SANTA FE – An agency that promotes the Los Alamos National Laboratory is asking a state lawmaker to pay back $8,000 in reimbursements paid to her while she served as the organization’s executive director.

The Regional Coalition of Los Alamos National Laboratory Communities wants state Rep. Andrea Romero, D-Santa Fe, to pay back the money she made before her election in 2018, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

Romero previously reimbursed the agency $2,200, but that was before the state Auditor’s Office released a report in August 2018 that identified 18 negative findings. Those included impermissible reimbursements for travel, meals and alcoholic beverages and lobbying activities that jeopardized funding the agency receives from the Department of Energy.

The audit especially hits Romero over unlawful reimbursements and found a lack of adequate documentation to support many expenditures “in violation of the published travel policy and state law.”

A separate audit found Romero as executive director spent $1,850 on a dinner in Washington, D.C., $307 for a dozen Major League Baseball tickets and at other events where alcohol was paid for. Those findings also were in Tuesday’s state auditor’s report.

The coalition’s travel policies prohibit alcohol as an allowable expense, but the audit says Romero was reimbursed.

That agency is made up of nine northern New Mexico cities, counties and pueblos surrounding the U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. The group promotes the economy in connection with the lab.

Santa Fe County Commissioner Henry Roybal, chairman of the agency, said board members “felt it was our fiduciary responsibility to try to close this chapter.”

Romero said she would not comment until she had seen the letter asking for new reimbursements.

Romero said in 2018 that she “did not knowingly or deliberately violate any standard for reimbursement.”