, elected in 2022, and on Tuesday, Nov. 3, he is on the ballot for a second and final term.

He grew up on a small farm in Santa Cruz, by Española, in a family of military veterans and public school teachers. An engineer, he left New Mexico for sixteen years and came home still in federal civil service, where he spent more than thirty years, and ran for the Española City Council in 2000. He went on to serve as mayor of Española, on the Santa Fe City Council and on the Public Regulation Commission.

We talked about selling corn door to door in Los Alamos as a kid, the mayor's tractor bid he challenged at his first council meeting, and clean water for the Española Valley. He described the program his office built to help acequias, land grants and other small public bodies catch up on their books and reach money the legislature had already awarded them. We also talked about the AI his office is bringing into audit reviews, a custom program now in testing, and the one it already uses on conservatorship reports, and why he doesn't burn bridges.