Letter to the editor: Tech institutes new purchasing policy

Editor:

New Mexico Tech embraces its partnership with the City and County of Socorro and with our other neighbors. We appreciate—in fact, need—the goods, services, assistance, and expertise they provide us, and we understand that NMT plays a vital role in their economic well-being—that they need us, too.

They help us accomplish our goals, and we help their bottom line: win-win.

This is why we have revised a long-standing practice that, despite the best of intentions, sometimes made doing business with them difficult.

Because Socorro is a small town, many area vendors have immediate family ties to NMT employees. However, NMT’s practice generally did not allow contracting with them in those circumstances in an attempt to avoid appearances of conflicts of interest or nepotism. That’s understandable, but in a small community, it becomes more restrictive than we need to be—and, frankly, hurts NMT and our neighbors.

For instance, if NMT wanted to present flowers to a dignitary visiting campus and a local florist was related to an NMT employee, the roses had to be purchased from another proprietor with no NMT kin (most often from another city or online). This restriction was inefficient and led to NMT taking extra steps while taking money out of our cherished neighbors’ pockets.

No more. Effective immediately, NMT can —and should — use local and area vendors when feasible, both those whose owners have NMT employees as immediate family members and those that don’t. We have a responsibility to our neighbors and to ourselves to make this happen.

The parameters are straightforward: NMT employees cannot be directly or indirectly involved in the ownership of a company owned by an immediate family member (e.g., spouse, partner, child, parent, sibling). This includes receiving income from the company, soliciting or engaging in business on its behalf, or otherwise participating in the procurement process.

Our Purchasing Department will soon roll out a form about this for those NMT employees with immediate family member vendors that do business or want to do business with NMT.

The right thing for NMT to do is not only encourage local and regional vendors to conduct business with us but also make conducting business with us as easy as possible. After all, town-gown relations are as invaluable as family relations.

Mahyar Amouzegar

New Mexico Tech President and the President’s Executive Cabinet