Audit: New Mexico spends $500 million out of state

ALBUQUERQUE —€” The State Auditor has found that government agencies in New Mexico last year spend more than $500 million of taxpayer money out of state when it could have been spent locally.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that state Auditor Tim Keller said Wednesday that those figures are among the initial findings of an audit looking at over all contracts over $60,000 entered into by local and state government entities.

The full audit will be released later this year, covering a total of $1.3 billion in contract spending.

Keller said at the Economic Forum that the largest percentage of out-of-state spending happens in the IT, health and medical and food services industries. However most money spent in construction, architecture and engineering was spent in-state.