A heat­ed po­lit­i­cal clash has erupt­ed be­tween Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath and his pre­de­ces­sor Colm Im­bert, over al­leged lav­ish spend­ing at the min­istry while Im­bert was there.

The ten­sion arose af­ter Padarath claimed Im­bert $1.3 mil­lion was spent to ren­o­vate an of­fice for Im­bert at One Alexan­dra Place af­ter he was shift­ed from the Fi­nance Min­istry to Pub­lic Util­i­ties by for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young in Feb­ru­ary.

Speak­ing dur­ing Mon­day’s mo­tion to adopt the re­port of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, Padarath raised eye­brows when he claimed he in­her­it­ed a hefty ren­o­va­tion bill al­leged­ly com­mis­sioned by the for­mer min­is­ter, point­ing square­ly at Im­bert.

“The mem­ber on­ly telling us half the sto­ry by giv­ing us don’t en­gage in any reck­less, wild and crazy ex­pen­di­ture, but com­mit­ted this Gov­ern­ment to 1.3 mil­lion dol­lars for his friv­o­li­ty, his ex­cess, his ar­ro­gance and his abuse,” Padarath said.

He claimed thou­sands of dol­lars were spent on out­fit­ting the of­fice for Im­bert af­ter he as­sumed his new of­fice in for­mer PM Young’s cab­i­net.

“The de­sign fees cost tax­pay­ers for a 30x30 of­fice for the min­is­ter, $60,000. Mr Speak­er, the mem­ber want­ed a new work­sta­tion which cost the coun­try $40,000.”

He al­so claimed the costs climbed fur­ther to out­fit the space with art pieces.

“You know this gov­ern­ment, they love paint­ings, they bought all the Caz­abon paint­ings. The for­mer prime min­is­ter was a con­nois­seur of paint­ings and art. The mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin North East has the same type of fetish. Mr Speak­er, for the min­is­ter’s of­fice, the paint­ings cost the coun­try $30,000. If it wasn’t bad enough that the paint­ings were $30,000, they paid $35,000 to in­stall the paint­ings.”

Padarath con­demned Im­bert and the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion for what he said was a mis­man­age­ment of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars.

But Im­bert in­sist­ed that the works were com­plet­ed at a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er cost than what Padarath ref­er­enced dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion.

“The cost was $160,000; the min­is­ter is a stranger to the truth,” Im­bert said.

The Diego Mar­tin North East MP al­so lat­er took to so­cial me­dia plat­form X (for­mer­ly Twit­ter) and de­liv­ered a fur­ther scathing re­but­tal.

“UNC MP Padarath false­ly in­sin­u­at­ed tonight that I spent $1.3M on a 30’ x 30’ room for my­self at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, which is a bla­tant UN­TRUTH,” Im­bert post­ed.

“The truth is the en­tire 6th floor of the Min­istry was ren­o­vat­ed, and the work on the Min­is­ter’s of­fice on­ly cost $0.16M.”

He al­so ex­plained that when he left the min­istry in April, “on­ly new car­pet­ing, new win­dow blinds and new light­ing were in­stalled in the min­is­ter’s of­fice and the walls paint­ed at a to­tal cost of 70k.”

In a di­rect re­sponse to Im­bert’s coun­ter­claim, Padarath yes­ter­day called for the for­mer min­is­ter to clear the air on the ex­pen­di­tures.

“I am yet to hear from the for­mer min­is­ter how we end­ed up hav­ing to pay for lux­u­ri­ous im­port­ed so­fa sets, light­ing fix­tures, cof­fee and tea join­ers and two paint­ings that cost­ed $68,000 com­bined at a time when the for­mer min­is­ter told pub­lic ser­vants that the coun­try couldn’t give them in­creas­es in their salaries and need­ed to tight­en their belts.”