Bob Johnson was a mentor and an inspiration

In 2002, then-Attorney General Patricia Madrid filed charges against five members of the Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education for violating the New Mexico Open Meetings Act. It was the second time in the state’s history the act was enforced with criminal charges.

All five board members were later convicted and fined for violating the act after secretly giving the former superintendent almost $1 million in incentives over the course of several years to try to keep him in Las Cruces.

Public disclosure and the resulting action by the attorney general would not have happened without Bob Johnson, the head of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government who died on Saturday following a stroke. He was 84.

I was a rookie reporter in 2001 covering my first full-time beat – education – when I received a tip that the superintendent, who decided to leave anyway, was being paid a bonus of $55,000 on his way out the door. It caught my attention because it wasn’t in his contract.

It was Bob who taught me the ins and outs of the Open Meetings Act and Inspection of Public Records Act and helped me through the investigation. My articles came at a time when middle-school science teachers were unable to assign homework because of a textbook shortage, and the community was outraged. In addition to the convictions, the two who were still members of the school board were overwhelmingly recalled.

Madrid later thanked me for my reporting, saying it got her attention on the topic, but it’s Bob who should get the credit. I wouldn’t have known how to proceed without his help.

In 2004, Bob helped me identify dozens of Open Meetings Act violations by the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners and obtain public records that revealed other, widespread problems. The resulting articles led to a special audit that confirmed the violations and other problems and forced county government to make a number of changes for the better.

Bob was a mentor to me and a tireless supporter of open government.

He helped start the Foundation for Open Government in 1998 after a long career with the Associated Press. It was Bob who wrote the news service’s first bulletin on the assassination of President Kennedy. He later went on to become a top executive in the organization.

When he retired to New Mexico, Bob also taught college courses. That’s how he met Julie March, an AP executive who got her start in journalism as a student at NMSU.

“He was tough and brought a level of demanding professionalism to the class that we needed,” March told the news service for an article. “There’s no doubt that I, along with many other young journalists inside and outside the AP, owe at least the start of our careers to Bob.”

Bob was working to increase government transparency in New Mexico up until his death, giving trainings along with the attorney general’s office on open government laws and working with the attorney general on new proposals. And he never gave up the fight to open legislative conference committees to the public. The proposal twice came within one Senate vote of approval this year and will come up for another vote in the near future.

Bob never backed down, even in the face of intimidation from a powerful senator during this year’s deliberations on the conference committee proposal. While senators who opposed the proposal had to resort to bullying and changing the subject, Bob stood firmly on a simple truth – that the public should have access to the business of its government.

“Real journalism – its goal – should be to enlighten the public about issues and enlighten them factually so they’ll know what’s going on,” he told the Associated Press in 2005. “That’s what I do as an open government advocate, making sure that people have access to public records. They’re called public records because they belong to the public.”

Bob, you inspired me and countless others. You will be missed.