A draft of a federal audit of the Secretary of State's Office says a Democratic consultant paid by the state to produce TV spots about the Help America Vote Act can't account for more than $2 million paid to him, and the state might be responsible for repaying some of the funds.

However, former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who is running for Congress in Albuquerque, calls the release of the Election Assistance Commission draft audit a politically motivated attack on her to damage her before the June primary.

She blamed current Secretary of State Mary Herrera. A spokesman for Herrera denied it.

Vigil-Giron said some of the issues raised in the preliminary audit — which apparently was leaked to The New Mexico Independent Web site — can be explained, though she said she doesn't know why the A. Gutierrez & Associates Inc. consultant company could substantiate only $2.6 million of the $4.8 million budgeted for voter education television spots.

Telephone numbers listed for the company in Albuquerque and Corpus Christi, Texas, have been disconnected. The firm's Armando Gutierrez didn't respond to an e-mail from The New Mexican on Wednesday, though he told the Independent in an e-mail he is "unaware of any such report."

The various public-service ads, which featured Vigil-Giron, ran about 44,000 times on New Mexico television stations.

A summary of the draft audit says the Secretary of State's Office, under Vigil-Giron, paid the Gutierrez company a total of $6.3 million. That includes a $1 million administrative fee that is not listed in the contract between the state and Gutierrez.

The document also says the amount paid to Gutierrez for voter-education ads was $323,000 more than the contract allowed; the state made a duplicate payment of $186,000 for a video used to train poll workers; Gutierrez billed the Secretary of State for $373,000 for state gross-receipts taxes but only paid $55,400 in taxes; and the state's required "match" of $751,500 was not deposited in the proper fund.

The exact amount the state might owe the federal government couldn't be determined yet, the draft audit said.

The Gutierrez firm, founded in Albuquerque by Gutierrez, has worked on several presidential campaigns. According to the company's Web site, these campaigns include the 1996 Bill Clinton re-election, for which he was responsible for "Latino advertising and marketing." He produced Spanish-language ads for the 2000 Gore campaign and was the "agency of record" for Gov. Bill Richardson's gubernatorial race.

Vigil-Giron said the contract with Gutierrez was approved by the state attorney general.

She said her office's accounting might be shoddy because the state Department of Finance and the Legislature "encourages shoddy accounting."

She said she's preparing a response to the draft audit.

Bryan Whitener of the EAC said Wednesday that the agency's inspector general "will issue the final report by the end of May to the executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. He will be responsible for working with New Mexico for resolution and the tracking of corrective actions. The EAC will make the decision as to whether any funds will need to be repaid."

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com.